From: New Worker Online <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001 20:31:42 +0100
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [New-Worker-News] New Worker Online Digest - 15/6/2001
New Worker Online Digest
Week commencing 15th June, 2001.
1) Editorial - Landslide.
2) Lead story - Give us back our guards.
3) Feature article - Unions ready to fight privatisation.
4) International story - Sinn Fein powers home at the polls.
5) British news item - Disabled blockade Birmingham.
1) Editorial
Landslide.
LABOUR'S victory in last week's general election was remarkable and
historic as it was the second Labour landslide in five years. The Tories
won back just a tiny handful of the seats they lost in 1997 and are
currently licking their wounds and looking for a new leader.
Quite a lot has been written and said about William Hague and his apparent
inability to woo the voters. But the personality of the leader was not
really the issue. It is elevated in order to avoid talking about the
popular rejection of the Tories' platform. During the campaign the Tories
went from issue to issue and nothing seemed to strike a chord with the
voters.
The majority of people were not taken with the idea of building lots of
detention centres for asylum seekers. They did not want massive tax cuts
that would benefit the rich at the expense of public services and they were
certainly not impressed by seeing Thatcher back on the streets reminding
everyone why they wanted rid of the Tories in the first place.
Certainly no one, including the Tories, were surprised they lost. But the
Tories were hoping to close the gap with Labour and the failure to do this
has caused dismay in sections of the ruling classes of Britain and the
United States. They clearly are the favoured party of the rich and powerful
and we can now expect to see the wealthy stepping up their donations to
Tory funds. In fact it's already started with a massive �5 million donation
from American billionaire J Paul Getty II.
The Liberal Democrats gained a little ground based on one aspect of their
othenvise pro-business campaign -- the call for a small increase in
taxation in order to improve health, education and other services. But once
again their results showed that people look for a party capable of gaining
a big enough majority to form a majority government.
In Scotland and Wales the nationalist parties came out largely unchanged
from their 1997 showing. In both countries the Tories got their usual
bashing and Labour continued to hold their traditional vote.
As expected, the small socialist parties were left far behind. The gap
between these parties and the winning candidates was huge -- none of them
won a single seat, nor even came close.
The only candidate to break the mould was an independent in Wyre Forest
near Kidderminster who fought (with Lib-Dem backing) for better resources
for a local hospital and defeated the sitting Labour MP.
The worst result of all was the neo-nazi British National Party (BNP)
getting some 5000 and 6000 plus votes in the two Oldham constituencies. It
followed a concentrated assault on this town by the fascists including
outrageous verbal and physical attacks on the town's Asian minority.
While the BNP is unlikely to maintain this vote, the racists and fascists
must be defeated by the vigorous efforts of the working class led by the
labour and antifascist movements. And the Labour government has to be
pressured to tackle the problems that fuelled the BNP vote -- problems of
housing, unemployment and economic hardship -- problems to be found in all
the areas that have suffered for years from the decline in manufacturing
industry.
We, the New Communist Party, called for people to vote Labour. But that is
certainly not a call for going "on message". On the contrary we believe it
is the working class that should be giving "messages" to Blair and the
incoming government.
The election campaigns have already made one thing abundantly clear -- the
NHS, education and public services have got to be adequately and fully
funded and drastically improved. That message has got to be repeated again
and again after the election dust has settled.
Another loud message coming from the public sector trade unions, and one
that has widespread popular support, is to stop the privatising of
hospitals, schools and services by both sell-offs of assets and by the
backdoor robbery of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes.
And there will be no let-up in the campaign for restoring the link between
state pensions and earnings.
The Blair government has now to be put under increasing pressure to meet
working class demands and to remember that while Getty is forking out for
the Tories it is the trade unions and organised workers who are paying
Labour's piper.
*********************
2) Lead story
Give us back our guards.
by Daphne Liddle
THE LEADERS of the transport union RMT are currently engaged in talks with
the Association of Train Operating Companies about the role of guards on
trains after the union announced two one-day strikes in protest at the
undermining of guards.
