Brit Economy hit by great strike [Archive]

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Threetune

30th November 2011, 13:12

The answer to Tory Chancellor Osborne’s ‘austerity for workers’ class war cry yesterday, is the biggest one day strike in Britain for decades.

Important sections of both the middle and working classes are on the march, stirred into action like European and Arab workers by the unending economic meltdown and vicious attacks on wages and conditions, proving once again that the best recruiting sergeant for revolutionary consciousness is the chaotic capitalist system itself.

The great debate about how best to organise the planet has taken a qualitatively giant leap forward, drawing millions of previously passive layers into the argument. This is already a massive victory for the revolutionary working class internationally.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15961863 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15961863)
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Threetune

30th November 2011, 14:47

Meanwhile hostilities against Iran are stepped up as imperialism’s only “answer”

to its rotten global extortion racket. Following provocative economic sanctions

the Brit government is now expelling Iranian diplomats. Defeat for ‘our own’

ruling class at home and abroad is the only real “answer”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15966628

30th November 2011, 15:30

bricolage

30th November 2011, 17:02

The strike is the biggest since 1926, but nothing of the same level. It is an important first step in rebuilding our class, even though it probably won't win anything in itself as some super-optimist left groups are hoping.
This is definitely true.
Class confidence is starting to return but the purely quantitative view of various Trot groups that getting more and more people out is the only way to do it (ignoring what those 'more' are actually going to do) is a bit of a dead end. This is nothing like the militancy of the 60s-80s.
That being said I'm definitely inspired by sectors that haven't been on strike for years coming back out, by cross-sector solidarity taking place and by the general increase in the willingness to fight back and the belief that things can be won (man this sounds really cliched). Anyway everything starts from somewhere.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

30th November 2011, 17:29

What a brilliant class movement in Scotland today thousands on the March in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Inverness and hundreds of other towns.

Arrived in Edinburgh at 7:30am and from then until 10:15 went round 5 picket lines, PCS, Unite and Unison, discussing, leafleting and selling a socialist newspaper. Went to the assembly area of the March and gave out hundreds of leaflets for the Socialist Party and for Standing Anti-Cuts candidates in the Local Elections in Scotland in 2012. Marched to the Scottish Parliament continually giving out leaflets, having discussions and selling the Socialist newspaper, (15 in total). It is estimated that the march in Edinburgh was over 20,000, that is absolutely brilliant. A big congratulations to all the Socialist Party members who helped out today. I am a happy knackered person who will go for a long soak and then make something to eat.

Geiseric

30th November 2011, 17:51

Kudos to the proles of the isles

Threetune

30th November 2011, 21:40

The strike is the biggest since 1926, but nothing of the same level. It is an important first step in rebuilding our class, even though it probably won't win anything in itself as some super-optimist left groups are hoping.

While predictably playing down the size and effectiveness of today’s great strike, the government are already signalling or feigning some willingness to restart negotiations. While they just might have been nudged into appearing to giving a very little bit more, it will only be so, in order to get the innately traitorous union leaders (who always sell out one way or another anyway) off the revolutionary collision course.

This utterly bankrupt capitalist democratic parliamentary racket is once again in dire need of help from the champions of reformism in the ‘British Labour Movement’ and the union leaders will be congratulating themselves tonight hoping that they have done enough to ‘let off the head of steam’ that was building-up among the members who pay their fat salaries and other sweet perks.

You are right; the ‘left’ agitation about “escalate the action to win” (Socialist Workers Party) http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/ (http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/)and
“We can win” (Socialist Party) http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/696/13260/30-11-2011/30-november-shows-we-can-win (http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/696/13260/30-11-2011/30-november-shows-we-can-win) sends the wrong message entirely about the nature of this crisis attack on jobs and conditions. Have the ‘lefts’ still not grasped the depth and magnitude of this economic crisis. Do we have to keep having the same arguments like this http://www.revleft.com/vb/tweet.php?do=post&id=2279717&c=2279717 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/tweet.php?do=post&id=2279717&c=2279717)
to demonstrate their lack of preparedness or willingness to begin overt open revolutionary agitation within workers economist and protest struggles.

Workers in struggle aren’t stupid sheep to be herded into this or that activist (SWP) or electoral (SP) corral. The tactics of these strikes, occupy movements, mass demonstrations and pickets etc can be endlessly variable and will need to be, but giving the impression that lasting reforms can be secured under capitalism (We can win!) in this period of all-out attack by the ruling class is a sick joke.

What is the point in making lots of generally good ‘socialist’ propaganda (which some do) without opening up the debate about the working class taking power? Like a clock hand ticking off the minutes but refusing to chime the hour?

Comrade Samuel

30th November 2011, 21:43

Many thanks britan...next comes America.

Le Socialiste

30th November 2011, 21:53

Slowly but surely we're seeing the first stirrings of renewed life in the working-class. While it will take some time for our message to gain traction amongst the rank-and-file, I'm sure we'll see a rise in the willingness of others to hear what the revolutionary left has to offer - and that's progress. It's not much, but it's sure as hell a start.

Crux

30th November 2011, 22:01

J0SPio6RE-s

El Louton

30th November 2011, 22:10

I was at the demonstration in Southampton today. It was brilliant and a great atmosphere. Great speeches against Tory Cuts and against capitalism. We need rolling strikes though!

Threetune

30th November 2011, 23:00

We need lots of things. Yes more “rolling strikes” and static strikes and rent strikes and occupations and anything else that might be necessary. The working classes of Europe and North America have a long and brilliant history of organising astonishing challenging protest and resistance to capitalism and the current ruling class managers are very alert and nervous about that because, out of necessity, the ‘protest and resistance’ will change into ‘demand and attack’ by workers. Be ready.

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0SPio6RE-s&feature=related

brigadista

30th November 2011, 23:31

fucking too right!!!!

J0SPio6RE-s

Threetune

1st December 2011, 01:47

Lenin did not spend his entire life in party faction fighting, and not much else, for the benefit of liberal/left academics and ratty opportunists to make personal careers out of revolution. Keep your eyes open and your guard up. ‘Left’ opportunism and fake 'left' ‘revolutionary’ careerism is a real offspring of middle class frustration.

阿部高和

1st December 2011, 06:00

1st December 2011, 07:10

One Day Strikes are garbage (In Japan they'll even help with one-day strikes because they know everyone gets back to work the next morning on time). they do nothing but make good photo-ops and headline grabbers for the newspapers, but they're extremely ineffective in accomplishing anything.

This striking doesn't work. They've attempted this in Spain, Greece, Italy, and now the UK--all have and will face austerity cuts. as if nothing happened the day before. and just like all the others, UK is going to face austerity cuts as well. the only way they'll ever fight this is if they not just strike, but boycott ALL work indefinetly.
People can tolerate having to forgo the mail for a day; but when Christmas comes and presents don't come, society will have the backlash on the causation.

The cogs of the machine have to break before they will ever give up the keys

While I agree that striking in itself is no solution or strategy towards anything, I disagree that we therefore need to go even further and adopt a slogan like "all out, stay out" (like the SWP in the UK does for example). This amounts to nothing more than revolutionary phrase-mongering.

The underlying point here is that the strength of the working class lies in its position of running society and that therefore withholding our work strengthens our position. On the contrary, the strength of the working class lies in its alienation from the means of production and the necessary collective action that flows from this position in relation to our society. Said differently, we have to form ourselves as a class before we can pose positive alternatives on society and a strike can help in this process.

Secondly, an actual indefinite general strike is wholly unacceptable as society would cease to function meaning no emergency services, no food in the supermarkets, no water from the tap. So what will actually happen is that a general strike committee must be formed which takes over the tasks of coordinating basic social functions. Of course this point is well understood by the "general strikist" left and it is in fact their intention to reach such strike committees. So, say after three months of a general strike, with social power firmly under control of the general strike committee, the left can go around to the working class and say: "oh by the way, we took over power from the capitalists, long live the revolution!". Or that is the plan in a nutshell.

This however has a major problem: It doesn't work this way. In any historical situation of a prolonged general strike situation or a situation of political melt down of the old order, the working class movement won't just spontaniously conclude to seize power for themselves, but instead will look to alternative but already established authorities. The social-democrats in Portugal in 1974 come to mind as a clear example of this. At another level the Iranian revolution of 1979 is another example. We cannot trick the working class into power.

The strategy then is to build our own alternative authority: that of a self-conscious working class wanting to take power as a class. This is why I think a partyist strategy is needed: A mass politicised working class movement that patiently works to educate, agitate and organise the working class independently and in its own interests on a radical democratic and global level. The left can be a positive triggering point for such a party-movement by uniting on this basis and for a Marxist programme.

Within this framework then a general strike is one available tactic in building our class.

S.Artesian

1st December 2011, 14:46

Crux

1st December 2011, 14:55

CHVG1Hsgls0
Oh and threetune your "fake lefty" shtick is getting old, because we know you think pretty much everyone is "fake" except you yourself, oh disciple of lenin.

ZeroNowhere

1st December 2011, 14:59

This striking doesn't work. They've attempted this in Spain, Greece, Italy, and now the UK--all have and will face austerity cuts. as if nothing happened the day before. and just like all the others, UK is going to face austerity cuts as well. the only way they'll ever fight this is if they not just strike, but boycott ALL work indefinetly. Which would probably backfire significantly in multiple ways. The working class do generally have an inferior position in economic struggles, owing to their position on the economic field in general, of course. In any case, what's important is not primarily the wage level, but the struggle.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

1st December 2011, 23:01

robbo203

1st December 2011, 23:18

ZeroNowhere

1st December 2011, 23:35

Here's what that overpaid twit , Jeremy Clarkson, has had to say on the matter

Jeremy Clarkson Calls For Strikers To Be Shot
Sky NewsSky News
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/jeremy-clarkson-calls-strikers-shot-012156802.html

The BBC has been forced to apologise after Jeremy Clarkson said he would like to see striking public sector workers "shot" in front of their families.
The Top Gear presenter made his comments on BBC's The One Show on the evening
of Britain's biggest public sector strikes in 30 years.
He said of the strikers: "I'd have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families.
"I mean, how dare they go on strike when they've got these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living."
Clarkson's comments caused an immediate uproar on Twitter, with hundreds joining the backlash.
From what I recall, the comment wasn't really particularly problematic in context. Seemed like decent satire.

