workers - latest · workers news digest 03 features 06 ... should give fresh confidence to britain...

JOURNAL OF THE CPBML

GUARDS Battle rages

RAIL Failed strategy

CHILDREN Care crisis

PRODUCTIVITY Pay up!

GRENFELL Out of control

1917 Which side are you on?

BREXIT Cromwell, we

need you now

JOBSWork-in victory

plusNews,

Book Review

and more

WORKERSWWW.CPBML.ORG.UK JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 £1

TAKE CONTROL: BUILD THE NEW BRITAIN

EU ARMY?YES, IT’S COMING

WORKERS

NewsDigest 03

Features 06

Contents – January/February 2018Scotland: a budget devised to divide, p3; Pensions: academics ballot onaction over scheme changes, p3; Work-in saves jobs, p4; The ever-shrinking Navy, p5

On the march towards a European army, p6; Guards battle still raging, p9; A longway from a believable future for rail, p10; How politicians created a childcare crisis,p12; No pay, no productivity, p14; Revolution: which side are you on? p16;Grenfell: no control, no accountability, p18

End Notes 21Book Review: Diary of a nobody, p21; Historic Notes: Highs and lows – from

the 1930s to the 1980s, p22

WORKERS is published by the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

78 Seymour Avenue, London N17 9EB. www.cpbml.org.uk @cpbmlISSN 0266-8580 Issue 204, January/February 2018”

Negotiations: let’s have clarity“NOTHING IS AGREED until everything is agreed,”said Theresa May and European Commission presi-dent Jean-Claude Juncker after the end of the firststage of the Brexit negotiations. That form of wordsalso appeared in the joint report from the negotia-tors which the Commission presented to the EUCouncil on Thursday 14 December.They might as well have added, “Nothing is clear

until everything is clear.” The language in the reportis in many places capable of several interpretations,and there is virtually no detail to explain the billionsof pounds we are supposed to pay the EU for theprivilege of leaving.Much may never become clear, such as the size

of the bill, or what “due regard” will be paid tojudgements of the European Court of Justice.Eventually, in the nature of things, the status of theIrish border will become clear, but what that statuswill be is not clear now.What the people of Britain need is clarity, the

kind of clarity that they showed in the referendum ofJune 2016. They voted to leave the European Union,and they expected that we would be out by June2018. Then-prime minister David Cameron hadvowed repeatedly that if the referendum wentagainst him he would invoke Article 50 immediately.It was crystal clear that leaving meant getting

out of the single market. It was, indeed, the onlything that Cameron, Osborne, Gove and Farage – infact, all the campaigners on both sides – agreed on.

Yet now the government and the EU haveagreed, in the section on Northern Ireland, “In theabsence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdomwill maintain full alignment with those rules of theInternal Market and the Customs Union which, nowor in the future, support North-South cooperation…”What do those words mean? Not clarity, for sure.And yet, as the second stage of negotiations

begins, one thing has actually become clearer: theEU is desperate for an agreement, if only because itdesperately needs money. Brussels has backeddown on many of its demands, and it changedcourse swiftly after a brief (reportedly, very brief)phone call between DUP leader Arlene Foster andTheresa May.Britain is not Syriza-led Greece. We don’t have

to roll over and agree to diktats from Brussels. Thatshould give fresh confidence to Britain as the nego-tiations proceed.“No deal is better than a bad deal,” Theresa May

told the Commons in her report-back on the negoti-ations. It’s time for the government to start actingmore as though they really believe this. Too much of the negotiations gave the impres-

sion of British negotiators going cap in hand toBrussels like loyal subjects, at whatever time of theday or night suited the EU. It’s time to toughen up.No deal should be our starting position. We just

want out. And if the EU doesn’t start cooperating, nodeal should be our final position. ■

“

WWW.CPBML.ORG.UK @CPBML

THE RECENT budget issued by the devolved government in Edinburgh marks a split inthe united approach to taxation in Britain. Under the SNP's separatist and pro-EUthinking, divergence in tax matters has been established.

The idea is to set Scotland on a path to separate financial governance, “fiscalautonomy” in other words. It is separatism by stealth after “independence in Europe”was solidly defeated in 2014 and with the SNP unable to obtain a second referendum.

Another tactic is attempting to pursue an independent foreign policy, illustrated byNicola Sturgeon's meeting in December with Chinese vice-premier Liu Yandong inEdinburgh.

Last year was not a happy one for the SNP. Nearly 30 per cent of its membershipvoted for Brexit – independence for the whole of Britain, not separatism for the northernportion. Opposition mounted to its planned merger of British Transport Police into PoliceScotland, especially from the RMT and TSSA trade unions. Centralising the Fire andRescue Service has resulted in over 700 frontline firefighters losing their jobs. And theSNP is still reeling from general election losses with big names booted out in fishing andrural communities.

Now that the detail of the December budget in Scotland has been digested, it is clearthat the SNP is implementing its own brand of “austerity”, including over £70 million tobe cut from the NHS Scotland capital budget. In July the annual NHS property surveyput the maintenance backlog at £887 million. NHS Scotland’s capital expenditure hadalready dropped from £537 million in 2015 to £336 million this year.

Tinkering with tax bands satisfied no one. And this budget does nothing to buildindustry or create jobs. The economy is stagnating, growing at a third the rate of the restof Britain. The budget’s main aim was furthering the separatist and pro-EU agenda. ■

SCOTLANDPENSIONSENGINEERINGCUBAEDUCATIONDEFENCEEUE-NEWSLETTERON THE WEBWHAT’S ON

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 NEWS DIGEST WORKERS 3

Build the new Britain

Divisive budget Academics ballot Work-in brings back jobs OU backs down Inter-union agreement The ever-shrinking Navy New call for integration How to subscribe More news online Coming soon

If you have news from your industry, trade or profession call us on 020 8801 9543 or email [email protected]

Academic ballotPENSIONS

UNIVERSITY WORKERS across Britainwere being balloted in December asWorkers went to press, over whether tofight to prevent the closure of theirUniversity Superannuation Scheme, a finalsalary arrangement.

The ballot gives university workers theopportunity to take action to overturn amanufactured pensions prescription thatdeliberately fails to measure pension assetsand liabilities using a balanced approach.

Despite the employer’s pretence, thescheme does not have a long-term fundingproblem.

What’s more, the accounting formatused to produce the alleged deficit hasbeen orchestrated by the EuropeanInsurance Occupational Pensions Authority,whose offices are in Frankfurt. As the EUregulator, it delivers its pensions diktat forBritain through its UK offshoot, thePensions Regulator, whose main office is inBrighton.

Anyone who works in pensions knowsthat deficits cannot at any point in time beprojected into the future with muchaccuracy. To suggest otherwise is simply“false precision” designed to promptpension closure.

The other point to consider is Brexit. Byleaving the EU, British workers will belooking to develop our economy rather thanbeing reliant on debt-fuelled consumptionfunded by foreign capital.

All of this and much more represents astrategic opportunity to create wealth basedhere in Britain that can be used amongother things to support state andoccupational pension planning. We want nomore EU-prompted pension closures. ■

@CPBML WWW.CPBML.ORG.UK

A budget devised to divideThe Scottish parliament building, Holyrood.

ON THE WEBA selection of additionalstories at cpbml.org.uk…

Scientists fear US block onresearch with CubaConcerns have been raised that the USgovernment is limiting scientificcollaboration between US and Cubanscientists – to the detriment of UScitizens.

Care home crunchCare provider Four Seasons is in talkswith its creditors – another symptom ofa widespread, deep-rooted crisis.

No Russian interference inLeave voteThose wanting to undermine the EUreferendum result try to blame Russianinterference. The facts don’t supportthat.

Vultures feast on housingshortageA case going through the High Courtshows how regeneration schemes areoften merely a curtain raiser for thedemolition of council-owned housing.

New tech university forHerefordThe government is giving up to £15million over three years to support theestablishment of a new, private, techuniversity based in Hereford city centre.

EU army defeatOn 13 November the governmentdramatically drew back from EU militaryintegration schemes.

Plus: the e-newsletterVisit cpbml.org.uk to sign up to your freeregular copy of the CPBML’s newsletter,delivered to your email inbox.

DECISIVE ACTION by the workers at Burntisland Fabrication (BiFab) has saved their jobs.In the middle of November the company, which makes equipment for the oil and gasindustry and the renewable energy sector, was on the brink of going into administration, andpayment of wages ceased.

But the workers and their unions, GMB and Unite, quickly organised a work-in. Theydecided to continue to work to complete their current contract – for Beatrice OffshoreWindfarm in the Moray Firth – despite having no guarantee that they would be paid.Members of both unions guarded the gates so that equipment and materials could not beremoved from the yard in Methil, Fife.

The 1,400 workers are spread across three plants: Methil, Burntisland and Arnish on theIsle of Lewis. The unions were told that the company’s financial crisis resulted from the maincontractor, the Dutch-owned Seaway Heavy Lifting (SHL), not paying BiFab for work alreadycompleted. The largest stakeholder, the energy giant SSE, was in dispute with SHL.

The solid work-in, combined with a vigorous march through Edinburgh on 16 Novemberattended by over 1,200 workers, spurred the company and its contractors into efforts tosolve the crisis. Within days a financial package was agreed with BiFab and the projectcontractors: SHL, SSE Energy and JCE Offshore.

This secures the work until the end of the contract in April 2018 with assurances fromgovernment that assistance would be given to seek further contracts.

At the rally in Edinburgh, Gary Smith, GMB Scottish Secretary, was adamant in hispraise for the workers' action: “If you had not taken the stand that you have, if you had notoccupied those yards, I promise you – your yards would have closed on Monday. You arean inspiration to the trade union movement.”

The reasons behind this crisis and the cash flow problems have not yet been fullyexposed. The two other major fabrication companies are unaffected by such problems.

Another positive outcome from this action has been the high level of joint planning andco-ordination between the two large trade unions in the industry. ■

4 WORKERS

THE OPEN UNIVERSITY has now agreed toadmit students from Cuba after criticismfrom educational unions and others. Thisreverses the position the OU held since2014, based on a view that it could not goagainst the USA.

This came to light when the OU refusedto allow a Cuban student onto a course thissummer because he came from “arestricted country” subject to “internationaleconomic sanctions and embargoes”.

The OU’s justification was that it“...considers that [the OU] falls within the

BiFab workers marching in Edinburgh on 16 November 2017.

Photo courtesy Unite

CUBAOU backs down

Work-in saves jobs


jurisdiction of US regulation with regard toeconomic embargoes. The OU has anumber of employees who hold UScitizenship (and are therefore subject to USregulation wherever they are in the world)and other significant links with the US(notably using US financial systems).”

