The Burston School strike

by Robert Laurie

A HUNDRED years ago in February 1911 two schoolteachers arrived to take up new posts in the Norfolk Parish of Burston and Shimpling near Diss. This was not the first posting in the agricultural county for the couple Tom and Kitty Higdon. Kitty Higdon married her younger husband, also a teacher, in their native Somerset in 1896.

            For a while they taught at St James's and St Peter's School in London's wealthy Piccadilly. In 1902 they took up joint posts at Wood Dalling, north of Norwich with Kitty as headmistress.

Here they proved popular and effective teachers. Staunch Christian Socialists they did much to improve the harsh lives of their pupils, such as purchasing shoes and footwear out of Kitty’s own pocket and conducting cookery classes in her own kitchen.

The Higdon's were not content with private charity. Soon after arriving in Norfolk Thomas (himself the son of a farm labourer) was fined for assaulting a farmer who employed boys who should have been at school. He also spoke in public and organised for the Eastern Counties Agricultural Labourers' and Small Holders' Union, founded in 1906.

 This was no easy task. In the countryside the normal difficulties of getting workers to join unions in the face of employer hostility was heightened by the tied cottage system, which meant a dismissed worker was also made homeless.

In 1910 he and other labourers were elected onto the parish council. This was not to the approval of the farmers who employed the labourers. They were also managers of the school and resented the Higdon's continued demands for improvements to the fabric of the school.

Such a lack of deference did not go unpunished. Norfolk Education Committee launched enquiries into their activities. The threat of sacking was finally lifted but these "troublesome teachers" were transferred to Burston in the south of the county. Defiant to the end Kitty Higdon's final remarks in the school log book were later officially expunged from the record.

            Perhaps wary of the Education Committee, the Higdon's kept a low political profile at first, but they soon started making complaints about the state of their new school. In 1912 Tom published a short pamphlet, Bodies without abodes, a fictional indictment of the tied cottage system.

            The April 1913 Parish Council elections saw Tom Higdon return to the electoral fray. He topped the poll along with many farm labourers who were also elected. The man at the bottom was no less a figure than the Reverend Charles Tucker Eland, Anglican Rector and chair of the school's management committee.

            He was not a man to take electoral defeat gracefully. From a wealthy Essex gentry family he used his remaining post as chair of the school body to launch a barrage of complaints against the Higdons. Enormities such as lighting a fire for pupils to dry their wet clothes and showing gross "discourtesy" were supplemented by trumped up charges of assaulting two pupils.

            His Reverence persuaded the county Education Committee to sack them (despite glowing reports from the inspectors and a rejection of the assault charges) after an inquiry in which the National Union of Teachers failed miserably. Their last day was the 31^st March 1914.

As they were about to hand over the next day, 66 of the 72 children refused to attend school. Instead, led by a concertina band they marched around the Village waving banners and cards reading: "We want our teachers back" and "We are out for justice".

As is normal with the bourgeois press The Times understated the support when on the 2^nd April it reported that only 25 of the 72 pupils attended the march that day. Dismissed by the Rector as an "April Fool's Joke" the march was repeated in the afternoon and on the following days. Properly organised lessons were given by the Higdons on the Village Green.

Only six pupils remained at the official school. On the 22^nd April the parents of the striking children were heavily fined by the magistrates at Diss. Half-a crown each was a severe penalty for farmer labourers earning less than a pound a week. They were further warned of heavier fines if the trouble recurred.

In the words of The Times of the following day: "All the parents demanded a public inquiry as to why the teachers were dismissed. Some of them said they sent their children to school, but the children joined the strikers. One parent said his lad had joined the strikers and dared not break the rules."

 Repeated fines for non-attendance were indeed imposed on the farm labourers, who were in fact sending their children to the school of their own choosing.

The outbreak of the First World War in August with the resulting need for manpower put a stop to farmers sacking labourers for their insubordination but this did not stop the Reverend Eland from evicting labourers from the allotments he rented out to boost his ample stipend.