The strikes would affect nearly all parts of Britain as companies affected
include Conner, Virgin, Scotrail, Southwest Trains, the Southend Line,
Chiltern, Thames, Silverlink and others.
The issue concerns jobs and safety for passengers and rail workers alike
and the dispute has been running for two years.
The train operators have been downgrading the role of guards, transferring
responsibility for the safety of trains from them to the drivers.
The union warns this leaves guards with the status of "kit-kat sellers" and
cost-cutting companies are tempted to cut their jobs completely. This is
all the more tempting as in the vast majority of journeys there is no real
safety role for the guard to play.
Yet when there is an incident their role is vital. The RMT pointed out
that in both the Ladbroke Grove and Southall rail crashes, train drives
were killed. Without guards, there would have been no one trained and
qualified to take charge and direct passengers.
Guards also have a vital role in operating automatic doors and letting the
driver know when all passengers are aboard and it is safe to proceed.
When all this responsibility is left to drivers, accidents can occur.
The RMT last week published a survey which showed that 91 per cent of
passengers questioned believed it "is important to have a fully-trained
guard on all trains".
RMT assistant general secretary said the plan to strike on Monday 25 June
and Wednesday 4 July "is about saving lives".
The train operators first set about planning to lower the status of train
guards in 1997 and implemented it in 1999.
At the time the RMT balloted for strike action and won a majority in
favour.
But court injunctions -- based on Thatcher's anti-union laws prevented
this at the time.
Now technological advances are further undermining the role of guards and
a ballot for strike action last month was supported by a majority of guards.
The talks between the RMT and train operators began last Wednesday. By the
evening both sides said they had been constructive and would continue the
next day.
Meanwhile Railtrack continues to stagger from one crisis to another. Rail
regulator Tom Winsor last week told the company to "knuckle down" and "put
away the begging bowl" after it came pleading for yet more tax-payers money.
Mr Winsor told the company it "should not bother" applying to him for more
money until it had sorted itself out.
Railtrack was asking for another �3 billion of public money by next summer
after its shares collapsed the week before by 20 per cent to 365 pence --
lower than the float price of 390 pence.
Tom Winsor told Railtrack to "put behind itself its discredited and hugely
damaging practice of neglect of its assets and hostility to customers and
funders."
The share collapse followed Railtrack reporting a �534 million loss and an
admission that it had incurred �733 million costs cleaning up the rail
network after the Hatfield crash.
Clearly Railtrack, as a capitalist enterprise, is dead on its feet. It can
only survive by draining yet more and more public money. Yet it can demand
this through blackmail -- no cash, no railway -- and so has little
motivation to try to operate efficiently.
There is only one answer. Railtrack must be renationalised. It should cost
the taxpayers nothing. The company has repeatedly breached the terms of its
franchise and the contract should be cancelled immediately.
And the same goes for the train operating companies. By undermining the
role of guards, they are undermining our safety. They are in breach of the
terms of their contracts. Renationalise at once.
*************************
3) Feature article
Unions ready to fight privatisation.
by Caroline Colebrook
TRADE union leaders representing millions of workers last week came
together to warn Prime Minister Tony Blair not to attempt to privatise any
more public services.
Bill Morris, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union
fired the first shot: "The Government has said there should be no
ideological bar to the role for the private sector in delivering public
services.
"I, for one, reject the notion that efficient public services can only be
provided in partnership with the private sector.
"It is a belief which is fast becoming an ideology -- one which does
immense damage to the morale of hard-working, dedicated public sector
employees.
"The leaked report from the Institute of Public Policy Research [a
Government think tank] which advocated greater involvement of the private
sector almost guarantees to make the National Health Service look like
Railtrack on a bank holiday."
John Edmonds, general secretary of the general union GMB, warned the
Government there is a "real sense of anxiety" about its proposals.
He said: "If the Government plans to lead an overall increase in private
sector involvement in health that will lead to conflict.
"The only reason to bring in private sector management into the NHS is to
bring in the private sector ethic, and that is exactly what we should not
do.