The newly formed National EducationUnion was one of the organisations whichcriticised the OU’s stance. The NEU JointGeneral Secretary wrote with great clarity,“It appears that the OU not only prioritisesUS law over UK law, but US law overfairness and equality.” The same claritywould be welcome from the new unionwhen it has to comment about judgementsfrom the European Court of Justice. ■

FEBRUARYTuesday 20 February, 6.30 pm

Brockway Room, Conway Hall, RedLion Square, London WC1R 4RL

“Stop the EU War Machine!”

CPBML Public Meeting

During the referendum campaignanyone who warned that a Europeanarmy and a common defence policywere coming was dismissed by theestablishment as a fantasist. Noweverything is out in the open – and it'staking shape in front of our very eyes.Come and discuss. All welcome.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 NEWS DIGEST WORKERS 5

WHAT’S ONComing soon

IF NOTHING ELSE, the Ministry of Defence has a sense of humour: with only one monthleft of the 2017 calendar year, it designated 2017 as “The Year of the Royal Navy”.

Roughly 100 mariners are now involved in protecting Buckingham Palace, a first inchanging the guard history. While this might be good for tourism as an oddity, it is rumouredthat the Navy is so short of sailors it cannot crew its ever-dwindling pool of gunboats.

The entire Navy currently appears to consist of just 19 frigates, 7 submarines and 2 amphibious landing ships. Not nearly enough to rule the waves. The landing ships Albionand Bulwark are apparently being measured up for sale to the navies of Chile and Brazil.This will mean an end to large-scale British landings or invasions – a good thing.

The only helicopter carrier the Navy has, HMS Ocean, is scheduled to be scrapped.Naval helicopter pilots flew more sorties in Afghanistan and Iraq than their Army compatriotsso a carrier is no longer needed and 1,000 Royal Marines become redundant.

Since the mid-2000s the Royal Navy has run its fleet on a leaseback scheme with theVT Group (Vosper Thorneycroft ship builders; Lord Thorneycroft is past Chair of the ToryParty). All this is to be compensated for by the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, thelargest ship the Navy has ever had, whose completion date is some time in the 2020s. Itsfull carrying capacity of 40 aircraft is to be tested on the US seaboard, so perhaps HMS QEwill end up flying the Stars and Stripes. ■

STAY INFORMED• Keep up-to-date in between issues ofWorkers by subscribing to our freeelectronic newsletter. Just enter youremail address at the foot of any pageon our website, cpbml.org.uk

and education provision, or to recognisethe need to oppose market thinking ineducation.

Instead, the NEU follows the approachtaken by Unison and GMB: no overallstrategy; taking a small minded, localapproach; ignoring changes in educationprovision over the last 30 years; poachingeach other’s members week in week out,wasting time and effort and treatingmembers like sheep. The only disruptivetactic Unison and GMB have in theirarsenal is industrial action in schools, againtreating members as passive, since eventhat action is only on the coat tails of theteachers.

At the same time, any steps tostrengthen joint trade union unity – NEU,Unison, GMB (and Unite to a lesser degree)– within the workplace and against theemployer will be positive. Rivalry andcompetition only leads to division andfailure. Unity and new tactics have to be theorder of the day. ■

EDUCATION

A GOOD development: the new NationalEducation Union (the NEU, a merger of theNational Union of Teachers and the smallerAssociation of Teachers and Lecturers),Unison and the GMB have agreed not topoach each other’s members.

The agreement will prevent infighting forsupport staff in Britain’s publicly fundedstate schools. But the merger itself has anegative side: the National Union ofTeachers, rather than concentrate on itstraditional core of teachers, is following thelong-established – and failed – road ofincorporation and takeover epitomised byrecent GMB and Unite mergers.

The NEU is another example of thebusiness trade union model at the centre oftrade union executives’ thinking, be theyself-proclaimed left or right. It fails toaddress the fragmentation of workforces

Inter-union agreement

EUNew call for integration


MARTIN SCHULZ, head of Germany’sSocial Democrats, wants to push forever-closer European integration to builda “United States of Europe” by 2025.

“I want there to be a constitutionaltreaty to create a federal Europe,” he saidon 7 December in his speech at a partyconvention in Berlin, as he urged hisparty to clear the way for talks withAngela Merkel’s conservatives whichcould lead to a new German governmentand put an end to an unprecedentedcoalition deadlock.

The constitutional treaty would “bepresented to the member states, andthose who are against it will simply leavethe EU,” he said. ■

Neat symbolism: US Navy fighter flies over the new HMS Queen Elizabeth.

The ever-shrinking Navy


SINCE OUR vote to Leave, the EU establish-ment has moved rapidly towards setting upan EU army with a single central command,without any national, democratic controls.Given the EU’s aggression in the past – lookat Kosovo, Ukraine, and the bellicose stanceagainst Russia – this is a dangerous devel-opment. It would give the EU, acting as abloc, a free hand to beat the drums of warwhere it chooses in the world.

Our governments act aggressively too,of course. But they are subject to control bythe people, when we choose to exercise it.Brexit should bring increasing awarenessand exercise of our power to do so.Before the referendum, EU supporters toldus that claims from the Leave side aboutmoves to unify Europe’s armed forces “arenothing more than fantasy”, as Guardiancolumnist Jennifer Rankin put it on 27 May2016. Lord Ashdown said the idea of an EUarmy was “nonsense”.

During the campaign the EuropeanCommission kept quiet about defence. Itwas under strict instructions not to do or sayanything that could have helped the Leavevote. Once the voting was over, the EUshowed its true intent.

Germany’s Defence Minister, Ursula vonder Leyen, took the opportunity to makethings clear in September 2016 during a visitto Lithuania – which now houses a Germanbattle group of around 1,000 troops. “It’stime to move forward to a European defenceunion, which is basically a ‘Schengen ofdefence’,” she said.

A month later the European Commissionunveiled its EU Defence Action Plan. “Astronger European defence requiresMember States’ joint acquisition, develop-ment and retention of the full-spectrum ofland, air, space and maritime capabilities,”

The EU has long charted a coursetowards defence union and has created aset of tools to this end: a Security andDefence Implementation Plan, the European

6 WORKERS JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018

The current president of the European Commission wants taking steps towards the creation of a unified European m

On the march towards a

© European Union 2014 - European Parliament

30 June 2014: the Eurocorps parades the EU flag to open the session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The Eurocorps has beenoperational since 1995. Currently 11 states are involved, including Turkey. It has been deployed in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

“It’s time to moveto a ‘Schengen’ ofdefence’.”


JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 WORKERS 7

Defence Agency, a Defence Action Plan, theDefence Industrial DevelopmentProgramme, a European Defence ResearchProgramme…the list goes on.

The EU is pursuing all this to expand“EU sovereignty” – President Juncker’swords – across defence, which was the EU’sambition from the start.

Political problems, not least the flatrefusal of British public opinion to counte-nance the absorption of British armed forcesinto a Euro Army, stalled the project fordecades. Brexit has cleared this objection.

Our vote to leave the EU was a key trig-ger for EU initiatives. Four days after, theFrench and German Foreign Ministerspushed for a European Security Union. Planswere always wrapped in a cloud of denialbut the long-term intent was clear, asRomano Prodi, then President of theEuropean Commission, said in 2000: “WhenI was talking about the European army, I wasnot joking. If you don’t want to call it aEuropean army, don’t call it a Europeanarmy. You can call it ‘Margaret’, you can callit ‘Mary Ann’, you can call it any name.”

PermanentThe EU plans to integrate member states’militaries into joint EU units by triggeringsomething called Permanent StructuredCooperation, or PESCO for short. In June2017 the European Council called for it to be“inclusive and ambitious”. The Commissionis frank about its aims: “PESCO is both apermanent framework for closer cooperationand a structured process to graduallydeepen defence cooperation within theUnion framework.”

The European Defence Agency, an armof the European Commission, is pushing “aEuropean defence research programme tostart when the current funding programmeends in 2020”. It’s talking about a budget ofsome €500 million which “… would placethe EU among the top 4 of defence research& technology investors in Europe” – omittingthat as a result most member states wouldhave to give up their own defence research.

What has all this to do with us, given wehave decided to leave the EU? Well, the EUis desperate to seize control of our military

Continued on page 8

s it. So did his predecessors. And now the whole EU is military, along with unified defence research…

a European armyKogo (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

THE NEW EU Defence Fund is to be sup-ported by billions of euros from theEuropean Investment Bank (EIB) whichexists to “contribute to EU policy andobjectives”. Britain is the joint-largestshareholder in the EIB, so the EU is aimingto reassign our money. The Fund will beable to offer money to British firms to joinEU-led procurement projects, giving thesefirms a financial incentive to demandinvolvement in the EU’s “defence singlemarket”.

In fact the EU wants a single militaryprocurement policy, coordinated by anewly empowered European DefenceAgency. This is a particular threat to Britain,with its highly developed defence manufac-turing and research complex, becausecompliance with EU defence directives is acondition of participating in the EU’sdefence industrial schemes.

At present, we are “permitted” tochoose our domestic suppliers in shipbuild-ing, aircraft and other manufacture. To doso means invoking the EU’s Article 346, thenational security clause, to exempt us fromEU rules that tendering must open defencecontracts to “cheapest-wins” EU-widecompetition except when a member stateregards domestic manufacture of a specific

item as a matter of national security. And the EU wants to end this exemp-

tion. Its Court has recently reduced thescope of Article 346 and the EU Councilcan at any time amend the items it covers.The EU wants to create a single EUdefence market in which member stategovernments could not protect domesticdefence jobs and industry, Scottish ship-yards for example. This “rationalises”defence industries. Each would specialise,so countries would lose some nationalcapabilities, leading to interdependency.

Even the government’s NationalShipbuilding Strategy of September 2017adheres to the latest EU rules on cross-border defence tendering. About one thirdof naval ships (frigates, destroyers and air-craft carriers) are reserved as Britain-onlybuild while all others (such as patrol, mine-countermeasure, hydrographic, amphibi-ous vessels and Royal Fleet Auxiliary) willbe open to international tender.

The GMB union rightly complained thatthe strategy does not allocate enough ship-building to our shipyards. This EU procure-ment policy squeeze also applies to build-ing helicopters, armoured personnel carri-ers, artillery, aircraft and firearms, and toconducting research. ■

Brussels eyes procurementA Eurofighter Typhoon at Germany’s Manching airbase in Bavaria.



assets. Britain accounts for a fifth of the EU’stotal defence spending. The EU wants us topay for a close association with EU defence.