Edit:

Matt Baker: Now, at the end of a day where Britain has seen some of its biggest strikes, what we need is someone calm and level-headed.
Alex Jones: Yep, a guest with balanced, uncontroversial opinions, who makes great effort not to offend.
Matt Baker: And we've got Jeremy Clarkson!
[studio laughs]
Jeremy Clarkson: Thank you very much.
Matt Baker: So Jeremy, schools, hospitals, airports, even driving tests have been affected. Do you think the strikes are a good idea?
Jeremy Clarkson: It's been fantastic. Seriously, never had … London today has just been empty. Everybody stayed at home, you could whizz about, your restaurants were empty.
Alex Jones: The traffic actually has been very good today.
Jeremy Clarkson: Very light. Now airports, you know, people streaming through with no problems at all and it's also like being back in the 70s, it makes me feel at home somehow.
Alex Jones: Do you know anybody who …
Matt Baker: [interrupts – inaduiable] – being on strike today?
Jeremy Clarkson: What, in public service? Of course I don't. No, absolutely. We have to balance it though, don't we because this is the BBC.
Alex Jones and Matt Baker: Exactly.
Jeremy Clarkson: Frankly, I'd have them all shot!
[studio laughs]
Jeremy Clarkson: I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families. I mean how dare they go on strike when they've got these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living?He said that the strikes were fantastic, realized that he could make a joke relevant to the previous conversation, commented that things had to be kept balanced, and then made a joke about this balance by creating a caricature of the opposite side. A friend of mine had written a sketch making fun of 'balance' regarding creationism and evolution through a similar set-up. Bit of a fuss over nothing, really.

Black_Rose

2nd December 2011, 01:06

J0SPio6RE-s

Would you consider him to be a revolutionary or someone who harbors revolutionary thoughts and attitudes?

How many people in the UK sympathize with his message?

robbo203

2nd December 2011, 09:52

From what I recall, the comment wasn't really particularly problematic in context. Seemed like decent satire.

Edit:
He said that the strikes were fantastic, realized that he could make a joke relevant to the previous conversation, commented that things had to be kept balanced, and then made a joke about this balance by creating a caricature of the opposite side. A friend of mine had written a sketch making fun of 'balance' regarding creationism and evolution through a similar set-up. Bit of a fuss over nothing, really.

Hmmm. I hadnt seen the actual transcript before - someone merely forwarded to me the article I posted - so this does rather throw new light on the matter. However I am not entirely sure that your reasoning is correct. Satire can also be used as a tool to smuggle into the argument certain "moderate" claims under the cover of the more extreme version of such claims uttered to create an effect. Nobody is suggesting that Clarkson seriously entertains the idea of shooting stikers in front of their families but what is he really trying to say here?

It reminds me of racists who crack racist jokes and then declare that they are not racist . For the record I still think he is a twit for saying such stuff even if he didnt exactly mean what he said

Threetune

2nd December 2011, 15:54

An article from the Socialist Party Scotland on the public sector general strike in Scotland. If Cameron and the ConDem’s do not back down immediately the TUC must set another date in January for a 24 hour Strike that unites both the public sector and the private sector against the the Government’s Cuts proposals. Remember for every job cut in the public sector means two lost in the private sector. Yesterday the Trade Union movement just raised its little finger and we saw what happened, just think what would happen if it raised the whole hand.

http://www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk/trade-union/other-news/354-weve-had-enough-scotland-shutdown-by-mass-strike-on-n30

Jimmy, do you really think that the TUC or any of its individual constituent union leaderships are planning for, what would amount to, a revolutionary challenge to the capitalist state by “raising the whole hand” as you put it.

I don’t believe that you rationally think such a thing. You must know that the union bureaucracy hasn’t the least intention of challenging for power in any shape or form. In which case what is your plan B and when are you going to tell the workers about it.

Arm Cathartha na hÃ‰ireann

2nd December 2011, 18:17

From what I recall, the comment wasn't really particularly problematic in context. Seemed like decent satire.

Yeah I think the Unions have kicked themselves in the teeth with this one. His joke wasnt funny but he was clearly joking if the whole transcpit is shown (which I never saw until you posted it, and which I dont think has been widley reported in our press here). Now that is been talked about is Jeremy Fuckin Clarkson instead on the strikes and the pension reforms. Even on Question time the first question was about Clarkson, the unions need to let this go imo.

Threetune

2nd December 2011, 21:00

Don’t kid yourselves, Jeremy Clarkson is expressing exactly the thinking of every reactionary form the leafy mansions of the Tory heartlands to the BNP shopkeeper.

The unstoppable spiral of world economic collapse is now degenerating so quickly that the panicky capitalist ruling class itself has abandoned even the farcical pretence of "democracy" altogether in Europe, insisting that "things are so bad that we don't have time for such 'clutter' when the 'markets demand' austerity".

Even the grotesque media swamped electoral manipulations of the jumped-up fascist buffoon Berlusconi are now "clutter"!!!

brigadista

2nd December 2011, 21:10

S.Artesian

2nd December 2011, 21:16

the hypocrisy of our capitalist "rulers"----

Francis Maude's publicly funded pension is £43,825 a year with a pot of £731,883
David Cameron's publicly funded pension is £32,978 a year with a pot of £550,725
George Osborne's publicly funded pension is £32,978 a year with a pot of £550,725
Nick Cleggs's publicly funded pension is £28,404 a year with a pot of £440,000
Eric Pickles' publicly funded pension is £43...,825 a year with a pot of £731,883
Vince Cable's publicly funded pension is £39,551 a year with a pot of £660,507
Andrew Lansley's publicly funded pension is £39,551 a year with a pot of £660,507
Danny Alexander's publicly funded pension is £26,404 a year with pot of £440,942

You left out that overfed, overpaid bunch of slugs... the royal family. I say expropriate their property, their pensions-- sell it of even to Branson or the other entrepreneurial leading lights. Use the revenues to fund the trial of the royal family according to the well known precepts of bourgeois justice: First we give them a fair trial, then we hang them.

brigadista

2nd December 2011, 21:25

You left out that overfed, overpaid bunch of slugs... the royal family. I say expropriate their property, their pensions-- sell it of even to Branson or the other entrepreneurial leading lights. Use the revenues to fund the trial of the royal family according to the well known precepts of bourgeois justice: First we give them a fair trial, then we hang them.

i agree the royal family are parasites but these people above are the ones- condemning organised public sector workers for protesting about
losing their pensions
telling them they have to work for more years before hey can retire and threatening to introduce new anti union legislation-
publicly promoting abolition of the minimum wage for under 21s etc etc .....and just look at what they will be pulling come retirement...from our taxes

S.Artesian

2nd December 2011, 21:34

I understand, and certainly support your reasoning, but I just wanted to make sure we didn't leave out some of the real public parasites out there.

Threetune

2nd December 2011, 21:37

And this Jimmy, as "technocratic" dictatorships are installed behind an excuse of "urgent necessity" to save the rich by imposing devastating Slump on Greece, and Italy; as the craven bourgeois government of equally devastated Ireland is marched to Berlin to have its no-longer-sovereign budget "vetted" before publication by ultra-rich German bankers (to undemocratically ensure it is harsh enough); and, with much the same effect, the supine paralysis and retreat of the reformist "left" everywhere else, (and the bankrupt and corrupted fixing of "parliamentary elections" anyway) leaves the ruling class imposing its poverty diktat by default (UK minority coalition via Labour and Trade Union inaction, Spanish "socialist" meltdown letting in the reactionary Francoist right etc), the world continues to be told that yet more countries must be invaded and blitzed into the ground "because they do not have freedom and democracy!

brigadista

2nd December 2011, 21:38

I understand, and certainly support your reasoning, but I just wanted to make sure we didn't leave out some of the real public parasites out there.

i hear you - the royal family - perpetrate division in the UK and it can be amazing when you meet people in the UK who appear to be going in the correct direction but who SERiOUSLY support the monarchy.......

Threetune

2nd December 2011, 21:50

Such staggering barefaced hypocrisy is underlined even further by the latest war-drum beating against Syria to set it up for yet another barbaric Western blitzing and invasion, either directly or if resources are stretched, via NATO stooge Turkey and the fascist Zionists, just as hungry for war distraction as any other part of capitalism.

And all this done under cover of the complete Western charade of favouring "freedom for the people" via the preposterous Arab League, a body dominated by the most corrupt and backward feudal sheikdoms and principalities of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Morocco and the artificial Gulf statelets, who have spent the last year repressing and slaughtering their own peoples' "democracy" demands and demonstrations.

Threetune

2nd December 2011, 22:40

Striking workers and their ‘left’ hangers-on in Britain will need to refresh their internationalist class understanding against the imperialist reformist chauvinism of the ‘labour’ union ‘leaders’ if they are going to make any revolutionary headway.

Some member states of the Arab League like the continuing military dictatorship in Egypt are even now shooting down yet more hundreds of genuine demonstrators and "ordinary people" as, with covert US and Western backing they attempt to head off the rising mass struggles against brutal gangster and Washington funded-dictatorship.

To put forwards this rag-tag "League" band of backwardness and US stoogery as "world opinion", fresh from their financing and participation in the disgusting counter-revolutionary Nazi NATO wholesale destruction of Libya, which has killed and ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in scorched-earth high altitude, high-explosive blitzkrieg, dirty ground war by secret western troops and local fascist vigilante vengefulness, underscores this ultra-Goebbels hypocrisy about freedom and democracy a thousand times over.
Jeremy Clarkson?