A national campaign by the labour movement ensured the striking pupils did not lack funds. Just one example of the campaign can be mentioned. In February 1916 the Higdons, some schoolchildren and their parents visited London sponsored by London trade unionists, where they spoke at four large meetings including a musical event at Bermondsey.

The hatred Eland brought upon himself can be seen in the case which took place in early 1917. The father of a former striker who was killed in the war objected to the Rector putting up a memorial tablet in the church as Eland had opposed the strike.

His efforts to have it removed failed so he smashed it with a coal hammer, an action resulting in the bereaved father being imprisoned. Later the diocesan court had it removed more officially. It was not only the established church that incurred the strikers' displeasure. When a Methodist lay-preacher spoke in favour of the Strike School he was rebuked by his church, prompting the departure of most of the village's congregation.

As summer turned to autumn a disused carpenter's workshop was used as a schoolhouse. The launch of national appeal for a more permanent building bore fruit within three years. The building which survives to this day was opened on the 13^th May 1917 by Violet Potter, the leader of children three years earlier.

George Lansbury, chair of the national appeal for the school and future Labour Party leader, unveiled the foundation stone while the militant Suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst also spoke.

Many branches of the Independent Labour Party, and the National Union of Railwaymen supported the building fund. Coal mining unions gave £401 of the £1662 raised. Many other labour movement bodies such as the Coventry Typographical Society and the Parkstone and Bournemouth Co-operative Society also contributed.

The departure of the Reverend Eland in 1920 was followed by his replacement by a less hostile Rector, who conducted services for the children of both village schools.

That they competed against each other on sports days demonstrates that the Strike School had become an established fixture of village life. Being the focus of a national campaign it was difficult for the powers to be anything but tolerant of the Strike School.

An annual rally was held by the National Agricultural Labourers' Union, which kept the school in the public eye. The Norfolk Education Committee was doubtless glad not to have the "troublesome teachers" on their books.

Thus the school continued for a quarter of a century. Apart from local children a few were sent by members of the Soviet Trade delegation to London. During the 1926 General Strike and lockout six children of Nottingham miners were boarded and taught for free.

The curriculum did not have classes on how to curtsy or forelock tugging to the gentry, but included trips to trade union rallies. When Thomas Higdon died in August 1939, the school had only 11 pupils. Kitty Higdon, then aged 75 was unable to continue and retired soon afterwards. The remaining pupils were transferred to the county school. She died in 1946 and was buried next to her husband in Burston churchyard near the school to which she had devoted her life.

The initial success of the campaign to defend the Higdons and the remarkable endurance of the school was a fine example of trade union solidarity. While Norfolk was one of the better organised areas the agricultural labourers were too weak in themselves to support the school for long.

Inside the Far Right

Review

By Owen Liddle

Matthew Collins: Hate, my life in the far right;With foreword by Billy Bragg
From Biteback publishers pbk, illus, 316 pp £14.99 but discounted to £13.50 if bought through www.hopenothate.org.uk and all good bookshops. All proceeds from copies bought from Hope not Hate go to the Searchlight Educational Trust