Britain’s defence research spending isabout £1.8 billion a year. We are the leadingdefence research power in Europe with thehighest level of defence research relatedexports. This is due not to the EuropeanDefence Agency but to our long history ofdefence research, military spending and sci-entific excellence. The EDA currently has abudget of just £27 million, of which Britainpays the second highest amount, more thana tenth of its budget.

The EU Parliament, in its NovemberDefence Union report, said that the EU’sCommon Security and Defence Policy“should lead in due time to the establish-ment of the European Armed Forces”.Various bodies are being brought into actionto make this a reality. The EU’s ExternalAction Service has also produced its ownSecurity and Defence Implementation Planwith the aim of tying EU defence capabilitiesto its foreign policy.

The EU sees the close connectionbetween defence supply and defence policy– and wants to make it even closer. TheEuropean Defence Action Plan aims to makea European military a reality with a €5 billiontarget for defence spending, a €500 milliontarget for spending on military R&D, a singlemarket for defence, defence industry ratio-

nalisation, joint capabilities held at EU level,and EU engagement in security of supply(which implies intervention abroad).

The May government approved thesetwo plans at EU Council meetings in late2016. The EU Commission has told the gov-ernment that because “decisions over EUDefence Union were taken unanimously”,Britain is expected to “play its full role while itremains a member”.

The Foreign Office, in its StrategicDefence and Security Review of December2016, proposed “continued UK involvementin EU Common Security and DefencePolicy”. Foreign Office minister Alan Duncantold MPs on the European ScrutinyCommittee there was “support from otherEU states for UK engagement in EU defencepolicy after Brexit” and he wanted to “avoidhampering such future cooperation”.

OppositionBut there has been deep opposition here,and at the EU Council meeting on 13November the government dramaticallydrew back from its previous consent to EUmilitary schemes by refusing to enter theEU’s PESCO military union agreement.

The new EU Defence Fund is to be sup-ported by billions of euros from the EU’sEuropean Investment Bank. Britain is thejoint-largest shareholder in the bank, so theEU is aiming to offer our own money toBritish firms to join EU-led procurement pro-jects, giving these firms a financial incentive

to demand involvement in the EU’s “defencesingle market”.

The EU’s drive to integration has built-in“mission creep”. Signing up to any part ofindustrial, technological or strategic cooper-ation involves being bound into EU militaryplanning for a common EU defence, anddrawn into contributing to EU defence funds.

EU military integration, a single EU for-eign and security policy, along with an EUtreasury with a single budget and a singleall-EU currency, all add up to a single EUstate.

Now we have decided to leave the EU,we should stay outside its defence schemesand should certainly not engage with themas a sweetener for the negotiations.

In the interest of peace, we must main-tain exclusive control of our armed forces,and redirect the away from aggression andtowards defence. With our fishing groundsto protect and facing new enemies in theworld because we have struck out for inde-pendence, they will have plenty of defendingto do. ■

Continued from page 7

CPBML/Workers

Public Meeting, LondonTuesday 20 February, 6.30 pm“Stop the EU War Machine!”

Brockway Room, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL

In the referendum campaign anyone who warned that a European army and acommon defence policy were coming was dismissed by the establishment asa fantasist. Now everything is out in the open – and it’s taking shape in front

of our very eyes. Come and discuss. All welcome.

“It should lead tothe establishmentof the EuropeanArmed Forces.”


STRIKES TO halt the removal of guards con-tinue on many passenger franchises. As wego to press, the RMT has announced furtherstrike action during December on Merseyrail,Greater Anglia and South Western Railway.

The West Yorkshire Combined Authority(WYCA) has backed the RMT’s campaign tokeep guards on Northern’s trains. It is a keyplayer in Rail North, the body that jointlyoversees the Northern franchise with theDepartment for Transport. Indeed, not onecouncil served by Northern supports driveronly trains.

The chair of the combined authority’stransport committee, Keith Wakefield, said,“The West Yorkshire Combined Authorityhas supported RMT’s concern for passengersafety under the proposed driver only opera-tion. Given the disruption to passengers wehave urged that the Government intervenesto bring about a fair settlement like they havein Scotland, which gives assurances to vul-nerable passengers.”

The agreement in Scotland guaranteedthe role of the guard on new trains andresolved an early dispute with RMT over theissue. A similar settlement has been reachedwith the Welsh government.

‘Human shields’Labour politicians in Merseyside don’t seethings the same way as they do in WestYorkshire. The RMT says the Merseyrail dis-pute could be easily resolved if senior politi-cians on Merseyside followed nationalLabour Party policy and supported theguards instead of acting as “human shields”for profiteering private rail companies.

The RMT’s dogged campaign againstdriver-only trains seems to have shiftedtransport secretary Grayling into concedinghe cannot stand in the way of its reachingdeals to retain a second person. It remainsto be seen whether the RMT feels able togive any ground over exactly what the sec-ond person on the train does.

The RMT has so far insisted on retainingthe status quo. Its problem is that Southernhas effectively managed to move away fromthe need for any second crew member on alloccasions. Other companies may be able toforce the issue to that point too. The RMTneeds to consider its tactical options care-fully to achieve its strategic aim of stoppingthe spread of driver-only train operation.

PayVirgin West Coast offered its staff a 3.2 percent pay increase, broadly in line with othertrain operating company pay deals. But itthen decided to pay its train drivers another5.9 per cent. This was mostly justified byincreased productivity, but about 0.9 percent was to buy out a claim for a shorterworking week.

Not surprisingly TSSA, representingwhite collar workers, and the RMT pointedout that they too had outstanding claims fora shorter working week, and they shouldreceive 0.9 per cent as well as the drivers.

Virgin refused to budge. Incensed RMTand TSSA members voted overwhelminglyfor strikes. The first, on 15 December, wassolid, in a company which has seen little orno industrial action since Virgin took overfrom British Rail in 1996. More strike datesare scheduled running into January.

RMT general secretary Mick Cash said“Richard Branson’s Virgin is top of the TOCrich list having long enjoyed the benefits ofpublicly funded new rolling stock and infras-tructure. This will be hard to stomach forworkers striking on the West Coast…forworkplace equality and justice.”

Manuel Cortes, TSSA general secretary,accused Virgin of dirty tricks, cynically caus-ing disruption by allowing an easily remedieddispute to escalate into a full-blown strike.

At Virgin Trains East Coast, RMT mem-bers were balloting in December in a sepa-rate dispute over pay and conditions. Thisfollowed acceptance of the company’s 3.2per cent pay offer by TSSA and Unite, afterthe company dropped the most draconianproposals for changes to conditions.

Of this dispute, Cash said, “With theGovernment lining up a £2 billion taxpayer-funded rescue operation for Virgin’s EastCoast operation, while the company arealready raking in the best part of fifty notesper mile, the travelling public will bedemanding to know why rail in Britain hasdescended into this outright chaos at theirexpense.

“We will not stand by while Virgin EastCoast attempt to impose a two tier work-force with different terms and conditions forour members.” ■

‘The RMT needs toconsider its tacticaloptions carefully.’


Disputes about staffing and pay are sweeping throughthe rail industry…

Guards battle still raging

RMT protest outside parliament, 1 November 2016, calling for guards to be kept on trains.

Workers



THE PRIVATE TRAIN companies that runBritain’s passenger rail services are findinglife very tough at present. On the one hand,recently awarded franchises run byStagecoach, Virgin and First are failing. Andon the other, attempts by the privateers tocut costs by screwing down pay rises andhaving many more trains staffed only by atrain driver are being doggedly resisted byrail workers and their unions.

The East Coast route has twice beenhanded over to private franchisees to run.Each time the operating company promisedan unrealistic level of payments to the gov-ernment out of their profits. And twice thefranchise holders handed the franchisesback. The state ran the services very suc-cessfully at a profit for several years inbetween.

Now, the third franchise holder to runEast Coast finds itself in the same positionas its two predecessors. The latest franchiseholder is Stagecoach – Virgin holds a smallstake and allows Stagecoach to use theVirgin brand for the company, known as“Virgin East Coast”.

FailureTransport Secretary Chris Grayling is des-perately trying to spare Stagecoach andVirgin’s blushes as well as his own. He triedto conceal the failure of the private operatorsby suggesting that ending the franchise in2020, three years early, was part of a new“partnership” approach to running railways.In reality Virgin and Stagecoach were goingto pull out of Virgin East Coast anyway.

This so-called partnership looks muchlike the model in Scotland, where publiclyowned infrastructure operator Network Railand the private passenger train operatorwork more closely together to overcome theproblems of splitting ownership of track andtrains. In Scotland, this means both partiessharing a common head manager.

Grayling was less forthcoming about thefact that this move spared Stagecoach and

Virgin the need to make nearly £2 billion inpayments to the Treasury. It wasn’t missedby the stock market though – the announce-ment saw shares in Stagecoach shoot up by13 per cent.

It would of course be much easier tobring both sides of the equation into publicownership and control as the rail unions arecampaigning for – but Grayling and his cor-porate allies are ideologically opposed toanything that prevents the privateers frommaking a fast buck.

Network Rail, the government-ownedcompany responsible for railway infrastruc-ture, was created after the failure of the pri-vately owned Railtrack. The Hatfield traincrash in 2000 cost it over £500 million andexposed the disastrous state of the railwaynetwork under Railtrack’s management.

Now that Stagecoach and Virgin haveeffectively received a massive cash injection,rail union RMT has seen the opportunity topress home its claim for an inflation-plus payincrease for the East Coast staff, and is cur-

rently balloting them for strike action.But it is not just East Coast that is in

financial trouble. First is reported to be losingbig money on the recently awardedTranspennine Express franchise. It isbelieved to be consulting its lawyers abouthow it can extricate itself from commitmentsto increase its payments to the Treasuryfrom £6.8 million in 2017/18 to a massive£178.9 million by 2024/25.

Passenger numbers have stagnatedover the past year after many years of aston-ishing growth. The figures were draggeddown by 0.4 per cent nationally because of a1.3 per cent fall in London and the SouthEast. Much of the fall was down to the bitterand long-running Southern dispute over theproposed removal of guards.

RMT believes that another recentlyawarded franchise, Arriva Rail North (knownas “Northern”) is also at risk. Again this isbecause of an over-optimistic projection ofpassenger growth, which assumed a 25 percent increase in demand over the 9-year

‘Passengernumbers havestagnated.’

Workers

Passengers at King’s Cross Station, London

A long way from a believ

The government talks about having a strategy, but the rea services cut, and taxpayers and passengers picking up the



duration of the franchise. In the nine yearsup to 2016 rail passenger numbers grew byabout 50 per cent overall. There werealready signs that increase would not con-tinue. Growth in regional railways, such asthe area served by Northern, was much less– around 35 per cent.