Threetune

2nd December 2011, 23:17

The ever escalating death-squad (and drone assassination program of US imperialism, now daily executing and "taking out" alleged "militants" worldwide without trial, and with casual disregard for the death and destruction of bystanders, families, innocents and children.

All this done with complete contempt for any "rule of law", "sovereign rights" of other countries (like Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen etc), or "humanitarian concern" and culminating in the depraved and fascist torture and killing of hundreds of Libyan fighters and civilians, (Sirte, an entire city of 100 000 people utterly flattened and its people killed or de-housed and turned into refugees), and the de facto war-crime vigilante buggering and lynching of Muammar Gaddafi, (for which not even an attempt has been made to bring anyone to trial, and the usually strident "humanitarian" braying of the Western media and bogus "international law" justice calls of the Hague court's pomposity have been entirely silent.)

u.s.red

2nd December 2011, 23:22

Threetune

2nd December 2011, 23:39

New details emerge daily of Washington's fascist monstrousness with even the mostly complicit bourgeois press forced to say something now and then (to preserve a semblance of verisimilitude for its non-stop distortions and lies) albeit some 18 months late and buried away in downpage foreign news or web-only discussions in the "liberal" and "serious" press. This following exception to the rule even makes a few comments itself about overall Western media bias:

Imagine that an opposition organiser were murdered in broad daylight in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador or Venezuela by masked gunmen, or kidnapped and murdered by armed guards of a well-known supporter of the government. It would be front page news in the New York Times, and all over the TV news.

The US State Department would issue a strong statement of concern over grave human rights abuses. ..Now imagine that 59 political killings had taken place so far this year, and 61 the previous year. Long before the number of victims reached this level, this would become a major foreign policy issue and Washington would be calling for international sanctions.

But we are talking about Honduras, not Bolivia or Venezuela. So, when President Porfirio Lobo of Honduras came to Washington last month, President Obama greeted him warmly and said:
"Two years ago, we saw a coup in Honduras that threatened to move the country away from democracy, and in part because of pressure from the international community, but also because of the strong commitment to democracy and leadership by President Lobo, what we've been seeing is a restoration of democratic practices and a commitment to reconciliation that gives us great hope."

Of course, President Obama refused to even meet with the democratically elected president who was overthrown in the coup that he mentioned, even though that president came to Washington three times seeking help after the coup. That was Manuel Zelaya, a left-of-center president who was overthrown by the military and conservative segments of society in Honduras after instituting a number of reforms that people had voted for, such as raising the minimum wage and laws promoting land reform.

But what angered Washington most was that Zelaya was close to the left governments of South America, including Venezuela. He wasn't any closer to Venezuela than Brazil or Argentina was, but this was a crime of opportunity. So, when the Honduran military overthrew Zelaya in June of 2009, the Obama administration did everything it could for the next six months to make sure that the coup succeeded. The "pressure from the international community" that Obama referred to in the above statement came from other countries, mainly the left-of-center governments in South America.

The United States was on the other side, fighting – ultimately successfully – to legitimise the coup government through an "election" that the rest of the hemisphere refused to recognise.
In May of this year, Zelaya stated publicly what most of us who followed the events closely already guessed was true: that Washington was behind the coup and helped bring it about. While no one will likely bother to investigate the US role, this is plausible given overwhelming circumstantial evidence.

Porfirio Lobo took office in January 2010, but most of the hemisphere refused to recognise the government because his election took place under conditions of serious human rights violations. In May 2011, an agreement was finally brokered in Cartegena, Colombia which allowed Honduras back into the Organisation of American States. But the Lobo government has not complied with its part of the Cartegena accords, which included human rights guarantees for the political opposition.
Here are two of the dozens of political killings that have occurred during Lobo's presidency, as compiled by the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America (CRLN):

"Pedro Salgado, vice-president of the Unified Campesino Movement of Aguán (MUCA), was shot then beheaded at about 8.00pm at his home in the La Concepción empresa cooperative. His spouse, Reina Irene Mejía, was also shot to death at the same time. Pedro suffered a murder attempt in December 2010 […] Salgado, like the presidents of all the cooperatives claiming rights to land used by African palm oil businessmen in the Aguán, had been subject to constant death threats since the beginning of 2011."

The courage of these activists and organisers in the face of such horrific violence and repression is amazing. Many of the killings over the past year have been in the Aguán Valley in the north-east, where small farmers are struggling for land rights against one of Honduras' richest landowners, Miguel Facussé. He is producing biofuels in this region on disputed land. He is close to the United States and was an important backer of the 2009 coup against Zelaya. His private security forces, together with US-backed military and police, are responsible for the political violence in the region. US aid to the Honduran military has increased since the coup.

Recent US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show that US officials have been aware since 2004 that Facussé has also been trafficking large quantities of cocaine. Dana Frank, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz who is an expert on Honduras, summed it up for the Nation last month: "US 'drug war' funds and training, in other words, are being used to support a known drug trafficker's war against campesinos."

The US militarisation of the drug war in the region is also pushing Honduras down the disastrous path of Mexico, in a country that already has one of the highest murder rates in the world. The New York Times reports that 84% of cocaine that reaches the US now crosses through Central America, as compared to 23% in 2006, when Calderón took office in Mexico and launched his drug war. The Times also notes that "American officials say the 2009 coup kicked open the door to [drug] cartels" in Honduras.

When I voted for Barack Obama in 2008, I never thought that his legacy in Central America would be the return of death-squad government, of the kind that Ronald Reagan so vigorously supported in the 1980s. But that seems to be the case for Honduras.

The Obama administration has so far ignored pressure from Democratic members of Congress to respect human rights in Honduras. These efforts will continue, but Honduras needs help from the South. It was South America that spearheaded the efforts to reverse the 2009 coup. Although Washington ultimately defeated them, they cannot abandon Honduras while people no different from their friends and supporters at home are being murdered by a US-backed government.

Yet simultaneously "human rights", "protection of civilians" and "freedom" continue to be invoked directly, and indirectly through obvious stooge provocateurs, as alleged justification for yet more devastating economic (sanctions), a slow form of war by starvation and siege, and military blitzkrieg, on country after country.

It has nothing to do with "freedom" and everything to do with capitalism's stampeding of the world back into a permanent war atmosphere, to whip up reactionary chauvinism everywhere (like in this year's near-compulsory UK thought-police insistence on poppy wearing, even in football matches, to back "our boys", currently a leading part of the Nazi rampaging through Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and more).

Green_Mist

3rd December 2011, 00:22

J0SPio6RE-s

haha the guys a legend :thumbup1:

bricolage

3rd December 2011, 11:01

In regards to this being the 'biggest strike' here's something some wrote on libcom (http://libcom.org/forums/history/biggest-strikes-ukbritish-history-01122011#comment-457134);

If 2 million workers were out, N30 would have meant 2 million lost strike days. Add to J30 and that's maybe 2.5-2.75m this year in the two major strikes, topped up by all the smaller/local disputes around the place maybe nearer 3 million. 1926 was about 160 million strike days lost, while '79 and 84-5 were in the region of 30 million. So in terms of annual strike days, it's nowhere close. In terms of one day action, in terms of absolute strikers probably the most ever ('26 peaked at 1.5-1.75 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_United_Kingdom_general_strike)), but not in percentage terms as the labour force was smaller in the past. That's probably because in the past, there were lots more disputes going on, and for a longer period of time, whereas this year has so far seen mainly big one-day set pieces.

http://libcom.org/files/graph3.png (http://libcom.org/files/graph3.png)
Green is strike days, read off the left axis. Source: ONS.

If Cameron and the ConDem’s do not back down immediately the TUC must set another date in January for a 24 hour Strike that unites both the public sector and the private sector against the the Government’s Cuts proposals.
How do you envisage this happening Jimmy? Political strikes are illegal and the trade unions (especially the TUC) are not going to break the law anytime soon so a unified strike against austerity seems exceedingly unlikely. The pensions strikes could happen because it is something that affects all public sector workers so there can be mass ballots on it, it's hard to see anything like that that could apply across all sectors. Is not the problem that appealing to the TUC will only ever produce these one day (albeit numerically increasingly) set piece affairs? If you look at say the Winter of Discontent it can't be reduced to the TUC 'day of action' but all the forms of worker insurgency that were around it, this seems a better way of pushing things forward than solely calling for more and more of the same.

brigadista

3rd December 2011, 14:35

In regards to this being the 'biggest strike' here's something some wrote on libcom (http://libcom.org/forums/history/biggest-strikes-ukbritish-history-01122011#comment-457134);

How do you envisage this happening Jimmy? Political strikes are illegal and the trade unions (especially the TUC) are not going to break the law anytime soon so a unified strike against austerity seems exceedingly unlikely. The pensions strikes could happen because it is something that affects all public sector workers so there can be mass ballots on it, it's hard to see anything like that that could apply across all sectors. Is not the problem that appealing to the TUC will only ever produce these one day (albeit numerically increasingly) set piece affairs? If you look at say the Winter of Discontent it can't be reduced to the TUC 'day of action' but all the forms of worker insurgency that were around it, this seems a better way of pushing things forward than solely calling for more and more of the same.

secondary picketing as im sure you know was not criminalised during the winter of discontent - nor was the closed shop these are different times unfortunatly

bricolage

3rd December 2011, 15:02

secondary picketing as im sure you know was not criminalised during the winter of discontent - nor was the closed shop these are different times unfortunatly
this is true, but political strikes are illegal too which is what the left groups are essentially calling for when they speak of a general strikes against austerity or unified public/private strikes against government cuts. so then who is more likely to break the law, rank and file workers or trade union bureaucracies?

Connolly16ir.net

3rd December 2011, 15:49

The marches have fundementally good intentions but a one day strike is far from revolutionary; to make a substantial dent in the bank balance of the elite class we need to strike for days and weeks on end, grind everything but essential services to a halt and live to survive for a while, once we have food, water, warmth and solidarity we would be fine.

