End of an era

Few suppose Joe Biden will lose any sleep over the concerns of his European allies who are now bleating on about America’s hasty retreat from Afghanistan, let alone the wails of their expendable Afghan servants left stranded at Kabul airport when the last US troops pull out at the end of the month.
    The last few days have been a bitter lesson in real-politik for British politicians who still talk, at least in public, about a “special relationship” with the USA, whilst there’s a growing realisation amongst the movers and shakers of the European Union (EU) that their supposed ‘super-power’ status is just another Brussels pipe-dream.
    Britain, which still has the fifth greatest economy in the world, can of course stand on its own two feet. But Johnson prefers to spout nonsense about “Global Britain” rather than take any serious steps to break the slavish dependency on the USA, scrap the £billions spent on the useless US Trident nuclear weapons system and use the money saved to develop a truly independent economy for the benefit of the millions who live here.
    Tony Blair and his kind can drivel on for as long they like about “human rights” and “imbecilic” US decisions, but no-one takes them seriously – least of all anyone who counts in America’s ruling circles. The Americans are leaving Afghanistan because they’ve lost the war. Crocodile tears are the most that the Afghans left behind to the tender mercies of the Taliban can expect.

opportunity knocks

Sharon Graham has won the election to be the next general secretary of Unite. She succeeds the 70-year-old veteran Len McCluskey, who prolonged his stay at the top table but finally stepped down this year after 10 years in office. Unite’s first woman leader received almost 5,000 more votes than her nearest rival in a three-horse race that ended this week. She will now take over from Len McCluskey as leader of the second biggest union in the country.
    As usual these days the race to the top was, in practice, confined to three full-time officers and the factions they head. Whilst all three claimed to be following in the footsteps of Len McCluskey the only one who had their old chief’s blessing was Steve Turner – and that was only grudgingly given after Len’s chosen man, Howard Beckett, dropped out when he realised he couldn’t win. Turner – the official broad left ‘United Left’ candidate – came a credible second whilst Gerard Coyne – the right-wing ‘moderate’ – was well behind in third place.
    Sharon Graham coyly says she’s “not a member of any Unite or Labour faction – other than my own supporters group”, which though technically true masks the fact that her ‘Workers Unite’ group has built up a very powerful left-leaning platform supported by some Trotskyist movements within the union and focused on grass-roots issues to get the vote out.
    Turner relied on a run-down broad left machine that simply could not cope with the demands of social media or the lock-down restrictions imposed on public work during the campaign, while Coyne mistakenly hoped that the backing of the Murdoch press and dog-whistle support from Starmer & Co would be enough to turn the tables on his ‘left’ rivals.
    Sharon Graham says: “My slogan all along has been ‘Back to the workplace’ to build the union to fight for jobs, wages and conditions.” Let’s hope she does so.