This growth assumption had drivenNorthern, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn(German state railways), to promise to cutpublic subsidy for the rail services it runs bya staggering 85 per cent, from £275 millionto £39 million in 2025/26.

RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said,“Far from a Northern Powerhouse there isnow a real danger of a full blown Northernrail crisis. First we have the East Coast fran-chise being terminated early and now itemerges that the Transpennine Expresscould follow suit and the sustainability of theNorthern franchise is built on sand.

“The government is engaged in fantasyfranchising where over ambitious projectionsof passenger growth, combined with thereality of falling passenger numbers, is atoxic combination that is likely to torpedo thegovernment’s whole franchising programmeleaving passenger services vulnerable tocuts and the taxpayer left to pick up the bill.”He went on to call for a full inquiry into thesustainability of the government’s rail fran-chising programme.

Ticket costsThe main reason for the sudden arrest ofpassenger growth is almost certainly theexorbitant costs of rail tickets at a time whenliving costs are increasing much faster thanpay. And those ticket prices rose still furtherin January, up by 3.6 percent based on theJuly 2017 Retail Prices Index.

Analysis of routes into six cities foundthe average annual season ticket would riseby £100 from £2,740 to £2,840. That com-pares with an average rise last year of £44for the same tickets. (These figures are anaverage across 85 of the most commonlybought annual season tickets for commutersinto London, Birmingham, Manchester,Liverpool, Leeds and Bristol.)

Many workers in the public sector andelsewhere who have been subject to a gov-ernment-imposed cap on their pay will findthat fare increases may mean they will not

be able to afford to continue to travel to theirwork. And rising housing costs, especiallyfor workers in the big cities, are forcing manyto live further from the workplace.

Meanwhile, many private train compa-nies continue to make massive profits.According to Cambridge Economic PolicyAssociates and the transport consultancySYSTRA, the over-extended Virgin EastCoast franchise received an astonishing£48.49 per train mile in 2015/16 from pas-senger fares alone – £708 million revenue ina year. Virgin West Coast, another Virgin-Stagecoach franchise, was slightly behindwith £46.33 per train mile but overall earnedmore passenger revenue: £1.017 billion.

These huge sums outstrip even thosereceived by the lucrative London and SouthEast commuter franchises including GTR’sSouthern. Even so, passenger revenue herewas still a very healthy £34.81 per train milefor a franchise that has been widely criticisedfor atrocious performance.

The RMT has accused those franchisecompanies of putting private profit beforepublic safety. And the issue that exemplifiesthis is the government-led move to have

many more trains crewed solely by a driver.Grayling’s announcement in November

of the government’s “Strategic Vision forRail” largely recycles previous announce-ments despite claims that it will “boost jobsand housing”. It may propose to open a fewrail lines closed by Beeching in the 1960s. Itmay be a tinkering with what many nowregard as a completely broken franchisesystem, including splitting up the disastrousGovia Thameslink Railway of whichSouthern has been a part. But there’s notmuch in this strategy that’s a believableapproach to the future of railways in Britain.

Mick Whelan, general secretary of traindrivers’ union ASLEF, said of Grayling’splans “There is nothing bold about them,and they will do nothing to improve ourtransport infrastructure, nothing to increasethe number of jobs in this country, and noth-ing to help build the homes young people sodesperately need.”

The solution to the woes of Britain’s rail-ways is to invest massively, not just in themuch-needed extra capacity that HS2 willbring, but in expanding the rail network as awhole. The profit motive and the franchisesystem hold the industry back. These areonce again putting profits before safety. Wemust not return to the disaster-strewn periodoverseen by a privately owned Railtrack.

The bold strategy which would stimulateeconomic growth would be to returnBritain’s railways to public ownership, wherethey belong. ■

“The government isengaged in fantasyfranchising.”

vable future for rail

lity is that overambitious forecasts are likely to leave e bill…

MM

“ eet the PartyThe Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist’s series ofLondon public meetings in Conway Hall, Red Lion Square,WC1R 4RL, continues on Tuesday 20 February at 6.30 pm withthe title “Stop the EU war machine!” (see notice, page 8).There will also be May Day meetings across Britain on 1 May;titles and details to be announced.

As well as our regular public meetings we hold informaldiscussions with interested workers and study sessions for

those who want to take the discussion further. If you areinterested we want to hear from you. Call us on 020 8801 9543or send an email to [email protected]

MM

MM



CHILDCARE ARRANGEMENTS in Britainare a costly mess for working parents.Britain’s proud history of innovation andquality in early years education was nevermatched by making it available for mostfamilies. Now the situation is becoming evenworse.

In 2015 the Conservative election mani-festo committed to fund 30 hours of freechildcare a week for England’s 3- and 4-year-olds. This was understandably greetedwith cautious optimism by parents runragged by trying to juggle childcare withwork.

The last Labour government had alreadyintroduced a universal free entitlement of 15hours weekly for 3- and 4-year-olds for 38weeks a year (so no help during school holi-days). This means that a child in any regis-tered form of education or care can receivethe free offer, whether with a private daynursery, state or independent school, play-group, or childminder.

Children in state nursery schools andclasses don’t pay anyway, but these had toincrease part-time places to 3 hours a day tomeet the requirement.

Access to the free 15 hours is limited towhere there are enough places available,although the great majority of parents whowant it have managed to get it. But with theroll-out of the 30 hours from September2017, the situation has been very different.

This offer is means tested – only parentsboth working more than 16 hours a weekand earning in total less than £100,000 ayear are eligible. Astonishingly, foster chil-dren are not eligible. Most importantly, par-ents have to be able to find providers whoare offering the free places. And that is prov-ing increasingly difficult.

The provision of early education andchildcare in Britain has suffered from the

refusal of successive governments to plannationally for it, or to fund it directly. It wouldbe simpler and much more helpful to pay toprovide free or cheap childcare, as is done inmany other European countries.

ProvisionHere, the government pays an hourly rateper eligible child to local authorities, whopass it on to providers, minus admin costs.Providers in turn have to prove, twice a year,how many children of the right age they haveon their roll. Some areas might have lots ofprovision, others almost none.

This is where problems arise. The gov-ernment has set the average hourly rate itwill pay for a child at £4.94 – and that is gen-erally below the actual cost of care.

Recent research by the Pre-schoolLearning Alliance found that 74 per cent of

providers will struggle to offer places at thisprice. The Alliance estimates the shortfall isaround 20 per cent – and the governmentscheme does not allow nurseries to chargetop up hourly fees.

There are regulations about child/staffratios and the qualifications of staff whichmean that care for babies costs a lot morethan for 3s and 4s. In the past most privateday nurseries have managed financially bybalancing out what they charge parents forchildren of different ages. The 15 free hoursoffer stretched private nurseries’ ability tobalance the books. The 30 hours offermakes this far more difficult.

As a result many providers are offeringonly a limited number of funded places,making up the shortfall by charging fully forother non-funded places, raising the ratesfor hours above the 30 free ones (a full-time

goodnews/shutterstock.com

What happens when the government introduces a childcare s childminders are quitting – and parents and grandparents are

How politicians created a

Underfunded plans to extend childcare have left many areas with shrinking provision.

‘The number ofregisteredchildminders inEngland hascrashed.’



place is around 50 hours a week), or charg-ing for “extras” such as food and nappieswhich had been provided free.

The scheme began operation on 1September 2017. More than three monthslater around 40 per cent of parents inLondon, East and South East England havestill not been able to get hold of a 30 hoursfunded place for their child.

As if this were not bad enough, childcareprovision nationally is shrinking. Since 2012the number of registered childminders inEngland has plummeted by 22 per cent.

In the past two years alone Ofsted(which has a special section accreditingchildcare providers) has shown a loss of1,146 providers – childminders and daynurseries – from the Early Years Register.Four-fifths of those which have dropped outof the register had been rated Good orOutstanding by inspectors.

One reason is soaring property prices.Day nurseries are often housed in largeVictorian buildings. In areas of high housingcosts they can suddenly find themselvesforced to close when rents skyrocket.Ironically, when their buildings are convertedinto much more lucrative flats, the new par-ents who move in discover that childcare iseven more difficult to find.

Soaring costsChildcare is particularly expensive inEngland. In London the normal daily rate is aminimum £55+ for a 2-year-old, more for ababy, and rates are not much cheaper else-where. The TUC estimates that childcarecosts have risen over four times faster thanwages over the past decade. Most womenhave no choice but to return to work afterhaving a baby, to pay for rent or a mortgage,yet they can find it is not financially worth-while. And anyway there might be few or nochildcare places available in their area, orlong waiting lists.

At one time many urban local authoritiesoffered council-run day nurseries offeringsome free places, and ran nursery schoolswith all or some full-time places. There arenow very few council day nurseries as cash-strapped councils are reduced to operatingfew services above what is statutory.

State nursery schools are considered tobe the “jewel in the crown” of early years

care and education, with the great majorityinspected found to be “outstanding”, yetthese too have been closing or threatened inrecent years as being too expensive to run.Yet research makes clear their importancefor children’s later educational achievement.

The sheer cost of childcare if it’s avail-able at all has led to a massive growth ingrandparent care. Just look at who is push-ing buggies along the pavement in yourarea, or visit drop-in sessions for babies andtoddlers, and you will notice many grey hairson the carers.

The Daily Telegraph recently quoted anestimate by think tank The InternationalLongevity Centre that around nine milliongrandparents are currently saving families inBritain an average of about £1,600 each ayear in childcare costs. This figure assumesthey look after one child each – yet manycare for siblings too, saving even more.

Almost half of carer grandparents pro-vide over 16 hours weekly, even though 39per cent are still working. In fact, after par-ents themselves, grandparents are thebiggest providers of childcare in Britain.Those who try to divide the working class bysetting the older generation against theyoung never mention this (nor that one infour mortgages is part-financed by theowner’s parents).

Although many grandparents enjoy theirgrandchildren’s company, taking regularresponsibility for caring for them can take atoll on health as well as time. Looking afterhealthy babies and toddlers requires quiteenough energy, as young parents are wellaware, but grandparents often provide backup when a child is too sick to attend theirusual childcare. Looking after children withspecial needs is even more onerous.

At one time many women had the optionof giving up work when they had young fam-ilies. Now it is rarely a matter of choice. Ofcourse it is good that many mothers want topursue a career, but for women who have tocobble together part-time or casual jobs tomake ends meet it can be exhausting jug-gling work and childcare, with the perma-nent fear of arrangements breaking downwhen children or carers are ill.