After the strikes we would need to attack while the elite are week, take the revolution to their homes, offices, ''property'' and banks. Kill them and their lackeys!

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

3rd December 2011, 16:20

For all those “revolutionaries” who want to immediately challenge and ‘overthrow’ the capitalist state in Britain NOW, there needs to be a little bit of understanding of the process that are taking place in the working class today in Britain. However, “Threetunes” certainly did not read or understand the few words I wrote as a preamble to the link I put on. I do not know if that person read the article or not, but the inference that Threetunes puts seems quite infantile. At this early stage in the class struggle in Britain the majority of the working class do not see that there needs to be a “revolutionary challenge to the capitalist state” as you put it. I do not know if you live in Britain or not, but if you do, then you certainly do not interact or have a dialogue with working people.

After more than 20 years of a long winter in working class consciousness there has now been a turning point and it has broken through the dam of capitalist ideology and started to advance forward. That has been shown on the one hand in action over the public sector strike and on the other by the opinion polls showing over a 50 per cent majority in favour to the Strike. The 30 November strike has changed the political and ideological landscape, but in Britain, at this moment the working class is not ready to overthrow the citadels of capitalism. Even though capitalism objectively is overripe for its socialist transformation, subjectively the majority of the working class do not see this. There are a number of bridges, both objectively and subjectively, they have to cross before that is on the agenda. Therefore it is up to socialists to put forward a programme, policies, strategies and tactics that are based on the reality of the objective, and subjective, conditions of the working class now and tomorrow; and not baldly repeating rote ultra-left rrrrrevolutionary slogans that are miles in advance of working people from the side-lines hoping the working class will come to you.

The 30 November public strike General Strike of 3 million workers and their families was in defence of pensions and other issues related to the austerity cuts carried out by the ConDem government in London and the SNP government up here in Scotland. But it is also a powerful weapon in the struggle against all Cuts. Three million workers on strike will provide a taste to the Con-Dem bullies of who they are messing with. Working class people have huge potential power when they are organised and have a leadership that is ready to fight to win.

The trade unions need to make it clear to the government that N30 is not a token strike but part of a determined strategy to win. The TUC must set the next strike date for further coordinated action - another 24-hour strike or stepping up to 48 hours to make it clear to the government that they are on to a loser. That should be in the next two months at least, preferably in the middle of January. Further action should also be spread to the private sector. A discussion should be held on making the next 24-hour strike a general strike, including private as well as public sector workers. As a minimum a call must be put out for all industrial action - private and public - to be coordinated. At this moment construction workers are in dispute with the multi-national Construction companies who are co-ordinating action to rip up workers contracts and have a race to the bottom on wage cuts.

If a fighting strategy is to be implemented it is essential that decisions on the struggle are not left in the hands of the national trade union leaders? There should be a demand that trade union members have democratic control of the negotiations at every stage. Within the trade unions there needs to begin to build fighting left organisations that struggle to ensure the trade unions fight in their members' interests. One demand of such organisations should be for regular elections of full-time officials and for them to be paid no more than a workers' wage. That ‘Threetunes’ is how socialists, the Lefts, will be able to win over trade unionists to socialist ideas.

Now the Civil Service union, the PCS, has been at the lead of pushing and pulling other public sector trade unions and the TUC in its fight against the ConDem government and the austerity cuts. Let us remember that the austerity cuts in Britain as elsewhere in the world are a political, as well as an economic, attack against the working class. The capitalist class wish to take any reforms that the working class won over the boom years of the post-war period back and push them into the 19th Century. So any action by trade unions to defend what they have will inevitably turn at some stage into political action. If fact N30 was a political strike as well as an economic strike because it challenged the government to stop the attacks on pensions and so on; but it is only one battle not the war. Also strike pickets broke the law by having more than the legal and political number on picket lines, which I believe is six. So political action is being taken and thought out, again it is a process that the majority of the working class who have never been in action before to learn the lessons of actual class struggle.

N30 demonstrates the enormous potential industrial power of the organised working class. However, if we don't have a political voice as well, we are fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. I argue that the trade union movement should begin to build a new party - a party that stands in the interests of the majority.

For the last 18 months the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) as an electoral alliance involving leading militant trade unionists from the RMT, PCS and NUT and socialists such as the Socialist Party have been campaigning for a working class political alternative to the capitalist parties, and that includes New Labour. TUSC plays an important role, enabling trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists to stand candidates against the pro-austerity consensus of the capitalist parties. However, the potential exists for this to develop on a far wider scale in the coming period. During the strike on 30 June, every call made for trade unionists to stand for election themselves as trade union 'anti-cuts candidates' was greeted with enthusiasm. In Scotland a group of leading trade unionist, PCS, Unison, Unite, have launched an initiative to stand anti-cuts candidates in the local council elections in May 2012. They will be standing on the programme of no to all cuts to jobs, services, pensions and benefits and no privatisation; fighting for Councillors to set ‘no cuts’ needs budgets that protect services, communities and jobs; support workers and trade unions, our communities and young people who are taking action to fight the cuts; and make the rich pay for the economic crisis. At the 20,000 demo held in Edinburgh on the 30 November I , and other Socialist Party members, were handing out leaflets on this question of anti-cuts candidates politically standing and they were being snapped out of our hands, because the working class on the demo saw the need of a political alternative to the bourgeoisie political parties.
Even if trade union candidates were to initially stand on a limited programme - opposition to all cuts in jobs, pensions, services and benefits, and repeal of the anti-trade union laws - it would mark a major step forward. However, the struggle that public sector workers are currently fighting goes beyond those immediate issues, in reality it is a struggle against the consequences of capitalism today and therefore poses the need for a socialist alternative.

But I will come back to it again the working class will have to go over a number of bridges to arrive at the conclusion that they need the socialist transformation of society to solve their problems. Many know what they do not want, but they do not know what they want; that is a process the millions have to go through and it is up to socialist to advance the programme that a socialist society would be run in the interests of the millions, not the billionaires. For a start it would nationalise the banking and finance sector - not to prop them up and leave the bankers in charge like the New Labour government did, but to run them democratically to help meet the needs of the majority. However, that would only be the start. The next crucial step towards solving the crisis would be to take the big corporations that dominate Britain's economy into democratic public ownership in order to allow for production to be planned for need and not for profit.

ZeroNowhere

3rd December 2011, 16:22

Maybe he should joke about rounding up British bankers and having them hung in front of their families.
In which case it would have been a satire of the left.

Leonid Brozhnev

3rd December 2011, 16:45

I thought we'd finally learned to ignore Clarkson. The man's an attention seeking clown, he thrives off this crap, blowing his gaffes out of proportion to score some political points doesn't work.

We'll be taking him round the back of the barn and give him both barrels in front of his wife an kids after the revolution anyway. (Just a joke, obviously... what I just said means no harm whatsoever) :rolleyes:

bricolage

3rd December 2011, 21:16

That's all well and good Jimmy but you still haven't answered my question of how you seeing this unified public/private strike against austerity taking place. You make a good point that picket lines were over the legal limit but this just backs up my point that breaking the law is only something on the ground workers are going to be doing, the union bureaucracies and especially the TUC will not call illegal 'political' strikes (ie. strikes for explicitly political reasons such as 'no cuts' or 'against austerity', I agree that every economic struggle is also a political one but this isn't how the state sees it) so where is the general strike going to come from?

At this moment construction workers are in dispute with the multi-national Construction companies who are co-ordinating action to rip up workers contracts and have a race to the bottom on wage cuts.I'm not sure if this is the same thing but if you are referring to the 'Sparks' movement it's a rank and file group organising the Wednesday strikes/blockades and have been consistently stifled by the Unite leadership. An indication of where social forces lie perhaps.

brigadista

4th December 2011, 10:29

Ctyt9KPMMr8

Threetune

4th December 2011, 15:00

For all those “revolutionaries” who want to immediately challenge and ‘overthrow’ the capitalist state in Britain NOW, ..."

"But I will come back to it again the working class will have to go over a number of bridges to arrive at the conclusion that they need the socialist transformation of society to solve their problems. Many know what they do not want, but they do not know what they want; that is a process the millions have to go through and it is up to socialist to advance the programme that a socialist society would be run in the interests of the millions, not the billionaires. For a start it would nationalise the banking and finance sector - not to prop them up and leave the bankers in charge like the New Labour government did, but to run them democratically to help meet the needs of the majority. However, that would only be the start. The next crucial step towards solving the crisis would be to take the big corporations that dominate Britain's economy into democratic public ownership in order to allow for production to be planned for need and not for profit."

This all sounds just plain silly and absolutely nothing to do with Marxist revolutionary understanding of class struggle which you make claim to, but refuse to advance in your electioneering propaganda among workers.

The notion that you would be able to “nationalise the banking and finance sector” and –“take the big corporations that dominate Britain's economy into democratic public ownership” without an enormous revolutionary war to smash the capitalist state first, is just so daft it confirms that it is you and your party that have “a number of bridges” to cross to any revolutionary understanding not the working class who’s minds you claim to know.

You pathetically attempt to ridicule revolution precisely because you program is so grotesquely reformist and therefore useless not to say transparently opportunist. You excuse yourselves by saying the working class does not see the need for revolution and insist that you will not say anything to the contrary.

Just follow on behind the counter-revolutionary sentiment of capitalist media which hourly refreshes the capitalist influence in the working class. Just adapt to the pro-capitalist reformist sentiment against workers power and the dictatorship of the working class in favour of your parliamentary racket ambitions.

And in case you should ever get ‘tainted’ with being revolutionaries, just run off the TV studios to condemn the workers as Steve Nally and Tommy Sheridan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QKOTfFjsKc&feature=fvst) did back in the poll tax riots.