"There will be a big row between the public sector unions -- including the
British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing -- and in that
conflict it is likely the unions will be lining up with the public against
the Government.
"The health service is not about producing surpluses, it is about ensuring
that people who go through hospitals feel good."
Last Monday, Dave Prentis, the new general secretary of the giant public
sector union Unison, called on Tony Blair to abandon the policy.
He pointed out that further privatisations will undermine the work of
doctors, nurses and all public sector workers. He added that Labour's
second term in government could be the last chance to save public services
from privatisation.
He said: "If Labour thinks it has been given a mandate to go ahead with
further privatisation of public services, then it had better think again."
Unison has produced a dossier of evidence for its conference next week
showing that private sector deals are poor value for money and lead to cuts
in services.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone joined the debate and warned against
involving the private sector in delivering public services.
"We have to repudiate the dogma that the private sector has all the
answers," he said. "If there is a shining example of what is wrong with the
privateering agenda for the public services, it is Railtrack."
TUC general secretary John Monks told the annual conference of the AEEU
electrical and engineering union that a confrontation with the unions on
this issue would be a "disaster" for the Government.
He called on Cabinet ministers including Health Secretary Alan Milburn and
Home Secretary David Blunkett to work with the unions, not against them.
He spoke of reports that some in the Labour leadership are eager for "an
early confrontation" with one of the big public sector unions.
"I say to them, look at the lessons of history. Look at 1978-79 when there
was such a confrontation and it was an electoral disaster for Labour and
for trade unionism," he said.
"We still walk with those ghosts of 20 years ago.
"My message is clear, no one will be able to deliver better public
services by seeking bruising confrontation."
The mood of the conference became even more antagonistic towards the
Government with the announcement of Blair's 40 per cent pay award to
himself plus similar high rises for other Government ministers.
Tony Blair's salary will now rise by �47,000 to �163,000 a year. Cabinet
ministers will each get an extra �20,000, taking their salaries to more
than �117,000.
Nigel de Gruchy. general secretary of the teaching union NAS/UWT condemned
the rise, saying: "It is obviously one rule for politicians and another for
teachers and nurses."
*************************
4) International story
Sinn Fein powers home at the polls.
by Steve Lawton
SINN FEIN replaced the SDLP as northern Ireland's chief nationalist party
following the Westminster elections. having increased its vote across the
board and added two seats to that of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.
The success of Pat Docherty in West Tyrone, predicted by Sim Fein, was
crowned by the very narrow victory of Michelle Gildenew in Fermangh-South
Tyrone -- the first woman nationalist MP since Bernadette Devlin
(McAliskey) and the first Sim Fein MP since Countess Markiewicz in 1918.
But the seat, with a rough cross-community balance, is a hot one since it
is here that Hunger Striker Bobby Sands first took the seat 20 years ago
while in the infamous Maze prison where he subsequently died.
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP's) James Cooper, who was ousted, is
mounting a challenge to her slender win (by 53 votes), citing
irregularities. The result in part reflects the damage caused by
anti-Agreement unionist Jim Dixon standing as an independent.
It is also here that Enniskillen, the largest town in the constituency
bombed by the IRA in 1987 (where Dixon was injured), has just seen an
increase in Sinn Fein's local poll from five to nine seats.
The SDLP, suffering a general decline in support, now have three MPs with
both Seamus Mallon -- deputy first minister, and John Hume retaining their
seats with a lower vote.
At the same time, a big shift has taken place from the UUP to the
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), reflecting a hardening of the
anti-Agreement position. That gave them five seats.
But three hardline anti-Agreement UUP MPs were also returned with an
increased majority, despite other losses to the DUP, enabling them to keep
the largest bloc by a whisker with six seats. Trimble was returned, but
with a lower vote.
Supposedly a litmus test of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and progress
since, the results of the 18 Parliamentary seats contested in the Six
Counties -- which Sinn Fein challenged as a whole for the first time --
were significant enough not to be completely overshadowed by Labour's
landslide return to Downing Street.