Tories Ahead

 The Conservatives are seven points ahead of Labour in the opinion polls that also say that some 88 per cent of the public think that the Government has done a good job getting the public vaccinated as soon as possible.
    While Boris Johnson basks in the reflected glory of the NHS’s coronavirus vaccine roll-out the future looks bleak for Sir Keir Starmer and his diminishing band of supporters. The knives are already out amid speculation that Labour is going to get a hammering in the local and regional elections in two months’ time.
    `The Blairites backed Starmer to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and drive the Corbynistas out of the party they tried to reform during Corbyn’s time at the top table. Now they’re having second thoughts.
    Some are openly saying that Starmer is a hopeless campaigner who is clearly unelectable. Others are staying their hand -- waiting to see what actually happens in the May polls before making any move to trigger another Labour leadership contest. But who’s going to lead them?
    Not the old has-beens on Labour’s back-benches who still think Labour’s fortunes can be restored by returning to the imaginary golden age of the Blair era. Nor the others who want to lure David Miliband back across the Atlantic to lead Labour when the time comes.
    They want Miliband. Whether he wants to give up his cushy number as head of the International Rescue Committee in New York in exchange is another matter. We’ll probably never know because there are plenty of other wannabe leaders in Labour’s ranks.
    Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has got his hands full campaigning for re-election in May. But Andy Burnham, the ambitious Mayor of Greater Manchester, has set his sights on the leadership. He said as much last month while denying planning a coup to oust Starmer. Though ultimately a careerist who loyally served the Blair and Brown administrations, Burnham can also count on the support of some of the big guns in the union movement.
    One of them is Len McCluskey. The leader of Unite, the biggest union in the country, told us in October that “Andy Burnham has been doing a fantastic job in speaking up for and defending the people he has been elected to serve. Unite members will be forever grateful to him for fighting the corner of the low-waged and those in insecure employment, the vulnerable and the young, all of whom are paying the heaviest price of this dreadful virus”.
     Grateful or not Labour’s rank-and-file are not consulted over Starmer while the Corbynistas are left fighting a losing battle against the bureaucracy’s suspensions and expulsions.
     Rebecca Long-Bailey, Starmer's closest rival in last year's leadership contest, has been sidelined. Momentum, with its claimed 40,000 plus membership, is a broken reed.
     Nevertheless the New Communist Party’s electoral policy is still to vote Labour. It’s not because we think a Labour government can solve the problems of working people. We know that isn’t possible in a bourgeois “democracy”. Our policy exists because it is based on the concrete conditions that exist in Britain today.
    In our view a Labour government with its continuing links with the trade unions and the co‑operative movement, offers the best option for the working class in the era of bourgeois parliamentary democracy.
    Our strategy is for working class unity and our campaigns are focused on defeating the right‑wing within the movement and strengthening the left and progressive forces within the Labour Party and the unions to create a truly democratic Labour Party that will carry out the demands of organised labour when in office.

A Man of the Clyde

by New Worker correspondent

Len McCluskey speaking

Jimmy Reid: A Clyde-Built Man by WWJ Knox and Alan McKinlay. Published by Liverpool University Press (2019).

Last Friday saw the launch of a new biography, authorised by his family, of Jimmy Reid: A Clyde-Built Man by WWJ Knox and Alan McKinlay, and published by Liverpool University Press for £24.95 for the paperback edition. Held at the Glasgow HQ of Unite the Union, it began with a ‘light lunch’ of steak pie with roast potatoes followed by chocolate pudding. The vegetarian option was macaroni and cheese, a very 1970s meal to commemorate the life of the leader of the 1971–72 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) work-in.

 Present-day leader of engineering union Unite Len McCluskey described Reid as a “working class hero” who inspired him in his youth and compared his speech on his becoming rector of Glasgow University as being like the Gettysburg Address. One of the two authors described Reid as being one of many “Philosophers in Overalls” on the Clyde. Knox said that Reid’s political life was a “life in three acts”. That indeed was true. Soon after the work-in that was successful in saving some shipyards, albeit at the expense of others, Reid rapidly went downhill.

Jimmy Reid’s leading role in the workers’ occupation of the Clyde shipyards threatened with closure made him a national figure during the UCS “work-in”. Backed by other unions at home and abroad, the UCS workers were publicly backed by famed Scottish comic Billy Connolly and the former Beatle, John Lennon. Reid was a leading member of the old Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and he soon achieved iconic status in the party led by a fellow Scot, John Gollan.

But Reid’s fame was illusory. His hopes of entering parliament on the CPGB ticket were dashed at the general election of February 1974. Although he did get 14.6 per cent of the vote, the best communist vote for years, he predictably lost to the sitting Labour candidate. His support plummeted at the second snap poll in the autumn of the same year.

In 1975 he left the CPGB to seek his fortune in the Labour Party, which only the previous year he described as “Falangists”. A career in print and broadcast journalism followed. He wrote for the {Glasgow Herald, The Scotsman}, the {Daily Mirror} and tellingly, the {Sun} when it was a rabidly Thatcherite Tory rag.