**** FOR RUSHES SEE CR2244
**** RUSHES NOT KEPT:

b) SEE ABOVE

a) (Leuchars,Anne)
ENGLAND
London TGV Rally along away with banners )
Whitehall MS Ditto L-R )
TMS Police along with demos )
CMS Police facing attacking protesters & )
using truncheons (Camera shaking) ) TX.31.3.90
BV Police retreating as missiles and ) ITN
assaults )
TLMS HIGHLIGHT Youth directing assaults )
MS Mounted police past old man with banner)
PAN R-L )

INT
ITN CMS Steve Nally (Anti-Poll Tax Federation) intvwdSOF
-We will hold a full inquiry and name names if
necessary

POLICE PKF
New Scotland CS Weapons, such as bolts, bottles, etc, used in riot
Yard shown PULL OUT

http://www.itnsource.com/fr/shotlist//ITN/1990/04/01/T01049003/?s=* (http://www.itnsource.com/fr/shotlist/ITN/1990/04/01/T01049003/?s=*)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDlqF6AE6dk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDlqF6AE6dk)

“We can win” really only means you can "win" your seats in the bourgeois corridors of power just like New Labour before you.

Threetune

4th December 2011, 16:27

We even get Sheridan wanting to build-up state forces. And the Socialist Party Scotland claim to be revolutionary. Don’t all laugh out loud, it will deafen em.

"Socialist MSPT Tommy Sheridan said the cash would have been better spent on more officers."

He said: "The force is understaffed by 350 people and they choose to spend over pounds 1m a-year on a helicopter."

A chopper for coppers.

Date:
Sep 8, 2000
Words:
129
Publication:
The Mirror (London, England)
ISSN:
1462-995X

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/A+chopper+for+coppers.-a065087492 (http://www.thefreelibrary.com/A+chopper+for+coppers.-a065087492)

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

4th December 2011, 21:20

London NSSN meeting - 'the genie is out of the bottle'

'Standing room only' doesn't even begin to describe the London National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) meeting held on N30.
Coming straight from the fantastic demonstration, the mood in the meeting was sky-high after such a historic day.
The meeting was opened by Martin Powell-Davies of the NUT national executive (personal capacity) and Rob Williams, chair of the NSSN.
Cheers greeted the many uplifting reports from picket lines and the march from Lincoln's Inn Fields to the Embankment.
Retired public sector worker Mike Cleverley (and apparently his pension isn't very 'gold-plated') reported on conversations he had overheard on the tube travelling to the London demo: "The genie is out of the bottle"; while the front page of the free Metro paper declared "This is class war".
Glenn Kelly, witch-hunted Unison member, described the new generation "blooded" in the day's strike.
There was a serious discussion about the next steps the NSSN needs to fight for. This includes keeping up the pressure inside unions such as Unison, whose current leadership will need to be pushed to continue the struggle.
A mental health nurse described brilliant picket lines built by ordinary members despite the efforts of the local union bureaucracy to prevent a proper strike in her area.
A Unison member described how a regional officer had told him he couldn't wear a Unison tabard and carry a Socialist Party placard! "Is it better to hold a placard saying cuts are 'Too far too fast' and a Labour rosette?"
Alex Gordon, president of the RMT, moved everyone in the meeting with his report of the strike by RMT members in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary - a massive picket on the main naval dockyard, where the knot of history was tied when they were joined by veteran seafarers.
To applause, he argued for united trade union action and for linking together public and private sector workers.
Peter Taaffe, general secretary of the Socialist Party, raised the sights of the meeting, explaining how the depth of the economic crisis means not only the necessity of a massive united fight by the trade unions, but also the need for a socialist programme and a mass working class alternative to New Labour.
The meeting pledged support for a prison worker who had joined the PCS union in order to join the picket line at his prison, and was later informed he had been sacked.

Paula Mitchell, London Socialist Party secretary

Threetune

4th December 2011, 22:45

London NSSN meeting - 'the genie is out of the bottle'

"'Standing room only' doesn't even begin to describe the London National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) meeting held on N30...."

"To applause, he argued for united trade union action and for linking together public and private sector workers.
Peter Taaffe, general secretary of the Socialist Party, raised the sights of the meeting, explaining how the depth of the economic crisis means not only the necessity of a massive united fight by the trade unions, but also the need for a socialist programme and a mass working class alternative to New Labour. ...."

Paula Mitchell, London Socialist Party secretary

And the meeting did not tell “Peter Taaffe, general secretary of the Socialist Party”, that what is needed is a revolutionary alternative to capitalism??? Some revolutionaries they are.

A mass alternative to New labour isn’t raising the sights of the meeting, its lowering them to electoral opportunism.

Threetune

5th December 2011, 10:51

The Brussels based capitalist ‘technocrat’ dictatorship being imposed by the ‘the market’ across Europe, Greece, Italy and Ireland, give the lie to the notion that capitalist society is free and democratic.

Not even capitalist ‘opposition’ parties are being given the chance to ‘represent’ the interests of their supporters. Entire national bourgeois class groupings are being told to shut up and impose austerity whether they like it or not. Watch the Italian finance minister breakdown under the strain. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ceZs1vhJoo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ceZs1vhJoo)
Crocodile tears or not, this drama just hints at what is in store for the workers in Italy and the rest of Europe without working class revolutionary leadership.

In Britain, calling for an “alternative to New Labour” as the Socialist Party is doing is like complaining about a draught under the door when a bomb has just come through the roof. And trying to persuade the genie of growing revolutionary understanding back into the putrid confines parliamentary representative democracy can only be regarded as either stupidity or opportunism.

By all means stand socialist candidates to make revolutionary propaganda. But revolutionary participation in elections is for the purpose of exposing what a stinking lying racket capitalist ‘democracy’ really is, not for climbing on the ‘representative’ band wagon.

The working class does not need ‘representatives’’ in the bankrupt capitalist parliaments it needs revolutionaries who will ruthlessly expose the entire racket.

Isn’t it time you SP people had a word with Peter Taaffe and the rest of your leaders about this?

Crux

5th December 2011, 15:55

Threetune

5th December 2011, 17:43

Isn't it time you stopped taking crazy pills, threetune? Jesus christ...you know it's hard to debate with someone who seems to think they are chanelling Lenin? But way to give the radical phrase a face. Like lenin would have said. FYI Sheridan has not been a member of the CWI for many years, but hey don't let that derail your ranting.

Every time you lot come out from behind your Strictly managed discipline, carefully rehearsed meetings, choreographed, demos, and manicured literature you drop yourselves in the swamp with your infantile inability to deal with open POLITICAL criticism.

What does it matter that Sheridan has not been a member of the CWI for years?

Are you trying to suggest that the same leadership of your current CWI did not commission Sheridan and Nally to run squealing there condemnation of the riots to the capitalist broadcasters?Is that what you’re trying? Peter Taaffe, general secretary of the Socialist Party was up to his neck at that time in that leadership.

Let’s make it quick and easy, plain and simple for the young comrades shall we?

A leadership that wants to be an “alternative” to New Labour without a revolutionary denunciation of the parliamentary racket, a track record of condemning anti-poll tax demonstrators and defending the police as “workers in uniform”.

Could it be that your parliamentary and local council candidates would not want to be associated with any serious exposure and revolutionary attack of the state? Sound like Labour Party Mk2 to me. Same old reformist rubbish dressed up as ‘socialism’ to keep workers diverted from discussion of revolution and real workers power over the dictatorship of capitalism.
There is no progress for the working class anywhere to be achieved by "slow determined piece by piece" improvement and gains.

Everything supposedly "won" by 150 years of reformism and the "Labour Movement" struggle, from a health service to pensions, to education, decent housing, jobs for all, fulfilling lives and a say in the world, is being torn to shreds by the vicious Tory ruling class (and Labour just as much) under the impact of the crisis.

It always was a giant fraud.
It always was ephemeral, destined to collapse and disintegrate, mere sops thrown out by a desperate ruling class when the real revolutionary pressure underneath was building up too much and domestically and even more when the international working class revolutionary struggle was pushing forwards with the titanic achievements of 70 years of building a communist workers state in the Soviet Union with not an owner or capitalist in sight.

The appeal of these titanic class achievements was particularly strong after the disasters of the 1930s Depression and WW2 had demonstrated the full horrors of capitalist slump yet again (after the Great War "to-end-all-wars" promises only 20 years previously) and the powerful social, economic, scientific cultural and educational gains of the USSR were set in contrast, reinforced by the historic heroism of the massive Red Army defeat of Hitlerite fascism.

And this continued despite all sorts of mistakes and errors, including the eventual retreat from revolutionary philosophical struggle which underlay the difficulties and problems of Stalinist revisionism and its ultimate end-point of complete pointless liquidationism of the still successfully operating Soviet economy under Gorbachevite capitulation to alleged "free market efficiency" (a soft-brained anti-Marxist nonsense that is looking sicker by the minute as the inevitable (as Marxism declares) crisis disaster unravels and drags the world into chaos including newly re-established Russian capitalism).

Everything delivered by the new workers state, building, as far and fast as limited resources and initially backward cultural development would allow, an astonishingly new, egalitarian and fair world, for the first time in all human history, was aped (under pressure) by capitalism in distorted form – health, housing, education, employment, holidays, pensions, – "granted" to head off bubbling European revolution everywhere in the post-war years, but only ever partially, always leaving private medical treatment for the rich in place etc, the privileged Oxbridge universities, privileged schooling etc etc.

And it was only done in the very richest of countries anyway, living on the backs of the great mass of Third World exploitation where near-slave plantation and sweatshop labour has constantly prevailed under the stooge management of numerous tinpot gangster dictatorships and fascist regimes, bribed and installed by more or less direct western interventions and post-colonial corruption, through CIA organised coups, death-squad intimidation, ghastly massacres (one million suspected communist sympathisers killed in Java in 1965), invasions and, where "necessary", all-out bloody blitzing wars destroying whole countries such as Greece, Malaysia, Vietnam, North Korea, to hold back and restrain any resistance.