The patchwork of childcare provision,with its gaps and high costs, puts a strain onfamilies. Why shouldn’t employers berequired to subsidise or pay a national child-care levy? Workers in their trade unionscould take up this demand as part of thestruggle to improve pay and conditions, andfor equality in the workplace. We need prop-erly planned, reliable, good quality and freeor reasonably priced childcare provision.This would greatly improve working lives. ■

scheme but fails to fund it properly? Nurseries are closing, e picking up the bill…

a childcare crisisTHERE IS a wide variety of education andgroup care for pre-school children. Thereality for the great majority is a nightmareof complicated hard-to-understand provi-sion and of managing different arrange-ments. Control is hard to achieve.

State nursery schools and nurseryclasses in primary schools have staffwhich must include fully qualified teachers.They are free for parents, but usually oper-ate during school hours only.

Private day nurseries charge fees, butthey offer longer hours more suitable forworking parents. They must be managedby and include qualified staff, but rarelyteachers.

Childminders charge to look after smallnumbers of children at home.

Independent schools may includenursery classes, sometimes with teachers,normally for a high fee.

A few employers provide workplacechildcare, knowing that they can attractand keep skilled women workers, but thisis vanishingly rare. Many women wouldprefer to keep their childcare arrange-ments under their own control.

Add to these breakfast and after-school clubs and holiday schemes for pre-school children, and the picture becomeseven more complicated.

All providers must be regulated andinspected by Ofsted, but beyond themthere is a world of unregulated and illegalgroup childcare. No one knows how com-mon this is. ■

Out of control?



ECONOMICS COMMENTATORS have away with words that tends to obscure thetruth. When the latest set of official figureson investment were published at the end ofNovember, the Press Association noted thatthe economy appeared “sluggish”. That’sovergenerous – the data show an almostcomplete lack of investment growth.

And before anyone starts shouting“Brexit!”, it’s worth pointing out that theworst performance in investment occurredin the third quarter of 2015, before the dateof the referendum had even beenannounced – an actual decline over the pre-vious quarter of almost 5 per cent.

The results of this dismal performanceare clearly visible in another set of figures,those dealing with productivity – output perhour. When the Office for National Statisticsreleased its bulletin covering labour produc-tivity from April to June 2017, it estimatedthis had fallen over the period.

The decline in productivity was small –0.1 per cent – but any kind of fall is reallybad news, even though the decline was not uniform throughout the economy.Productivity in the service sector was esti-mated to have risen by 0.2 per cent. But thatwas not enough to cover a shocking 1.3 percent fall in manufacturing productivity.

Officials from the Office for BudgetaryResponsibility (OBR) said in December 2017that productivity was a bigger challengethan Brexit.

“The big issue economically is produc-tivity. If we could do something to addressthat successfully it would completelyswamp the Brexit consequences, whateverthey are,” said Sir Charlie Bean, its topmacroeconomist.

Productivity is indeed the big issue. TheOBR has been puzzling about it for years.Five years ago, in an article aptly headlined“The Productivity Puzzle”, it examined anumber of possible reasons for the long-term decline of productivity.

In the end it was still baffled. “It isunlikely that any single factor fully explainsthe fall in productivity,” it said. “The balanceof the arguments...suggest that a significantproportion of the 15 per cent differencebetween the current level and a pre-crisistrend level is structural, although there isdoubtless also a cyclical element.”

Which is all as clear as mud. That confusion and lack of analysis

probably explains why the OBR has anappalling track record in predicting what willhappen to productivity.

In these grim economic times, anyonelooking for a good laugh could start with theResolution Foundation’s briefing paper (seehttp://bit.ly/2oi2zCQ) produced in responseto the autumn Budget – specifically at Figure1, which shows precisely how wrong all theOBR’s forecasts have been.

The real scale of the productivity deba-cle, though, is shown in the ResolutionFoundation’s Figure 2. It comments, “Theawfulness of the UK’s recent record ongrowth in output per hour is even moreapparent when viewed over a longerperiod…”

That longer look shows that the past tenyears have been the worst decade for pro-ductivity growth since…1812. Yes, 1812,the year nominated by BBC History maga-zine as Britain’s worst ever, the yearNapoleon invaded Russia and the UnitedStates declared war on Britain, the year theprime minister was assassinated.

StrategyWhile commentators on the recent officialfigures lined up from all sides to explain whyinvestment and productivity are so low, thegovernment produced its White Paper onIndustrial Strategy – putting productivityfront and centre.

“For all the excellence of our world-beating companies, the high calibre of ourworkforce and the prosperity of many areas,we have businesses, people and placeswhose level of productivity is well belowwhat can be achieved,” wrote business sec-retary Greg Clark in his introduction.

He went on: “So this Industrial Strategydeliberately strengthens the five foundationsof productivity: ideas, people, infrastructure,business environment and places.”

The White Paper is full of initiatives onthis, that and the other, many of them laud-able. But there is almost nothing aboutwages, except to assure us that higher pro-ductivity will lead to higher wages.

Social democrats have two answers tothe productivity puzzle. Neither is right.

The first explanation is that the problemis demand – business won’t invest becausepeople haven’t got enough money to buygoods. Yet industrial production since Brexithas been strong. The second is skills – pro-ductivity is low because there is not enoughinvestment in training.

Tony Burke, assistant general secretaryof Unite, says it’s no wonder productivity isdropping: “Our workforce is undereducated,exploited and demoralised.”

In 2015 Unite analysed manufacturingproductivity in Britain, the US, Germany andFrance. “One of the biggest problems facing

Stop all this talk about higher productivity being the route to rise will capitalists be forced to invest…

No pay, no productivity

“Machines arepricing themselvesout of work.”

The government’s Industrial Strategy is full of init


the UK is that lending and investment stillhave not even come close to their pre-crisisrates and this has forced some companiesespecially SMEs to hire cheap labourinstead of buying new machines that wouldmake them more productive,” it said.

It all comes down to the platitude thatproductivity is low because investment islow. And why is investment low? Their onlyanswer seems to be that there was a finan-cial crisis in 2008.

Nowhere does Unite address the ques-tion of why SMEs are able to hire cheaplabour – because that would force the unionto acknowledge the consequences of thefree movement of labour from the EuropeanUnion, and of immigration in general.

Most unions appear to believe thathigher wages will flow from higher produc-tivity and higher skills. It would be nice tosee the evidence for this. The facts show the

opposite: since the start of 2008 real wageshave declined in Britain by about 3 per cent,while productivity has risen (by a little under1 per cent).

The big financial crash took place withthe collapse of Lehman Brothers on 15September 2008. But the productivity slumpwas already well under way by then.

“Labour productivity – the economicoutput produced per hour worked – has, formany decades, grown steadily at 2.3 percent a year. All that changed in 2007, sincewhen it has stubbornly flatlined,” bloggedSheffield University Pro Vice Chancellor forResearch and Innovation Richard Jones twoyears ago.

Free movement of labour into Britainfrom Poland began in 2004, and fromBulgaria and Romania in 2007.

A classic case study is academia itself. Itis undeniable that the productivity of aca-demics is increasing. A survey by aca-demics’ union UCU in 2016 put numbers tothis: 83 per cent of staff in higher educationreported a rise in the intensity or pace ofwork over the past three years; in furthereducation the figure was 95 per cent.

Shrinking payWhat has been the result of this rising pro-ductivity? Pay rates in 2016 were a massive14.5 per cent lower than in 2009. While aca-demic pay has shrunk, academic immigra-tion from the European Union rose from10.9 to 17 per cent between 2006/07 and2015/16, according to Universities UK.

Blinded by their love of the EU, mostacademics seem unable to work out whyuniversities have no trouble filling teachingand research places while morale and payrates plummet. The answer is simple: thereare plenty in the EU who earn a lot less.

When labour is cheap, capitalists willhave less incentive to invest. Why shouldthey? And labour in Britain is cheap, drivenabove all by uncontrolled immigration.

We’re always being lectured by ourrulers that “you can’t buck the market”. Andto make sure that wages stay low, they haverigged the labour market through free move-ment so that the supply of labour is, effec-tively, infinite. Wages, like everything else,are affected by supply and demand: whensupply exceeds demand, the price will drop.

All this may be a big puzzle to the gov-ernment and the TUC, but Karl Marx saw tothe heart of it more than 150 years ago.There is indeed a link between productivityand wages: not that rising productivity pro-duces rising wages, but that rising wagesproduce higher productivity.

Chris Dillow from Investors Chronicle putin nicely in an article for the Financial Timesin November 2017: “The flipside of peoplepricing themselves into work is thatmachines are pricing themselves out ofwork.”

Marx had already observed this relation-ship in 1865, in Wages, Price and Profit, aseries of lectures he delivered in London. Henoted that the rise in agricultural wages inEngland from 1849 to 1859 led to a rise inproductivity. Faced with higher labour costsand unable arbitrarily to raise prices,landowners turned to new technology –introducing machinery of all sorts, adoptingmore scientific methods, and so on.

“This is the general method in which areaction, quicker or slower, of capitalagainst a rise of wages takes place in old,settled countries,” Marx said.

In those days, before mass transport,modern communications and free move-ment of labour, landowners couldn’t place ajob ad in Poland and have a migrant work-force in place virtually overnight. Now theycan, and they do.

Britain’s forthcoming departure from theEuropean Union gives an unprecedentedopportunity to the labour movement to re-assert control over the labour market.Instead of promoting free movement, unionsshould fight to stop the flow of migrantlabour. Then and only then will greater edu-cation and training lead to higher wages andto a more productive economy. ■


higher pay. In fact, the reverse is true: only when pay rates

“Blinded by theirlove of the EU, mostacademics seemunable to work outwhy.”

iatives – but none relate to pay.



WHEN FREDERICK Engels was asked in1889, on the 100th anniversary of theFrench Revolution, to explain its signifi-cance, he declined on the basis that it wastoo early to say.

The 100th anniversary of the BolshevikRevolution has been commemorated inevery country in the world, with comment bypolitical parties of every description, withpraise, with support, with confusion – andevery counter-revolutionary lie everinvented.

Any appraisal of the century since theBolshevik Revolution must also consider itsmirror image: a century of counter-revolu-tion, still ongoing.

Here in Britain the Trades UnionCongress has commemorated the RussianRevolution. This is fine. But we commemo-rate the Bolshevik Revolution, and there is afundamental difference.

Rule by workersThe Russian Revolution was the comingtogether in February 1917 of myriad forcesfor change to sweep away Tsarism. TheBolshevik Revolution In October that yearwas the sweeping away of capitalism and ofthe bourgeoisie, creating the first dictator-ship of the working class and peasantry inhistory. The world was stood on its head.

What was Tsarism? In short, the mostreactionary, bloody, oppressive, anti-worker,anti-peasant, anti-people, anti-progressregime to have blighted the history of theworld.