During the 1984–85 miners’ strike he launched a vicious attack on Arthur Scargill in the Tory {Spectator} magazine at the behest of the Labour leader Neil Kinnock, who wanted his own hands kept clean. A former comrade, Scottish miners’ leader Mick McGahey, somewhat aptly called him “the broken Reid”.

Some charitable souls suggested that Reid was simply desperate for cash to acquire the vast quantities of a noted Scottish beverage that had long been a feature of his life. Soon after Tony Blair came to power he urged support for the Scottish Socialist Party in the first Scottish Parliament elections, but he soon found a home in the Scottish National Party (SNP). He died in 2010 and he is remembered in the Jimmy Reid Foundation, the publisher of the {Scottish Left Review}, a journal of the left in Scotland.

Honda workers march for jobs

McCluskey says Unite will fight!

By Alex Kempshall

Thousands of Honda workers and their families along with trade unionists from across the country marched and rallied in Swindon last Saturday to protest and fight against the proposed closure of the Honda plant in the Wiltshire town. They called on the Japanese company to continue production at the Swindon plant that employs over 3,500 workers.

At the rally Len McCluskey, the Unite General Secretary, said his union had no intention to allowing the company to close this significantly profitable plant. He said that the company would never have dreamt of doing this to workers in Japan and that Honda should show the same dignity to their Swindon workers as they would do to Japanese workers.

There are 3,500 Swindon workers and thousands more in the supply chain wondering what their future is, and this in a town with only 10,500 manufacturing jobs. The Honda plant is vitally important to our manufacturing base in general, and he demanded that the government step up to the mark and get Honda to treat the workers with respect.

He thanked those who had come from all over the country and from Europe to show their solidarity with the Swindon workers. That solidarity builds hope. When working people come out on the streets to make their voices heard then people do sit up and take notice, and Honda will be made aware that we won’t lie down and allow them to walk all over us.

John Cooper, Chair of Unite’s Automobile National Industrial Sector Committee and also the Unite Convenor at the Vauxhall Plant at Ellesmere Port, said that Unite’s 100,000 car workers would fight to save every job and fight to stop Honda ripping the heart out of Swindon.

He said that we will not allow it because we remember one of the oldest slogans of our union – “an injury to one is an injury to all” – and warned that if we allow Honda to walk away from Swindon then every boss in every boardroom will think they can do the same, and every car worker from Vauxhall in Ellesmere Port to BMW in Cowley to Nissan in Sunderland will be the weaker for it.

John said that together let’s build a wall of solidarity, let’s build a political and industrial campaign that protects the jobs put at risk by Honda's intention to exit the UK.

Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary, told the rally that the Swindon workers were a world-class work force and that the plant was a world-class plant that’s worth fighting for.

She went on to remind us that the wider economic consequences of the closure would be absolutely devastating, with £15 billion knocked of Britain’s GDP [gross domestic product], £48 million lost in tax that could be going to our NHS and public services.

Rebecca promised that Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell would fight with the Honda workers. It’s not only about keeping one plant open, it’s about recognising that manufacturing is not just in our national DNA but key to our economic destiny. Over the last few decades it’s manufacturing, not services, that has led the productivity growth in our economy. With the right support, the right investment in manufacturing, we could transform our economy. We need to re-industrialise not de-industrialise Britain.

She went on to say that if Honda want an electric vehicle market, well let’s give them one. We invest in the infrastructure that will spur on that investment with vehicle charging points in every village, town and city. We incentivise people to buy electric vehicles and other low carbon vehicles. We should use the huge power that government and our public services have to buy their vehicles from Honda and other British manufacturers. The biggest thing that governments can do is to support our own industry and workers here in Britain. We need government support to go across the supply chain especially in relation to battery technology, we don’t want those jobs to go overseas, we want to make those batteries here. To create more jobs, a bigger supply chain with a better future for all.

Honda said in February that it was going to close the Swindon factory in 2021 as part of restructuring plans. Production started in 1989 and the plant makes 150,000 vehicles per year.