Generations of hundreds of millions have never seen even the hope of even decent basic living conditions, in the sewage-ridden, dirt-street shanty town hovels, starvation and lack of education, let alone such "luxury" as university or even decent schools.
In the "well-off" West such reforms have anyway always been a trick, unevenly distributed and leaving millions in poverty, unemployment and bleakness anyway.

IndependentCitizen

5th December 2011, 18:21

J0SPio6RE-s

Wow, thanks for that. He's spot on. I love how he said he'd try not to swear, but breaks not even a minute through.

Truly passionate about what he says.

Threetune

5th December 2011, 19:46

Now millions more are being forced back to that, and the "gains" are all being dismantled and taken back, from the miners’ strike onwards as an increasingly pressed ruling class has faced cutthroat competition from more powerful and efficient rivals (like Germany and the Euro-bloc it is forming around it, to be able to take on America as crisis deepens all the way to renewed world war).
As Marxism constantly warned, everything will turn to dust as the crisis collapse makes it impossible for the ruling class to deliver.

It is equally impossible for the "left" reformists to deliver either, or "defend living standards" etc because the world spiral of collapse is overwhelming – so they have simply abandoned the field, opportunistically happy not to be in power while continuing to play a game of pretend opposition and tepid sniping, to occasionally "justify" their comfortable salaries and lavish perks and expenses and try and keep the parliamentary charade going.

That is why they did not even attempt to form a "Labour" Coalition and why the Spanish Labour Party equivalent did not even put up a fight in the elections just held.
The working class increasingly sees every supposed "democratic" path to improvement being closed off.

Revolution is increasingly the only option as Marxism has always insisted.
But for all their pretences and decades of "we'll be there when the time comes, comrade" sneering, the fake-"lefts" they still do not raise the revolutionary questions as the central issue and the vital need for working class understanding and struggle, immediately and now.

Which part of rapidly unfolding catastrophic failure of capitalism is not glaringly clear enough yet for the posturing antics of the Trotskyist pretend "revolutionaries" (anti-communist through and through in reality) or the ineffectual revisionists (hiding their inadequacies and evasions under a dishonest pretence of "Stalinist hardness") and the slimy opportunist Trade Union and "left" reformists they back up, with their feeble and hopeless illusions in "controlling the banks", "forcing the ruling class to share out the money", making things "more democratic" and "stopping war" by "peacefully" protesting against it?

Is it that they cannot see the rapidly deepening devastation of wage cuts, unemployment, youth despair, slashed pensions and privatised health provision which has only just begun and can only inexorably continue as week after week of market and credit system turmoil demonstrate?

Is it that they did not notice the cynical and casual tearing up of supposed democracy in Italy and Greece where the panicking European ruling class (in the allegedly unchallengeable form of the "markets") has decided to abandon even the outrageous manipulated pretences which pass for "democracy" under the jumped-up fascist buffoon Silvio Berlusconi or the pseudo-"socialist" reformism of the treacherous Pasok-ites, all under the muttered excuse of "not upsetting the markets" (thereby proving that it is the dictatorship of capital which is in charge)?

(As if any "democracy" has ever been anything anyway but the most monstrous deception and hoodwinking charade, hiding the permanent dictatorship of capital and big money behind the confidence trick of "everyone having a say"?)

Or is it the next instalment in the now endless Goebbels demonisation of victim country after victim country now being stirred up by the filthy and conscious distortions and outright LIES of the intelligence agency-fed Western media machine, all done outrageously and barefacedly under the pretence of "bringing democracy and the 'rule of law' to (allegedly) benighted counties", which they still fail to see?

Is all that not an obvious enough Goebbels Nazi joke????

Crux

6th December 2011, 11:23

Every time you lot come out from behind your Strictly managed discipline, carefully rehearsed meetings, choreographed, demos, and manicured literature you drop yourselves in the swamp with your infantile inability to deal with open POLITICAL criticism.

What does it matter that Sheridan has not been a member of the CWI for years?

Are you trying to suggest that the same leadership of your current CWI did not commission Sheridan and Nally to run squealing there condemnation of the riots to the capitalist broadcasters?Is that what you’re trying? Peter Taaffe, general secretary of the Socialist Party was up to his neck at that time in that leadership.

Let’s make it quick and easy, plain and simple for the young comrades shall we?

A leadership that wants to be an “alternative” to New Labour without a revolutionary denunciation of the parliamentary racket, a track record of condemning anti-poll tax demonstrators and defending the police as “workers in uniform”.

Could it be that your parliamentary and local council candidates would not want to be associated with any serious exposure and revolutionary attack of the state? Sound like Labour Party Mk2 to me. Same old reformist rubbish dressed up as ‘socialism’ to keep workers diverted from discussion of revolution and real workers power over the dictatorship of capitalism.
There is no progress for the working class anywhere to be achieved by "slow determined piece by piece" improvement and gains.

Everything supposedly "won" by 150 years of reformism and the "Labour Movement" struggle, from a health service to pensions, to education, decent housing, jobs for all, fulfilling lives and a say in the world, is being torn to shreds by the vicious Tory ruling class (and Labour just as much) under the impact of the crisis.

It always was a giant fraud.
It always was ephemeral, destined to collapse and disintegrate, mere sops thrown out by a desperate ruling class when the real revolutionary pressure underneath was building up too much and domestically and even more when the international working class revolutionary struggle was pushing forwards with the titanic achievements of 70 years of building a communist workers state in the Soviet Union with not an owner or capitalist in sight.

The appeal of these titanic class achievements was particularly strong after the disasters of the 1930s Depression and WW2 had demonstrated the full horrors of capitalist slump yet again (after the Great War "to-end-all-wars" promises only 20 years previously) and the powerful social, economic, scientific cultural and educational gains of the USSR were set in contrast, reinforced by the historic heroism of the massive Red Army defeat of Hitlerite fascism.

And this continued despite all sorts of mistakes and errors, including the eventual retreat from revolutionary philosophical struggle which underlay the difficulties and problems of Stalinist revisionism and its ultimate end-point of complete pointless liquidationism of the still successfully operating Soviet economy under Gorbachevite capitulation to alleged "free market efficiency" (a soft-brained anti-Marxist nonsense that is looking sicker by the minute as the inevitable (as Marxism declares) crisis disaster unravels and drags the world into chaos including newly re-established Russian capitalism).

Everything delivered by the new workers state, building, as far and fast as limited resources and initially backward cultural development would allow, an astonishingly new, egalitarian and fair world, for the first time in all human history, was aped (under pressure) by capitalism in distorted form – health, housing, education, employment, holidays, pensions, – "granted" to head off bubbling European revolution everywhere in the post-war years, but only ever partially, always leaving private medical treatment for the rich in place etc, the privileged Oxbridge universities, privileged schooling etc etc.

And it was only done in the very richest of countries anyway, living on the backs of the great mass of Third World exploitation where near-slave plantation and sweatshop labour has constantly prevailed under the stooge management of numerous tinpot gangster dictatorships and fascist regimes, bribed and installed by more or less direct western interventions and post-colonial corruption, through CIA organised coups, death-squad intimidation, ghastly massacres (one million suspected communist sympathisers killed in Java in 1965), invasions and, where "necessary", all-out bloody blitzing wars destroying whole countries such as Greece, Malaysia, Vietnam, North Korea, to hold back and restrain any resistance.

Generations of hundreds of millions have never seen even the hope of even decent basic living conditions, in the sewage-ridden, dirt-street shanty town hovels, starvation and lack of education, let alone such "luxury" as university or even decent schools.
In the "well-off" West such reforms have anyway always been a trick, unevenly distributed and leaving millions in poverty, unemployment and bleakness anyway.
And you knocked down that truly gigantic straw-man with ease, congratulations. I am sorry I see no political criticism to be adressed here.

Threetune

6th December 2011, 18:20

See the “workers in uniform” taking ‘solidarity action’ with environmentalists, students and miners before being introduced to their trades union ‘brother and sisters’ in the prison officers union.

Climate camp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t244-zEENSs&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t244-zEENSs&feature=related)

Students http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YGVPKlLcSk&feature=endscreen&NR=1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YGVPKlLcSk&feature=endscreen&NR=1)

Miners http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTc-750COQI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTc-750COQI)

the Leftâ„¢

6th December 2011, 18:33

J0SPio6RE-s

this is so fucking awesome. I want to just high five this man.

"Its all fucking interrelated, Egypt and all o them, protestin the same shit"

Yeaaaaaa budddddy

ed miliband

6th December 2011, 19:11

It's hilarious but he's a well-known performance artist. Well, as well-known as performance artists can be...

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

6th December 2011, 20:32

Conference to launch Anti-Cuts candidates in Scotland

by Philip Stott

Millions of workers took part in the biggest strike seen in living memory against attacks on pensions and cuts by the Con-Dem government on November 30th. The next step in the battle against cuts is to prepare a further public sector shutdown in the new year At the same time many public sector workers will be discussing how we can build a political voice to represent us in elections. A meeting is taking place on Saturday in Glasgow to launch an anti-cuts coalition to contest the Scottish council elections next year.

Leading public sector trade unionists in Scotland have launched an initiative to stand anti-cuts candidates in next May’s local council elections in Scotland. With politicians of all parties carrying out the Con-Dem cuts, we need our own candidates prepared to defend jobs, public services and our communities. Come along on December 10th and help build the alternative to cuts and austerity.

Alongside the Westminster coalition of cuts Scotland's main parties are also carrying out cuts unprecedented in their scale. The SNP government in Scotland have implemented the Con-Dem cuts by slashing over £3 billion from the budget, attacking pensions, freezing pay and cutting services. John Swinney and Alex Salmond both crossed the picket lines on N30, with Swinney claiming it was his duty as a government minister to break the strike.

Labour councils are also making deep cuts. The mantra is cuts are inevitable, it’s only the pace and timing of the cuts that is up for debate among the main parties.