Everything belongs in a historical con-text. In Britain we finally destroyed feudal-ism, along with Charles I, in 1649. Francehad its great revolution in 1789. Russialagged years behind.

In applying Marxism to Russian condi-tions the Bolsheviks were able to under-stand the unevenness and the contradic-tions inherent in development, and lead agreat revolution.

Russia was a combination of reactionaryforces: feudal landowners who retained serf-

dom until the 1860s; religious bigotry andbackwardness truly worthy of the DarkAges; and capitalism in its infancy butfuelled by French and German finance.Dissent was brutally suppressed, along withworkers, peasants, women and the nationalminorities, who numbered over half the pop-ulation.

What was to be done?In the face of this oppression and igno-

rance, the task was straightforward: build arevolutionary organisation based uponMarxist principles and analysis. It had to becapable of uniting the workers’ and peas-ants’ movement under working class leader-ship to smash the system to pieces.

That is what the Bolshevik Party underLenin’s leadership did, never deviating fromfocusing on Russia and building the Party.

InheritanceThe workers and peasants of what becamethe Union of Soviet Socialist Republicsinherited the revolutionary destruction of Tsarism, the civil war that followed, the defeat of the Allied intervention, and the devastation of industry, transport,health, education and civil society. Theystarted with nothing. But in destroying theold system, the Bolshevik Revolution pro-duced a reaction: the counter-revolutionary

scum which still feeds the blackest forces ofreaction across the world.

From day one of victory, the enemies ofsocialism strained to throttle this new,unique workers’ and peasants’ state at birth.It has been estimated that in the lead-up tothe Nazi invasion of the USSR, over 200 fas-cist counter-revolutionary organisations fes-tered in the nations bordering the SovietUnion.

The ceaseless attacks by the world’sbourgeoisie against what was the first work-ers and peasants state, its ideas and itspractice, continue to this day.

It has been the same wherever peoplehave stood up for independence,sovereignty and self-determination – China,all the Peoples Democracies in EasternEurope, and even those which tried a parlia-mentary road, such as Chile. All have beenattacked.

There is still undying hatred of Lenin,dead 93 years, and even more of Stalin,dead 64 years and the architect of theUSSR. He promoted the building of social-

A century after the Bolshevik Revolution ushered in worke lessons continue to reverberate around the world…

Revolution: which side are ‘The world wasstood on its head.’

• This article is an edited and shortenedversion of a speech given at a CPBMLpublic meeting in London in November2017.

1. Build industry as the base for socialism. 2. Build the industrial base to defendsocialism, being ready for the war that wascoming and had been in the making since1917.3. Build industry where there wasn’t any.Power generation, metals, transport, tex-tiles, defence, oil, construction etc.4. Build industry to liberate people – qual-ity of life, ideas, thinking etc. Socialism isfor the uplifting of life not levelling down.5. Build education – schools, nurseries,universities, vocational education, techni-cal education, art and literature, adult edu-cation, post-work education. There is nolimit to the intellectual abilities of people.6. Promote education to obliterate all

religious backwardness.7. Eradicate illiteracy, lifting the culturallevel and understanding of the most back-ward and downtrodden. Build parks, the-atres, museums, libraries, sports facilities,train artists, musicians and writers, estab-lish innumerable newspapers in dozens oflanguages and media outlets.8. Build a health service. Provide pen-sions, workers’ rest homes, holidays etc.9. Establish the equality of women in allspheres of life.

Only a revolution genuinely committedto the interests of the people, to obliterat-ing poverty and hardship would commit tosuch a course. ■

The aims of Soviet socialism

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018


ism and ruthlessly defended the Soviet stateagainst all-comers – left or right, internal orexternal.

Driven by their racist ideology Nazis andfascists massacred peoples of the world.The Soviet Union united and developed itspeoples to protect themselves, peace andsocialism. You may have been part of a spe-cific republic nationality but you were unitedas Soviet citizens.

The Soviet working class and peasantrycrossed from the capitalist world into theuncharted lands of building socialism. Theysaw off the doubters, the armchair theoreti-cians, “the Old Imbeciles” as Lenindescribed the Old Bolsheviks. Asserting thenew industrial Soviet working class wasvital.

There could be no ready-made solutionsfor the Soviet working class. Nor are therefor us in Britain, though the principles thatguided them point the way (see Box, left).

They had to socialise and collectiviseagriculture to take the USSR from the 16thcentury into the 20th. This resulted in a bru-tal civil war in the countryside as rich peas-ants fought against the socialist revolution.

Success Of course, tactical mistakes were made butthe strategic success of the policy was vin-dicated. The USSR was fed and capital wasraised to assist industrialisation. The peas-ant of the 16th century became the Sovietcitizen and worker of the 20th century, andthe Soviet peoples defeated Nazism in theSecond World War.

Under the Soviet constitution of 1936(often called the Stalin Constitution, thoughnever by Stalin), citizens had the right towork, to leisure, to material maintenance intheir old age, in illness and incapacitation,and to education. Compare that with Britainin the 1930s – and today.

Every revolution since 1917 – China,Albania, Cuba, Vietnam and others – hasbeen based on the principles and practicehammered out by the Bolshevik Revolution.

And every revolution lost must return tothe issue of rootedness, of dealing with theanalysis of real events, with the Party notbecoming divorced from the class. Alongwith this, workers need to comprehend thesheer scale of orchestrated worldwide

counter-revolution grounded in the heart-lands of capitalism – London, Washington,Berlin, Paris.

Lenin described the dictatorship of theproletariat as “a most determined and mostruthless war waged by the new classagainst a more powerful enemy, the bour-geoisie, whose resistance is increased ten-fold by its overthrow…a stubborn struggle –bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful,military and economic, educational andadministrative – against the forces and tradi-tions of the old society”.

What lessons do we see for Britaintoday? First, we need clarity about class:there are only two in Britain – those wholabour and those who exploit irrespective ofhow the world of work is cosmetically rede-fined. Exploitation is exploitation. Anythingwhich divides us is the enemy.

We also need clarity about nation – we

need to take the boot of the EU off ournecks as a class to be able to deal with ourown bourgeoisie.

We need clarity about industry and ourability as a nation of workers to produce,and clarity that struggle through Parliamentwill never bring success.

We must prevent war. Never mindTrump – the EU beats the drums of wardaily. Who is their enemy? Why, us ofcourse.

We need to build the Communist Party.Our working class has been around a longtime: we are not a Party looking at a blanksheet of paper. But we need organisationand it must permeate every aspect of ourthinking and our working class. It is our lifeblood for growth and renewal.

The challenge is to change the worldand we start by defeating our own rulingclass and their allies in the EU. ■

ers’ power, the

e you on?

Poster from around 1919 calling on people to take sides. Translated it reads, “Cossack,who are you with? With us or with them?” – the question is asked by the Bolshevikpeasant, soldier and worker.

Everrett Historical/shutterstock.com


AS WE AWAIT the outcome of the Moore-Bick Inquiry into the Grenfell fire, one thingshould never be forgotten: that it was thetenants themselves who fought hard to pre-vent it, the Grenfell tenants and the GrenfellTower Leaseholders Association (GTLA).

One of their last posts was entitled“Playing with Fire!”. In it the tenants warned:“It is a truly terrifying thought, but...only acatastrophic event will expose the ineptitudeand incompetence of our landlord [the[Kensington & Chelsea Tenant ManagementOrganisation], and bring an end to the dan-gerous living conditions and neglect ofHealth & Safety legislation that they inflictupon their tenants and leaseholders.”

The GTLA could not have done more toattract attention. For years it publishedreports, sent emails, and blogged, whilepower surges caused smoke to come out oftheir light fittings, computers, washingmachines and TVs, until the whole electricalsystem went into meltdown. For doing this,two of them were sent threatening lettersaccusing them of harassment. Both died inthe fire.

Whitewash fearNow hundreds of thousands of documentsare to be examined including residents' cor-respondence warning of fire sent to theCouncil. Tenants suffering from trauma andloss fear a whitewash. They also fear signingaway any right to an equivalent home downthe line by accepting unsatisfactory rehous-ing now. So they remain in B&Bs.

The tenants rightly distrust both localand central government authorities. Thewhole political system that produced a firejust waiting to happen is still there – and isnow expected to rehouse them.

Of course the inquiry will focus on thelack of statutory regulations regarding fire-retardant cladding. The Fire ProtectionAssociation wants this changed. Britishsafety regulations in general are inconsis-tent. But who is qualified to set specifica-tions? Who are the “experts”? That shouldbe clear, but it isn’t, so the inquiry will lookat qualification to set specifications.

There was once a national body con-cerned with building control and materials,called the Building Research Establishment(BRE). In 1996 – when the EU was making

aggressive inroads into national institutionswith the full backing of Labour and theunions – the BRE was put up for sale. Itcould have formed part of a proposedNational Centre for Construction, but bothTory and Labour governments rejected theidea of a national body.

So the organisation that concerned itselfwith community safety in the event of firesceased to be a national asset. Now calledthe BRE Trust, on the face of it a charity, inreality it seems to be a dubious global groupof businesses, gift-aiding its business profitsto itself. It is that same privatised BRE doingthe Grenfell tests.

Nor is there a foolproof system of

accountability by either local or central gov-ernment. In the absence of a national masshousing policy Kensington & Chelsea, alongwith many other local authorities, washed itshands of responsibility and created an“arms-length management” structure(known as an ALMO) for housing that playeda big part in taking disastrous decisionsaimed at saving money without regard tosafety. This system is still in place and mustbe changed before similar disasters becomewidespread.

The Kensington & Chelsea TenantsManagement Organisation, now belatedlysacked, is such an arms-length manage-ment structure. In 1996 responsibility for

dominika zarzycka/shutterstock.com


Flowers left by a church near Grenfell Tower, west London, ten days after the deadly fire.

Tenants at Grenfell Tower could not have done more to attr more than penny-pinching profiteers – a whole system had

Grenfell: no control, no a


Grenfell – and the Housing RevenueAccount of £21 million – was transferred toit. There were politicians on its board,including Labour’s Emma Dent Coad, nowso vocal in blaming the Conservative coun-cil. And there were eight tenant members,who must bear some responsibility.

For profitThis organisation was set up for profit, underlaws that ensured the profits were non-tax-able and that the whole outfit was exemptfrom Freedom of Information requests. It is aprivate company with appointed tenantspaid to sit on its board.

It was this board that dropped the

original Grenfell Tower contractor to savemoney on its refurbishment. Meeting on 26May 2016 the board discussed “Value forMoney Procurement” and decided to put inplace a manager to “promote and embed aValue for Money culture”, as required undera new EU Directive on Procurement Rulesfor Housing Associations and public bodies.