MATTHEW Collins was a teenager who grew up in south east London. He was not atypical, coming from a poor working class background, single-parent family and his father having left home when he was a small child.
He also hated the secondary school Thomas Tallis that failed to give him the education that he needed, thinking for example, that eating lemon meringue pie was a sign of sophistication. Where Matthew differed was that his anger and alienation turned into racism and lead him to join the National Front (NF) and quickly rise in their ranks.
I had wondered what had turned Matthew to the NF as I too have a lot in common with him: I also come from the same part of London and from a poor single-parent family; I also went to Thomas Tallis at the same time as Matthew and we both left school the same year (although I'm two years older) to go on and get shit jobs in the civil service.
Tallis was one of the better schools in Greenwich, despite having a high number of Trotskyite teachers and Colin Yardley, a Eurocommunist, had taken over as headmaster, and was busily ruining the school’s reputation as well.
Although it was a progressive school there was racial tension between the Afro-Caribbean gangs from Lewisham and the white gangs from the Ferrier (a large sink estate next door to Tallis) and I knew several fellow students who carried knives "for their own protection".
Despite this the vast majority of white kids were not racist, having grown up with and forged friendships with other children of several different races, most notably Afro-Caribbean's, Punjabis, Cypriots and Chinese. Matthew’s hatred stopped him from having different race friends and so learning about their culture and more importantly the things common to all of us, being poor and hard up.
Time and time again he mentions that the NF and BNP thugs who he'd go out with knew nothing about the people whom they were trying to beat the shit out of. With Thatcher doing away with national pay bargaining and constantly attacking the National Union of Teachers both Matthew and I were glad to leave Tallis behind us. A large number of teachers also left at the same time and those who stayed wished they could have left as well.
Mathew was already an NF member when he left school, as his new comrades in the far right were the only ones who would take his racist view point seriously.
He was soon being mentored by the then leader of the NF, Ian Anderson, as he was thought of as being one of their most intelligent members and a possible future leader.
Taking six months sick leave from the civil service, he was soon learning how to organise meetings, produce Nazi magazines and was soon flogging them as well as hard core porn to the right-wing faithful.
Some of Matthew’s tales of his time in the NF will be familiar with any one involved in small political parties. Problems like the battle with constantly breaking down print presses, the failure to understand modern technology, and sitting through meetings where the party hierarchy waffle on, massaging their egos, while every one else tries to stay awake. There is also the familiar backbiting and clash of egos but the right wing took this to extremes by actually thumping each other.
Matthew’s epiphany came when he organised a group of NF and BNP hooligans to gatecrash a meeting of anti-racists at Welling Library. In what became know as the battle of Welling Library he tells of how he led his Nazi horde into the meeting and started punching and kicking anyone they could lay their hands on, mostly middle-aged Asian women.
One pregnant woman had to lock herself in the toilets to avoid getting a good kicking. Having felt sick at what his comrades had done he ended up phoning Searchlight anti fascist magazine anonymously to pass on information to them.
Matthew grew increasingly disillusioned with the psychopaths, alcoholics and violent Nazi nutters of the far right. He realised that the realities of the fascists taking over in a military coup were pure fantasy born of blood-crazed, ignorant, paranoid minds who would never understand, as he had come to, that society’s problems were down to class not race.
He began to hate the far right everything they stood for, like the links they were trying to forge with other right-wing paramilitaries like the UDA and American Nazi groups. He was making more and more phone calls to Searchlight. This led him eventually to meet up with Searchlight activists and become one of their moles in the far right.
As a reward for his spying he was given book tokens and told to go educate himself. This was only partially successful as he may have used them to buy Billy Bragg CDs.
Matthew’s book is a thoughtful, candid and very personal look into the British far right. Despite the serious and often brutal nature of the book there are several laugh out loud moments, I practically liked the Eddie Whicker guide on how to post a turd through the mail.
The only possible criticism is that he may have used a bit of artistic exaggeration as according to accounts from the anti-fascists at the battle of Welling library, it was not as one-sided as Matthew’s recollection.
But that's not to take away the poignancy and relevance of the book and recent events have reminded us that the disillusioned and disenfranchised youth can turn to mob mentality and violence.
In fact this book should be on the school reading lists. But the middle class trendy pseudo-lefty teachers would probably object to the language and the violence contained in the book, totally missing the point and again that would be letting down another generation of kids, much as they did at the school Matthew and me were from.