Next May all of Scotland’s councillors are up for election. We need to stand anti-cuts candidates to offer an option to trade unionists, young people and our communities. We believe that an anti-cuts coalition involving trade unionists, anti-cuts campaigners, socialists and young people could stand candidates across Scotland offering a real alternative to the parties of cuts and privatisation.

At the meeting on Saturday we will be discussing a proposal to stand across Scotland. Leading public sector trade unionists, supported by the Socialist Party Scotland are putting forward the following platform for standing candidates next year.

1, Our candidates oppose and if elected will vote against all cuts to jobs, pay, services, pensions, benefits etc. Only cuts we support are those that would cut the income of rich and big business the bankers.

2. Our candidates if elected will put forward needs budgets that protect services, our communities and jobs. Our Councillors will help lead a mass campaign to demand a return of the money stolen by the ConDem's to invest in public services.

3. We oppose all privatisation which is increasingly on the agenda in local government. We stand for the abolition of PFI/PPP schemes that are a huge drain on public resources.

4. Full support for workers and trade unions in the public and private sector, the communities and young people who are taking action to fight against the cuts. For a united fightback against austerity and cuts. Abolish and oppose all anti-trade union laws.

5. We will support progressive policies including making the rich elite pay increased tax, and for increased tax on big business. We are for public ownership of the banks the privatised utilities and the big corporations. Public ownership would allow investment in jobs and services, which are needed now more than ever.

Come along on Saturday and help build a fighting anti-cuts coalition for the elections in May 2012.

Saturday 10th December 2.30pm
Adelaides, 209 Bath Street
Glasgow

Speakers include
Cheryl Gedling PCS NEC member
Brian Smith Glasgow Unison branch secretary
(in a personal capacity)

[x] close (http://www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk/news-a-analysis/scottish-politics/356-conference-to-launch-anti-cuts-candidates-in-scotland?tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default&page=#)

bricolage

6th December 2011, 20:41

Jimmy, can you answer the questions I asked here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2313966&postcount=40) and here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2314313&postcount=47)? Not trying to be annoying but I am genuinely interested in your answer.

Threetune

6th December 2011, 21:51

And you knocked down that truly gigantic straw-man with ease, congratulations. I am sorry I see no political criticism to be adressed here.

No straw man as you claim.

Here is the incontestable evidence that the Socialist Party (formally the’ Militant Tendency’) were still lying about their role in the poll tax riots at least as late as 2010.

From</SPAN>The Socialist newspaper, 24 March 2010 (http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/617)

“On 31 March 1990, Scotland's demonstration was angry but peaceful. However, as the article below, shows, London's was not, due to the policies of the government and the machinations of the state and police. Steve Glennon was the chief steward of the All-Britain Anti-Poll</SPAN>Tax (http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/keyword/Tax)Federation on the London demonstration. “…

…“Whilst sectarian groups in the anti-poll tax federation repeated the government's story that the Fed leadership was going to name the marchers who had 'started the violence', no marchers were ever "grassed up to the police". The Fed named Thatcher and the police as the instigators of the violence.” …</SPAN>
by STEVE GLENNON 24 March 2010. (Bold Added by Threetune)

If you want to check it, here is the link http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/international/militant/article/9075 (http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/international/militant/article/9075)

So the Socialist Party are again slyly claiming here and blatantly lying that they were not blaming the marches and that they were blaming Thatcher. So how do they explain this TV interview with Tommy Sheridan ‘Chair of the Anti- Tax Federation and leading ‘Militant Tendency’( Old name of the Socialist Party)

‘Militant ‘Sheridan : “Of course we don’t condone that we condemn it completely, most working class people do, most people sitting watching those seens will be very very angry at this small minority of people who have marred what has been a marvellous demonstration.”

Interviewer: “So what went wrong?”

‘Militant’ Sheridan: “What went wrong basically was that we had two or two-hundred and fifty of these people who were intent on causing trouble.” See the interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDlqF6AE6dk (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDlqF6AE6dk)

Is this naming and blaming Thatcher, as they claim as late as 2010?

Next we can see the record of the ITN ‘RUSHES’ which state that Steve Nally, also of the then ‘Millitant Tendency’ was interviewed:

**** FOR RUSHES SEE CR2244
**** RUSHES NOT KEPT:

b) SEE ABOVE

a) (Leuchars,Anne)
ENGLAND
London TGV Rally along away with banners )
Whitehall MS Ditto L-R )
TMS Police along with demos )
CMS Police facing attacking protesters & )
using truncheons (Camera shaking) ) TX.31.3.90
BV Police retreating as missiles and ) ITN
assaults )
TLMS HIGHLIGHT Youth directing assaults )
MS Mounted police past old man with banner)
PAN R-L )

INT
ITN CMS Steve Nally (Anti-Poll Tax Federation) intvwdSOF
-We will hold a full inquiry and name names if
necessary

http://www.itnsource.com/fr/shotlist//ITN/1990/04/01/T01049003/?s=* (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.itnsource.com/fr/shotlist/ITN/1990/04/01/T01049003/?s=*)

Proof positive that this so called Socialist Party will fabricate their history and their role in it in order to promote their reformist agenda.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

6th December 2011, 23:46

Tuesday, 6 December 2011Green Cuts Budget Proposals
Are Green Councillors Hands Tied? Or Are They Tying Ours?

By Jon Redford, Brighton and Hove Socialist Party, England.

The Green budget proposals were released on 1st December. In the face of a 33% reduction of funding from central government they are proposing that £35m of cuts are made over the next two years. Most departments are facing between 5-15% cuts in services. The main cuts over the year 2012/13 will be to adult social care (£3.2m), children's services (£2.78m), housing (£2.09m), communities (£1.1m), city regulation and infrastructure (£4.85m) and resources and finance (£1.85m). Up to 120 council jobs will be lost.

There will be increased parking charges and charges for registering births, deaths and marriages, scrapping mobile libraries, reducing library opening times and closing public toilets. The cuts in areas such as adult social care and children's services will see day centres, meals on wheels and community care cut, as well as cuts to mental health services, childcare training schemes and children's centres. In particular school attendance budgets and assistance to young people not in education, training or employment will face cuts. Many more details of areas that will face cuts can be found in the budget itself, although not in the press releases so far issued by the Greens.

In addition the Greens are foregoing a one off grant from central government to prevent a one year council tax rise, instead implementing a 3.5% rise. Whilst the Greens are correct to point out that the government's offer is a poisoned chalice; it only lasts for a year and would result in lost funding in the long-term, it is not acceptable to offset cuts with tax rises that impact disproportionately on the working-class and poor. This council tax rise is not being used to invest in new services, it is being raised to mitigate the harmful effects of the overall reduction in government funding.

Can Councillors Fight the Cuts?

Brighton and Hove Socialist Party has consistently argued that anti-cuts councillors would build a mass movement to refuse to make the government cuts. In Q&A notes released at the same time as the budget the Greens take up the question of refusing to make the cuts:

“Q: Why not defy the Government and refuse to set a budget - or set an uncut one?

A: These are not the defiant 1980s. Nowadays, if we set an illegal budget, an unbalanced budget (where spending exceeds income) or no budget, it will just be set for us by the Council's Chief Finance Officer or a central Government civil servant.”

This is an incredibly important question. They argue that their hands are tied, and a fight-back is simply not possible. If it was true that the council cannot fight this funding reduction then the question for us would be the same questions facing the Greens. However we are not just limited to the options the government present us. The aim of the workers and anti-cuts movements must be to make our own 'option' instead of shuffling along behind variations of a theme we disagree with. More importantly the position put forward above is false.

It is strange to hear them say “These are not the defiant 1980's” only a day after the biggest strike in Britain since 1926, and probably Brighton's largest ever demonstration! The announcements made in George Osborne's Autumn statement made it clear the pain was not yet over, and in fact it would continue for a further two years of austerity after 2015. Disposable income will remain below its 2002 levels as the government aims to reduce public spending to 1998 levels. It is hard to see how the defiance of the 1980's will not return or be surpassed in the coming period!

Politics is not just (or particularly) a matter of council practices and procedures; a mass movement of the working-class can decide questions that politicians can only wistfully chew over for decades. However where is the campaign to demand the funding back from the government? Why have the Greens immediately set about making the cuts? They are silent on the fight-back, and have conducted a consultation which is as a result deeply divisive. That has done nothing to build a movement against the cuts, and everything to undermine it.

Not only have the Greens rejected the idea of using the budget setting process to fight for money to be returned to the city, they seem to have rejected the idea of any campaign at all. The Greens are looked to as an alternative to the main three parties (Tory, Labour, Lib-Dem) in the city, if Green MP Caroline Lucas (who has so far said nothing about the decisions of the council) announced a demonstration, backed by the anti-cuts and trade union movement it would no doubt be taken up by many thousands and signal even more that Brighton is willing to fight. Such a campaign does not in itself mean passing a needs budget, although we argue that is the necessary final step; otherwise the movement will be like a lion with no teeth or claws.

What is the Law?

If anti-cuts councillors took a stand and pushed for a budget that reflected local need instead of the government's directions for cuts, the Chief Finance Officer (CFO) could issue a report to the council under s114(3) of the Local Government Finance Act 1988, which the council would have to respond to within 21 days.

“The chief finance officer of a relevant authority shall make a report under this section if it appears to him that the expenditure of the authority incurred (including expenditure it proposes to incur) in a financial year is likely to exceed the resources (including sums borrowed) available to it to meet that expenditure.” s114 (3) LGFA1988

However the council can reject this guidance; it is false for the Greens to argue the CFO can force the budget through. According to the Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accountancy report on the role of the CFO in local government,

“If the authority (or the executive) acts positively on the s114 (114A) report, well and good; if not, any further formal action is to be taken by the external auditor...”