Here the GTLA were completely upagainst the Tenants’ ManagementOrganisation, that in no way representedthem. The name is deliberate obfuscation.Landlords and parliamentary parties don'tlike independent tenants’ organisations,which they can’t control. They prefer to workwith hand-picked, paid tenants.

We should not underestimate the rolegenuine residents’ associations can play inplanning for better housing, not just oncouncil estates, and not just in London, buton the streets and terraces up and down thecountry. Nor should they underestimatethemselves, but play a part in upgradingBritain’s building regulations, which areclearly inadequate.

ClassTenants’ and residents’ associations mustdraw up their own independent constitu-tions based on their understanding of theclass-based conflict of interest betweenlandlords and tenants, and on traditionalBritish democracy. Where this awareness isweak, landlords control meetings.

But the emergence of tenants groups onthe Grenfell estate shows that despite themulticultural nature of their estate, tenants’instincts are to fight for their class interestsagainst their landlords, however confusinglynamed. Unfortunately in this case the fightwas too late. That lesson will have to belearned.

Grenfell was not a ghetto. It housed across section of the working class. It wasbuilt to Parker Morris standards on space –standards which Thatcher did away with. Inthe words of a Grenfell survivor (a chauffeurby trade, whose daughter overcame traumato take her chemistry exam the same morn-ing and passed with flying colours): “Weloved our home in that flat. I invested in it.”

There were compromises from the start.Some of the original concepts of architectPeter Deakin which were integral to a sense

of community and safety, such as a first-floor walkway connecting to other blocks,were abandoned. Grenfell remained unin-tentionally disconnected from its surround-ing buildings.

The focus had shifted from social needto clamping down on antisocial behaviour.Grenfell Tower, with its single stairwell, hadat that time two means of entrance andescape, but these were reduced to one,through one constricted lobby, as we saw inthe fire.

Even now many new blocks, includingluxury blocks, are going through the plan-ning process with only one stairwell, and fireexits reduced to make way for shops andother commercial space.

But it was not building design alone thatkilled Grenfell residents. It was years of indif-ference from those in authority, poor mainte-nance, complacency, and the loss of controlthat comes from subcontracting and out-sourcing to consortia on the other side ofthe globe.

The trade paper Construction Newssays 60 firms were involved in the Grenfellrefurb. There had been a gas leak, andNational Grid’s subsidiary distribution armhad installed new gas risers and pipeswhich were left exposed. Then in March thisyear the subsidiary was sold to investorsincluding the Qatari Investment Authority,renamed Cadent Gas. Rupture of the gasmains added to the number of deaths.

Cost was also the reason given for notinstalling sprinklers. After the deadly LakanalHouse fire in Southwark in 2009, the coroner’s recommendation for retrofitting


‘Even now manynew blocks aregoing through theplanning processwith only onestairwell.’

Continued on page 20

ract attention to the risk of fire. But they were up against d been designed to take control away from them…

accountability

sprinklers was ignored. His report warnedabout maintenance work and renovationsreducing existing fire protection.

Where there has been deregulation, reg-ulate. Control construction and mainte-nance. It took the fire of 1666 to draw up theLondon Building Acts, with effective legalenforcement by surveyors and inspectorswho took their professional responsibilitiesand expertise seriously, regardless of anydefects of national or local government. Abit like the civil service. Grenfell proves thesystem of regulation and enforcement todayis unfit for purpose.

The Grenfell Tower was fatally compro-mised. The refurbishment was signed offwithout scrutiny, both inside and out.Residents pointed this out in 2013, and ablog in 2014 by a technical designer andcampaigner pointed out the gap betweenconcrete and windows (pulled forward)which created a funnel, hence the speedand ferocity of the fire.

DeliberateGrenfell must be a wake-up call to the wholecountry, that radical change is needed.Described as a “tragedy” as though it werea simple accident, it was instead a whollypreventable act of manslaughter, part of alethal chain of greed and deliberate neglect– they call it “managed decline” – replicatedacross Britain.

What happens in London could equallyhappen in Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool,Birmingham, Cardiff and elsewhere. Ninesimilar blocks have been identified inSalford, others in Portsmouth and Plymouth,also private ones in Scotland.

A fire like this could change everything.It could halt the headlong rush to put profitover people’s lives. But only if we make ithappen. ■

20 WORKERS BOOK REVIEWS JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018


‘A whollypreventable act ofmanslaughter.’

REMEMBER PRIVATE Finance Initiatives?These 30-year lease-back deals to bringpublic money into private hands are nownotorious as very bad value for money.Over three decades, they have also beenengines of obsessive deregulation to thepoint of criminality. They are everywhere.

The Grenfell cladding was one of thePFI projects. It’s not untypical: there arethousands of substandard PFI buildings –hospitals, schools, and in the private sec-tor as well.

PFIs started in a small-scale wayunder John Major in 1992, but were whole-heartedly embraced and developed by thenew Blair government in 1997 as a quickfix. Now they are a source of righteousindignation, hence shadow chancellorJohn McDonnell’s probably over-opti-mistic promise to bring work back in-house. Labour wants power – so its ownunpopular policies are glossed over as"Tory housing and regeneration policies”.

Camden tooThe Chalcots estate in Labour-runCamden, evacuated so hurriedly after theGrenfell fire, is a PFI contract, still up onthe contractor Rydon’s web page as main-taining the tower blocks for the duration ofthe contract – not only the cladding refur-bishment but maintenance, servicing andfire-safety.

All this work went to the same contrac-tor as at Grenfell, using the same subcon-tractors (Harley Facades and Lakehouse),which are already under investigation formalpractice. Another ALMO, HackneyHomes, signed off allegedly defective workby Lakehouse.

It comes down to professional stan-dards and taking responsibility. In PFI pro-jects designers are not in charge.Architects are employed simply to raiseRight To Buy value, to be able to say ahouse is “architect-designed”. But if askedto be yes-men for the developer, archi-tects can be quite awkward. And theyexpect a professional level of pay.

A year before the refurbishment at

Grenfell the council role of Constructionand Design Co-ordinator (architectsdepartment) was in effect abolished, andregulations were changed to make theTenants’ Management Organisationresponsible for health and safety.

Kensington and Chelsea’s Departmentof Building Control was still responsible forsigning off the cladding via the Tenants’Management Organisation. But since thearchitect was cut out on grounds of cost,Full Plans on Completion could not besubmitted. Instead, the Tenants’Management Organisation had to rely onthe honesty of the contractor and subcon-tractors.

And there was on-site inspection froma visual point of view only – not subjectedto close scrutiny. (Current building regula-tions allow this). The completion certificatestates “Completed Not Approved” –because, the Organisation said, architectapproval “was not required in this case”. ■

PFIs – lucrative and lethal

Burnt-out Grenfell Tower, the day afterthe fire.

Continued from page 19

C. Hoyer/shutterstock.com

Brexit: How the Nobodies beat theSomebodies, by Sebastian Handley,paperback, 160 pages, ISBN 978-1999715694, i2i Publishing, 2017, £9.98.Available on Kindle.

“MY NAME is Sebastian, and I am anobody.” So opens a slim but jewel-packedvolume that sets out to explain how Britainoverturned the establishment and voted toleave the EU. And it does so from a particu-lar perspective – that of a relatively isolatedcampaigner in one of Britain’s most Remain-friendly cities, Brighton.

In just 160 pages Sebastian Handley, aBrighton-based singer, songwriter and per-formance poet, has written one of the verybest books on the referendum campaignand certainly the most entertaining.

Why did we win? “When the history ofthe Revolution [as he calls the vote] is writtenit will be tempting for someone like MaxHastings to simplify the story into a narrativewhere one individual (Farage or Johnson) ledthe peasants to a stunning victory. They did-n’t. The war was won not by one greatleader but by thousands of nobodies whoincrementally broke down a vast institution-alised lie.”

As for Remain: “I would say there’s onlythree things the Remain campaign gotwrong: 1, Too monolithic […] 2, Poor groundcampaign […] 3, Shit product. I can’t put itany kinder than that.” He concedes that theRemain campaign was “actually fairly strongbut when you have such a bag of crap forsale, however passionately you flog it, thereare only going to be so many people weak,scared or stupid enough to buy it.”

What shines through is his utter convic-tion that the argument for independence“really was a progressive argument”. As heobserves, “The only reason why Guardianreaders tended to disagree was becausethey conflated the EU with a progressivismthat it didn’t deserve, and Brexit with a right-

wing agenda that we didn’t deserve either.”After the referendum, many campaigners

thought the job was done. Now, with thefight to leave the EU entering a new phase,and in the teeth of unremitting hostility by theestablishment, Leave groups are being rein-vigorated. Indeed, some have been formedby people who didn’t campaign during thereferendum but were shocked at the viciousattempts to deny democracy.

Reaching peopleAll this makes Handley’s short book quite lit-erally essential reading, because it looks atwhat works and what doesn’t. He is particu-larly strong about social media and how toreach as many people as possible.

Handley suggests paying Facebook topromote posts: choose a few posts, decidehow much you want to spend, tag them,choose the age/gender of recipients andpress Go. Then check which got the mostshares to help aim the next post.

Delivering leaflets door-to-door is one ofthe most effective ways to campaign, hesays. It gets your arguments into people’shomes. They see that your campaign is alive,and it bypasses the media.

You can get many more leaflets read bydelivering them to homes compared to astreet stall says Handley. But that didn’t stophim setting up his stall and making contact

with new allies. Here, too, he has a tip: “Onething you learn in street campaigning is notto get embroiled in conversations with peo-ple who agree with you because that isn’twinning any votes.”

Towards the end of his book there is atelling photograph of the Brighton Brexiteers– fully six of them in a pub. Just six. “Is thatwhy we won? Well, yes and no. The marginof victory was over a million votes so even ifnone of the Brighton team had done any-thing we would still have won,” he writes.“But the point is that there were lots ofautonomous leaderless ramshackle groupslike us up and down the country.”

In fact, says Handley, being leaderlesswas the campaign’s greatest asset. In a par-ticularly thoughtful section he talks about aDaily Telegraph article by Dan Hodges writ-ten towards the start of the campaign thatconcentrated on the perceived splintering ofthe Leave campaign. Initially, the articledepressed him (because the splintering wasreal). But read his conclusions:

“Hodges’ error here was to think the ref-erendum would be just like a general elec-tion but just on a bigger scale, and that unitywas vital, in fact unity was lethal. It was thesplintering of the Out campaign that won it.”He adds teasingly, “I will explain why later.”

Buy the book to read this explanation.And to arm yourself for the battles ahead. ■

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 BOOK REVIEW WORKERS 21


‘The war was wonby thousands ofnobodies…’

Self-made sticker – showcased on the cover of Sebastian Handley’s book.