Stalin's Wars

BOOK REVIEW

By Eric Trevett


Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War 1939-1953. Geoffrey Roberts: Yale University Press 2008,496 pp, illus. £15.20




THE BOOK Stalin’s Wars is a valuable contribution to the discussion around getting a clearer assessment of Stalin and the Soviet Union.
The book covers the years 1939-53 and includes a detailed account of the major battles of the Great Patriotic War, which started in Russia in 1941.
Geoffrey Roberts is a bourgeois military historian who has done his research through the archive files in Moscow and is trying to be objective. He was born in Deptford, south London, and is a professor at Cork University in Ireland.
In his preface Roberts makes the case that Stalin was an effective and highly successful war leader. He made many mistakes and pursued harsh policies. Millions of people died as the Germans advanced but Stalin kept his head and without his leadership the war against Nazi Germany would probably have been lost.
Roberts does explode a slander that began with Kruschov’s “secret” speech to the 20th CPSU congress in 1956. Kruschov said: “It would be incorrect to forget that after the first severe disaster and defeats at the front, Stalin thought this was the end. In one of his speeches in those days he said: ‘All that which Lenin created we have lost forever’. After this Stalin for a very long time actually did not direct the military operations and ceased to do anything whatever. He returned to active service only when some members of the Political Bureau visited him and told him that it was necessary to take certain steps immediately in order to improve the situation at the front.”
Roberts reports that Kruschov went on to elaborate this story in his memoirs, claiming that Beria, Molotov and Mikoyan were the Politburo members in question. But, as Roberts points out, citing different accounts by Roy and Medvedev, this is was a very unlikely story because Molotov and Beria were among the most submissive of Stalin’s inner circle and would not have dared be so forthright.
Roberts quotes the direct report of Yakov Chadev, which paints a very different picture. In an interview in 1982 Chadev said: “During those days of crisis, of critical situations on the front, Stalin controlled himself very well on the whole, displaying confidence and calmness and demonstrating industriousness.”
Roberts also quotes Molotov’s account of the incident at the dacha: “Stalin was in a very agitated state. He didn’t curse but he wasn’t quite himself. I wouldn’t say that he had lost his head. He suffered but he didn’t show any signs of this. Undoubtedly he had his rough moments. It’s nonsense to say he didn’t suffer. But he is not portrayed as he really was… As usual he worked day and night and never lost his head or his gift of speech. How did he comport himself? As Stalin was supposed to, firmly.”
Then there was Zhukov’s account: “Stalin himself was strong-willed and no coward. It was only once I saw him somewhat depressed. That was the dawn of 22nd June 1841, when his belief that the war could be avoided was shattered. After 22nd June 1941, and throughout the war, Stalin firmly governed the country.”
Roberts continued: “When Lazar Kaganovich, another Politburo member, was asked if Stalin had lost his nerve when the war broke out, he replied: ‘It’s a lie!’…
“Perhaps a better guide to Stalin’s personal response to the German attack is the contemporary evidence of his actions during the first days of the war. According to his appointments diary, when war broke out Stalin held numerous meetings with members of the military and political leadership.
“The early days of the war required many decisions by Stalin. On the day war broke out he authorised 20 different decrees and orders….”
This must be contrasted to performance of western European leaders who fell apart and capitulated to the German war machine.
Churchill, Hitler, Mussolini and Roosevelt – they were all replaceable as warlords but not Stalin. In the context of the horrific war on the eastern front Stalin was indispensable to the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
To fully appreciate the contents of Geoffrey Roberts’ book it is essential to have some knowledge of the history of the whole of the 1930s. That decade began with capitalism in crisis; millions were out of work; in the United States one in four of the workforce was unemployed. The response of the capitalists was to turn towards fascism.
Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria all had fascist governments and even Britain had a strong presence of people who admired Hitler.
In the second half of the 1930s the elected government of Republican Spain was overthrown with the direct assistance of the Nazis. The town of Guernica was destroyed by Nazi bombers.
The International Brigade predicted that the bombs that dropped on Madrid would be falling on London before long if fascism was not defeated in Spain – and they were proved right.
The governments of Britain and France sought to appease Hitler, paving the way for German rearmament.
Roberts gives a fair account of the Russo-Nazi non-aggression pact. In spite of the heroic Soviet endeavours and those of the workers and peace movements of the capitalist countries, especially those of Britain and France, they were unable to prevent the collaboration of their governments. All the capitalist governments had within them pro-fascist elements who were in contact with the Nazi regime.
The pact with Ribbentrop was signed after the western powers had signed the Munich Agreement in September 1938. After that Great Britain and France claimed they could not join an anti-Nazi alliance and when Stalin invited them to do that they sent only a minor diplomat. Clearly they had had no intention of any serious response to Stalin’s call for unity against Hitler.
Stalin, through the Comintern, warned communist parties and the labour movement that the Soviet Union would have to take steps to safeguard its own future but this would be in the long-term interests of the working class.