There are then three courses of action available to the external auditor, section 6 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 or the issue of an ‘advisory notice’ under section 19A or an application to the Court for a declaration under section 17 of the 1998 Act. The first option allows the external auditor to require information to investigate, while the second allows the external auditor to issue a notice to the council explaining they are overspending. However the law is very clear:

“An advisory notice is a notice which...requires the body or officer before i) making or implementing the decision or ii) taking or continuing to take the course of action... to give the person who is for the time being the auditor of the accounts of the body not less than the specified number of days’ notice in writing of the intention of the body or officer to do that thing.” 19A(3)(d) ACA1998

In other words, the council can decide to proceed as long as they inform the external auditor within a set period of time of their intention to do so. The external auditor may then apply for a court order under section 17 which may result in an order to rectify the accounts but since 2002 and the passing of the Local Government Act 2000 it may no longer result in personal liability for the councillors.

Once the CFO has issued a notice to the council and it has been rejected the councillors could be referred to the Standards Board, a process which takes months and which we could use as a platform to gather support for refusing to make the cuts. It is not a short rubber stamp procedure. We would make it as transparent a process as possible and call demonstrations to put focus on the fact that anti-cuts councillors attempting to resist government cuts are being hauled before the committee! Anyone involved in the anti-poll tax campaign will know that court procedures can become a weapon in our hands, they can become a platform to express our ideas or a way to create a massive backlog.

Impact on Councillors

The impact on individual councillors will not be a personal fine as with the Liverpool councillors, after the law changed in 2000, but (at worst) a suspension. Green councillors need to ask themselves whether fighting the cuts is more important than their council seats? But if a movement was built to refuse the cuts, if the councillors used the standards board procedure as a platform to further build the campaign and deepen the mass following they had built, and still the government suspended them, nothing would stop us restarting the process and running in the by-election on the same program of refusing to make the cuts!

Imagine the uproar if they, after all that, imposed commissioners! What difference is there in principle between the Greens (or any other party) being forced to carry out the government cuts, or the government itself directly imposing them? The question is whether we are going to fight or not – and councillors need to decide which side they are on. The Greens may argue there is not difference in principle, but in practice they are able to protect the most vulnerable. However as the details of this budget emerge it is clear there is very little option available to them but to cut services. As the Greens themselves said 'there is no fat left'. If they do not fight for the extra funding they will be cutting into meat and bone.

Ultimately whatever action the government may or may not eventually take depends on the campaign waged to oppose the cuts outside the council chamber. The most recent example of a campaign to resist local government cuts was in Liverpool in the 1980's. The threat of imposing an unelected government commissioner was made by the Thatcher government but they did not take this step, instead they waited for then leader of the Labour party Neil Kinnock to attack the council before picking off the councillors Had they imposed commissioners it would have sparked an even bigger fight-back as a result, especially against the backdrop of the miners strike in 1984-85.

The Greens plead with the movement while they are making the cuts 'our hands are tied, we are doing our best to oppose the cuts by directing the axe'. However the law looks very different. If they cannot demonstrate that their hands are tied by the law, then we have to conclude it is the Greens themselves that are tying the hands of service users, local authority staff and trade union members in Brighton and Hove!

The conclusion that we draw is that the Greens should be waging a campaign but they are not. So we have to build a political force that will do all of this, that is rooted in and depends on a mass movement of the working-class to achieve its aims. That is why we are proud of the role we have played at the core of the strike movement and the rebuilding of the trade union movement in Brighton and Hove; confidence and democratic organisation is needed to oppose this government's unjust pension reforms. We are proud to be part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, standing in the Westbourne by-election. We are proudest of our call for a strategy to win the fight against the cuts, to end the capitalist system which breeds them and replace it with a democratic socialist society!

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

7th December 2011, 00:49

Bricolage, I will come back to your question(s) shortly,

THreetunes, you do have a fetish, like all anarchistic/syndicalistic non-socialists, on the question of events around the so-called poll tax riot. Like all of your ilk, you huff and puff and scream from the side lines miles from the front about so-called reformist Trotskyists doing the capitalist state’s work by misrepresenting events and words and phrases in those events and take them as set in stone and as gospel. The most important event 20 years ago was not the so-called poll tax riot on the 31st March 1990, but the event that the ‘reformist Trotskyist Militant Tendency’ led 18 million people in the biggest civil disobedience campaign in British History. What did you anarchists do? Nothing, absolutely nothing, but carp and complain about how the reformist Left in the Labour Party, when MT was in it, was ruining working class solidarity. And to be quite truthful you besmirch the true meaning of Anarchism. Your ideas will continue to be nothing in the Labour movement; all you are Threetunes is a screamer on the internet giving half-truths and manipulation of words.

By the way Threetunes I was there in 1990 and through the anti-poll tax struggle. Were you? And I know about the capitalist State apparatus when it jailed me for non-payment of the poll tax, then jailed my wife for non-payment of the poll tax; then took me back to court for supposedly inciting a political campaign against right-wing reformists in the Labour Party who were jailing women and old people for non-payment of the poll tax. At the same time I and other anti-poll tax activists used the courts to defend non-payers by becoming non-legal Advocates in the same State system to stop them being jailed and harassed by the State system. When friends of your ilk left them to be crucified by the same State system you vilify.

You know nothing about the events during that time. You are not learning anything from the Anti-Poll tax struggle in your contributions and you are not advancing any theoretical, political, strategically or tactical points in your contributions. So why do you not give it a rest.

And I am still out there having a dialogue with working people week-in week-out on the streets of Britain, knowing how they feel and what they want. Are you? The anti-cuts electoral strategy at this juncture in the class struggle with its sea-change in consciousness is the best beginning for the working class in advancing their political opposition to the ConDem government. Your strategy is like telling, nay demanding, that a six month old baby do a 25 mile marathon NOW. Politically naïve and destructive to working class solidarity. Only by escalating the trade union struggle on the one hand and a political strategy of building the confidence of working people to fight the capitalist system through organisations like the anti-cuts coalition will the working class see the necessity to go forward to the socialist transformation of society.

Threetune

7th December 2011, 23:17

If that’s all you’ve got, job done on that for now.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

8th December 2011, 00:47

Jimmy Haddow: why do you continually seem to push this line of 'I was there, where were you?'

For all you know, Threetune (who I don't often defend on here) could have been in his mother's stomach during the poll tax riots. It's a ridiculous ad hom and it doesn't paint you in a very good light, so can you please not bring such stupid arguments into the discourse; really, you come across as intelligent and knowledgeable enough to not have to resort to such attacks to get a decent point across.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

8th December 2011, 11:52

To Stammer and Tickle: Maybe you need to explain from your interpretation of what you mean by “so can you please not bring such stupid arguments into the discourse”, because I do not know what you mean. But I will try and explain why I put personal experiences into a discourse when I am trying to explain to a politically ignorant person who is not prepared put forward a coherent point.

Theory is the concentrated experience of the working class, both collectively and individually, and of society as a whole. Just one example for that argument is that only after the practical experience of the Paris Commune in 1871 did Marx and Engels come to the conclusion that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purpose”. So I give my experience, individually and collectively, of my time in politics as an explanation to people like Threetunes that he does not know the F**K he is talking about.

On this issue about the ant-poll tax struggle all Threetunes does are spout anarchistic style ideological falsehoods, distortions and downright lies; and on the State and the individuals who work in the State apparatus, again, Threetunes has no practical or theoretical explanation or understanding to give a coherent clarification. All Threetunes does is culls pieces of information here and a piece there completely out of context and call everyone a reformist betrayer, etc, and that everyone who is connected to the State are part of Capitalism.

For example, when I was in prison for non-payment of the poll tax I had a number of positive political discussions on the question of the poll tax and on Thatcher’s and Major’s governments with prison officers, and with the police for that matter, and less than 1% did not agree with the analysis I was putting forward. At the same time I had discussions with my fellow inmates who considered I should not be inside for a non-criminal matter, but they were on a different level than with the prison officers. Also 7 years after my jailing and when I had finished my academic qualifications as a mature student I ended up teaching social science, literacy and numeracy in prison education for nearly 12 years. What I found in my practical experience as well as my theoretical understanding is that prison officers are just workers in uniform who have to do the bidding of the capitalist system like the rest of us. Prison officers, the armed forces and the police are just a reflection of the capitalist society; the minority who tell the majority what to do; and the minority who try to divide and rule the majority by making them do things that are at times repugnant and not right.

Bluntly speaking Threetunes talk’s shite, I believe, out of political and personal ignorance not out of any political knowledge and personal experience within the working class. Maybe I would not be so harsh to this person if he explained where he was coming from, but all Threetunes does is shouts betrayal from the backlines because he/she does not have a dialogue and/or interacts with working people in the State or society at large.
Threetunes does not know the history of the non-payment anti-poll tax struggle, the fact that it was started in Scotland in 1998 by the Militant Tendency which then became a mass movement which brought down Thatcher and the poll tax itself, or what was done and said and in what context everything was done during that time. Threetunes does not know, or put in context, the events and causes of the eventual retreat of leading figures of the anti-poll tax struggle, such as Tommy Sheridan, from Marxism and the Committee for a Workers International as a means to put Sheridan’s later words on various questions in their proper context. All Threetunes does is cull quotations and put them all together to show that everyone who has been in struggle are reformist betrayers and opportunists without giving a coherent political programme to achieve a new society. And for the record many of the comments by Sheridan, etal, in their retreat from Marxism where taken up, sometimes sharply, by the leading members of the CWI, such as Peter Taaffe, in the theoretical and political discussions over the past decade or so.

I hope Stammer and Tickle this explains why I use my experience as well as my theoretical knowledge to explain the processes that are taking place within society. I do not do it for kudos or arrogance but simply to clarify that Threetunes is fundamentally wrong in his homilies.

Crux

8th December 2011, 13:14

No straw man as you claim.
Oh yes it was, seeing as I was adressing this post (http://www.revleft.org/vb/showpost.php?p=2316281&postcount=55) of yours, not your ranting about the poll tax riots. Apprently not even you can defend your own ramblings or keep them apart.