The Labour Government, which is resuming talks between the key parties and
the Irish Government, now has the urgent task of addressing, chiefly, three
festering problems:
* The policing legislation fiasco that former northern Ireland minister
Peter Mandelson engineered, undoing the Patten policing commission
proposals and thereby leaving the sinister anti-Catholic RUC essentially
intact;
* the arms decommissioning process that unionists distort to mean that
the IRA destroy its weapons, contrary to the agreed process which involves
independent monitoring and secured arms dump verification by
internationally respected inspectors;
* the demilitarisation of British occupation of the Six Counties. The
British military persists in maintaining a heavy presence in predominantly
nationalist, Catholic areas, while the military base and spying
infrastructure remains virtually untouched.
The beleagured leader of the UUP and assembly First Minister David
Trimble, hotfooting it to Prime Minister Tony Blair's court on Tuesday,
insisted that he will resign on 1 July unless the IRA begin actual
destruction of their weaponry.
The anti-Agreement inroads that the DUP have made into the UUP's electoral
showing has no doubt added pace to Trimble's actions, but although his
position is being assailed, it is far from being taken.
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, who was returned with an increased vote,
said that the solution lies beyond Trimble: "I would like to think that
Blair's increased mandate will allow him to face down the rejectionists
within his own establishment."
The hardline anti-Agreement DUP and pro-Agreement Sinn Fein, gaining
largely at the expense of the UUP and SDLP in the general election, has
been interpreted as a polarisation of hardline unionism against
strengthening republicanism and nationalism.
But then, nothing on the entire rocky journey toward reconciling both
communities -- Protestant and Catholic, nationalist and unionist -- has
ever been achieved without some major political upsets and hard fought
accommodations. This has been so ever since SDLP leader John Hume and Sinn
Fein president Gerry Adams began, in 1994, to set the ball rolling.
The 2001 general election -- particularly northern Ireland's local polls
-- are an extension of the battle for change that continue to move, by
degrees, to a political solution. The local elections showed an evening out
of support across the four main parties for the 582 seats, but again Sinn
Fein and the DUP advanced significantly. Sinn Fein busted its target 100
seats to take 108, while the SDLP is down to 117; the DUP reached 141 and
the UUP dropped to 154. In both Parliamentary and local polls, smaller
parties -- Alliance in particular -- suffered heavily.
Martin McGuinness, reelected with a big increase in his support, took an
optimistic view of the electoral outcome: "If you analyse the figures," he
told the BBC's Sir David Frost last weekend. "there is probably now more
support for the Agreement from right across our community."
He emphasised: "There will be a huge responsibility to make it absolutely
clear to those people who proclaim themselves to be rejectionists, that
they are not going to have their way."
David Trimble's resignation threat -- which the DUP urge him to carry out
for supposedly conceding to the IRA -- would be "a blow to the process", he
said, "There is a duty on all of us to try and prevent that happening."
*********************
5) British news item
Disabled blockade Birmingham.
HUNDREDS of disabled, mentally ill and homeless people have been blockading
major traffic routes in and around Birmingham to protest at the closure of
seven day centres for vulnerable people.
They have been supported hy the public sector union Unison and by film and
TV comics Norman Wisdom and Jo Brand.
They are also backed by the residents of Birmingham's residential care
homes for the elderly anti severely disabled who are engaged in a separate
legal battle, using new human rights legislation, to stop these homes being
privatised.
Unison has warned that Birmingham's �12 cuts programme is likely to be
repeated all over Britain as even now under Labour's second term of office,
huge cuts are still being forced on local governments.
Hull City council is seeking ways to cut �30 million from its budget
overthree years. This will mean cuts to social services.
Unison estimates that the Birmingham cuts will cost 850 jobs.
Mick Lewis, who uses a threatened homeless centre in Summerhill, said: "It
is totally gob-smacking. Money was wasted on glossy leaflets promoting the
city's "culture" which could instead have been spent on services helping
more than 1,000 people a week."
*********************
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