Much is made of the failure of Stalin and the Soviet high command to resist the onslaught of the Nazi armies in the Soviet Union in 1941. But in reality even if they had been prepared they could not have repulsed the Nazi offensive. The official thinking in Britain at the time was that if the Soviet Union survived for six seeks it would be an achievement and if they lasted out for three months it would be a miracle.
Trotsky also had this view and he tried to make this a death wish by promoting acts of industrial sabotage and spreading disaffection and defeatist ideas designed to demoralise.
Roberts is critical of Stalin’s purge of senior Red Army officers in the 1930s. Many of those purged were veteran officers of the old Czarist army in which there was a culture of admiration for German militarism.
But the new Red Army nurtured and produced many fine generals from the working class to replace those who were purged. These included Marshall Zhukhov who won the Battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk and Leningrad. The battle of Kursk involved 4,000 tanks and it was where the German Panzer tanks met their match.
Roberts reports that at one of the lowest points in the war, on 7th November 1941 when German forces were advancing through Soviet territory and the Red Army was taking severe casualties, Stalin addressed troops parading through Red Square. He said: “Remember the year 1918, when we celebrated the first anniversary of the October Revolution. Three-quarters of the country was … in the hands of foreign interventionists. The Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East were temporarily lost to us.
“We had no allies, we had no Red Army … there was a shortage of food, or armaments … Fourteen states were pressing against our country.
“But we did not become despondent, we did not lose heart. In the fire of war we forged the Red Army and converted our country into a military camp. The spirit of the great Lenin animated us ….
“And what happened? We routed the interventionists, recovered our lost territory and achieved victory.”
Roberts sometimes refers to Stalin as a dictator but Stalin always worked in the collective and this is referenced in his daily communiqués that he gave to the armed forces. These statements were the product of the leadership collective.
In the 1930s every country in the western world, without exception had a considerable number of willing and influential people favouring an alliance between themselves and Hitler in a crusade to destroy the Soviet Union.
Indeed France and Britain had expeditionary forces ready to go to the aid of Finland, which had refused to allow the Soviet Red Army authority to occupy a part of Finland essential to ensure the defence of Leningrad.
On the issue of the shooting of the Polish officers at Katyn, Roberts comes down on the side of blaming the Soviets. He puts a lot of store on the questionable fact that a letter had been found dated after the blame was being attached to the Nazis. This issue remains unresolved but the probability is that it was a Nazi atrocity. More to the point, the ammunition used was German.
Geoffrey Roberts is good on the controversy over whether the Soviet Union should have aided the uprising in Warsaw. He argues that the uprising was authorised by the Polish government in exile in London in an attempt to establish authority before the Soviet occupation of Warsaw, which they believed to be imminent.
At that time the Red Army had already twice tried to breach the Nazi defences of Warsaw and had been repulsed. It was therefore absolutely necessary to build up the forces that would overcome the resistance of the Nazis.
He reports that the Red Army was always well led and well disciplined.
Roberts is also good on the interplay between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, which is quite fascinating. Churchill was always the more treacherous compared to Roosevelt – witness his letter from in the War Cabinet before the battle of Stalingrad had been won, expressing his fears that there might be a run of communism across Europe.
Again in 1945, Churchill told Montgomery to be ready to hand weapons back to the Nazis if the Red Army reached where the western liberation line had stopped.
It may surprise many readers to learn how keen Stalin was after the war to see Germany broken up. He feared that Germany would become a threat again within 30 years. And the recent alliance between Britain and France within Nato have been a reflection of this old fear of Germany – not so much on the military but on the political and economic front.
Another good feature of the book is the glossary of events from 1939 to 1953. One of the best quotes is attributed to W Averell Harriman, the US Ambassador to Moscow, describing Stalin: “He had an enormous ability to absorb and act on detail. He was very much alert to the needs of the whole war machine … In our negotiations with him we usually found him extremely well informed.
“He had a masterly knowledge of the sort of equipment that was important for him. He knew the calibre of the guns he wanted, the weight of the tanks that his roads and bridges would take and the details of the type of metal he needed to build aircraft.
“These were not characteristics of a bureaucrat but rather those of an extremely able and vigorous war leader.”
All in all, this book requires a knowledge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from its inception. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia inherited a country where 80 per cent of the population was illiterate, the working class was proportionately small and poverty and superstition were prevalent.
Stalin carried on from where Lenin left off. He renounced the term “Stalinist” and always claimed to be a Leninist. Under his leadership the Soviet Union changed from being the poor house of Europe to being a commonwealth of nations from which skilled and educated people of all professions emerged in great numbers.
His ability to inspire and teach remains unsurpassed and this is what has to be borne in mind when reading the revisionist Kruschov’s so-called secret speech at the CPSU 20th Congress, as well as Geoffrey Roberts’ book
Roberts says that Stalin made a lot of mistakes. But in his conclusion he says: “To make so many mistakes and arise from the depth of such defeat to win the greatest military victory in history was a triumph beyond compare.”