Diary of a nobody

With Britain’s independence movement facing newchallenges, a fresh book looks how to fight, and win…

To win the conflict with Nazi Germany,the British establishment gradually had toremake the Second World War as a peo-ple’s war, a total war, where the potentialof the people was unleashed as thebedrock of victory, whatever reservationsthe ruling elite had initially.

As the war took effect, the govern-ment struck a contract with the people.For its hard work, the people wouldreceive a guaranteed job, a living wageand care in times of need. The demand formunitions and productive workers createdfull employment – an unusual conditionunder capitalism. Workers took advantageto strengthen their collective bargainingpower.

Though the largely conscripted troopsendured poor pay and conditions (only thepreviously long term unemployed wouldhave felt better off), war workers hadhigher wages and better job security.

By the autumn of 1940, unemploy-ment was virtually unknown in Britain. By1943 more than a third of married womenwere at work too. Lots of factory workerswere producing munitions, tanks andguns and earning better wages thanbefore the war.

SuspicionMass-Observation was a social researchorganisation set up in 1937 which becamevery influential. According to its reports atthe beginning of the war there was awidespread suspicion of government,which was felt to be solely representativeof the fai led ruling class. With theChurchill-Labour Coalition from May 1940,there was a concerted effort to widen thebase of government and to govern in adifferent way.

During the war the government, ratherthan employers, controlled manpower,wages and working conditions throughthe Emergency Powers (Defence) Actpassed in 1940. Strikes were deemed ille-gal under wartime Defence Regulations onthe argument that the nation needed the

22 WORKERS HISTORIC NOTES JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018


maximum productivity. Despite that, by 1942 the number of

days taken by industrial action was backto its peacetime high. There were morethan 1,700 strikes in 1943 in engineeringfactories mainly producing munitions,tanks and aircraft and nearly 2,200 in thefollowing year.

Production did improve but the work-ing class also largely retained its indepen-dence. Aircraft production was takenunder Whitehall control and by 1944 morethan 1.7 million people were engaged inbuilding bombers and fighters. JointProduction Committees between manage-ment and workers were created toincrease war output, which was achieved.After the war these were shelved despitean economic crisis.

The Second World War heralded aperiod of full employment and compre-hensive welfare provision. After the defeatof Nazi Germany, the Brit ish peoplerejected the war leader, Churchill, in theGeneral Election of 1945 and voted in

WHAT OCCURRED before the SecondWorld War deeply affected working classthinking and shaped attitudes about thetype of post-war society we wanted.

Wealth and privilege and glaring classinequality were seen as fundamentalproblems of British society in the earlierdecades. “No return to the thirties” and“Never again” were common, heartfeltrefrains during the war. People had freshmemories of the empty promises made bythe ruling class and its government afterthe First World War.

The people enthusiastically embracednew aspirations for post-war societybecause they had intensely disliked thebitter backdrop of the interwar years.

Grievances were many – the massunemployment that had persisted for twodecades, the harsh industrial and politicalset-backs following the tactically ineptGeneral Strike of 1926 that took a longtime to wear off, the indignities of the1930s Means Test, the general decay,idleness and dole in the widespreaddepressed areas that included industrialScotland, the North-East coast, much ofSouth Wales, parts of Cumberland, thecity of Dundee and so on.

By the end of the 1930s there weresigns that the working class was emergingout of the economic and political depres-sion. There were concentrations of work-ers in new industries chiefly in the south ofEngland. After a decade of losses, by1937 there were increases in trade unionmembership and even some industrialunrest. Also, 1938 to 1939 witnessedincreased rearmament activity.

‘By 1943 more thana third of marriedwomen were atwork.’

1934: March organised by the National Unemploye

Highs and lows – from t1930s to the 1980s

The high point of achievement for the British working clas the post war years that followed. But how did 1945 happen

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018

Attlee’s Labour Party government thatwas to nationalise many industries andservices as well as establish the NationalHealth Service.

And yet this high point was followedjust a few decades later by the low pointof Thatcher’s election in 1979 and the eraof privatisations and finance capital domi-nation of Britain. What is the explanationfor this woeful transformation?

Our high point seems also to havebred our low point. Did the British workingclass come to believe that the post-waradvances were permanent, that reform ofthe exploitative system did not depend onworking class organisation but on legisla-tive enactments and alliances betweenunions and governments? Could our highpoint have become the source of ourweakness?

Can a working class ever cease tofight against the encroachments anddomination of capital? We must alwaysaim to be independent, collectively organ-ised and building our network of power. ■

The Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist held its 17th Congressin 2015. The published Congress documents are available atwww.cpbml.org.uk. At that time the need to leave the EU was urgent,and on 23 June 2016 the working class of Britain took the vital step toeject the EU from Britain and entered a new epoch. The tasks identifiedat the 17th Congress remain as relevant as ever, and the decision to leavethe EU makes the question of Britain’s independence immediate andpractical. The tasks facing the working class and Party are:

Develop a working class industrial strategy for the building of anindependent industrial manufacturing base for Britain, including the development ofour energy industry. Our capacity to produce is the basis for providing the publicservices the working class needs.

Rebuild Britain’s trade unions to embrace all industries and workplaces.The trade unions must become a true class force not an appendage to the LabourParty or business trade unionism. Reassert the need to fight for pay.

Preserve national class unity in the face of the European Union and internalseparatists working on their behalf. Assert workers’ nationalism to ensure workers’control and unity. Resist the free flow of capital and the free movement of labour.

Oppose the EU and NATO (USA) militarisation of Britain and Europeand the drive towards war on a global scale. Identify and promote all forces andcountries for peace against the USA drive for world domination by economicaggression, war and intervention. Promote mutual respect and economic ties betweensovereign nations on the principles of non-interference and independence.

Disseminate Marxist theory and practice within the working class andwider labour movement. There is no advance to socialism without Marxism. Developagain our heritage of thinking to advance our work in and outside the workplace.

Re-assert that there are only two classes in Britain – those whoexploit the labour of others (the capitalist class) and those who are exploited (theworking class). Recruit to and build the party of the working class, the CommunistParty of Britain Marxist Leninist.

Interested in these ideas?• Go along to meetings in your part of the country, or join in study to help pushforward the thinking of our class. Get in touch to find out how to take part.• Subscribe to Workers, our bimonthly magazine, either online at cpbml.org.uk or bysending £12 for a year’s issues (cheques payable to Workers.) to the address below.UK only. Email for overseas rates.• Sign up for our free email newsletter – see the form at www.cpbml.org.uk

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INDEPENDENCE

CPBML78 Seymour Avenue, London N17 9EB

email [email protected]@cpbml

www.cpbml.org.ukphone 020 8801 9543

Worried about the future ofBritain? Join the CPBML.

@CPBML

ed Workers Movement.

he

ss was 1945, and n?


‘Self-importantMPs – and thereare plenty ofthem – must bemade tounderstand thatany sovereigntythat parliamentholds is merelyon loan from thepeople.’

We need a Cromwell nowTHERE ARE few more nauseating sights inpolitics than that of ardent pro-Remain MPsstanding up for their constitutional right to“scrutinise” Brexit-related legislation. For theyare, virtually to a woman or man, the sameMPs who spent years nodding through a floodof EU laws.Such a torrent, indeed, that whole articles,

books and doubtless PhD dissertations havebeen devoted to working out how many legalacts the European Union has produced to beincorporated into British law or British socialand commercial practice.Rough estimates suggest between 1,000

and 2,000 pieces of EU legislation each yearfor the past 25 years, and goodness knowshow many before that. All of it has had to passthrough the House of Commons EuropeanScrutiny Committee – a task so overwhelmingthat around two-thirds of all proposed EUlegislation is accepted with no further action orcomment (according to the House ofCommons Information Office, Factsheet L11).Now consider that the Scrutiny Committee

has just 16 MPs. You’d think in a parliamentwhere around 70 per cent of the membersvoted Remain that they would be clamouringfor a seat to scrutinise all this vital legislation.Actually, no. In the current committee, just 5 ofthe 16 are Remainers. That’s how much theycare for parliamentary scrutiny.All of which sets a little bit of context for

the vote in parliament on Wednesday 13December, when by 309 votes to 305 theyhobbled the government’s ability to negotiatethe way in which Britain will leave theEuropean Union.“Theresa May has resisted democratic

accountability. Her refusal to listen means shewill now have to accept parliament taking backcontrol,” said erstwhile opponent of the EUJeremy Corbyn. This from a parliament thathas for decades ceded control to Brussels.Meanwhile, in an act of the deepest

political dishonesty, Remainers from all partiestook to the airwaves to declare that the vote to

Leave the EU was all about returningsovereignty to Westminster, and here’s anexample of it. Only the most cynical kind of politician

could claim that the great referendum vote wasabout making Westminster sovereign. It wasabout bringing control back to Britain.It was the people who voted to take back

control. Yes, control in parliament, but only tothe extent that the elected representatives ofthe people carry out the will of the people.And the will of the people is absolutely

clear. In the largest single vote for anything inthe history of British politics, the people said,“We want to leave the EU.” Not, “We want toleave the EU but still be subject to EU laws.”Not, “We’d like to leave the EU but only ifparliament has spent years mulling it over andagreed that we can.” To be clear: electing representatives does

not of itself make a system democratic. Truedemocracy – the word means rule of thepeople – is a system of rule where the people’spreferences govern public policies. It requireselected bodies and elected officials to carryout the people’s will without imposing theirown preferences.Self-important MPs – and there are plenty

of those – must be made to understand thatany sovereignty that parliament holds is merelyon loan from the people. The people aresovereign over parliament. Those who departfrom the principle that parliament derives itsauthority from the people, and must serve thepeople, are on a road that leads to fascism.They have forfeited the right to rule.It’s not the first time parliament has stood

in the way of progress. In 1653 Oliver Cromwellfamously told the so-called Rump Parliamentto quit. “You have sat too long for any goodyou have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; andlet us have done with you. In the name of God,go!” he told them. Soon after a sign appearedon the doors: “This House is to be let: nowunfurnished.” We need a Cromwell now. ■

NEW BREXIT PAMPHLET Take Control spells out clear red lines forindependence from the EU and calls forthe campaigning bodies left dormant afterthe referendum to be reactivated.Download it for free at cpbml.org.uk/redlines.pdf. Please share it with yourfriends, family and workmates. For freehard copies, please send a large stampedaddressed envelope to CPBML, 78Seymour Avenue, London N17 9EB.If you would like the CPBML to hand outcopies outside your workplace or college,or you would like to help us get the mes-sage out, email [email protected].

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