Twenty years ago...

in the NEW WORKER


ROVER plans to axe 1,260 non-manual jobs, 12 per cent of the group’s workforce. It brings the total number of Rover jobs lost in the last 18 months to 3,500.
Around 500 will go at Longbridge, 400 at Solihull, 180 at Cowley, 110 at Swindon and 70 at Gaydon.
The recession has hit motor companies world-wide. In Europe only German new car sales are up significantly fuelled by re-unification.
Rover claims that this latest round of job cuts are part of a long-term restructuring, “emulating Japanese manufacturing efficiencies” as a company statement put it.
Even so, Rover has said it will put 12,000 production workers on a four-day week because of falling demand for key models.
Rover has been increasing its share of the market, but the market itself is shrinking fast.
Last month Ford announced it was halting production at Harewood. But it will retain the plant’s 6,500 assembly workers, already working short-time on full pay.

**************************

A SENIOR European Community official has met the Albanian government which has been desperately seeking imperialist aid to stave off famine.
The Ramiz Alia government, a coalition of anti-communist nationalists and Alia’s revisionist wing of the former Party of Labour, faces an economic crisis provoked by the so-called reforms of this year.
This has seen the abandonment of the socialist constitution, the break-up of the co-operative farms and the beginning of the restoration of capitalism in the small Balkan republic.
The talks between the EC Foreign Affairs Commissioner Frans Andriessen, and Albanian Prime Minister Ylli Bufi centred around Albanian appeals for urgent supplies of food and medicine.
The Albanian premier warned the EC official that government wasn’t bailed out soon the people would lose confidence in what he called the “democratic reforms” and the subsequent backlash could jeopardise its very existence.

Unions remember Tolpuddle

by Alex Kempshall

Thousands of trade union and labour movement activists marched through the small Dorset village of Tolpuddle last weekend. They marched behind the banners of the Tolpuddle agricultural branch. Southampton Unite and Unison workers were at the head of the march with their banners shouting the slogan “Cut my pay – no way” a protest against Southampton Council's attempt to cut the pay of it's workers.

The keynote speeches were delivered by TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber, Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary, and Tony Benn. Nigel Costley, South West TUC Secretary set the scene by reminding the rally that “We come here to remember and honour the Tolpuddle Martyrs. We come here to refresh out commitment to what they believed in – Unity, Solidarity, Trade Unionism and we also come to celebrate the fact that protest and campaigns that were waged by the unions then resulted in victory when the government backed down and performed a u-turn. It was possible then and it is possible now.”

Sharan Burrow spoke of the importance to renew our commitment to a decent world, social justice and to the rights of union members. She reminded us that “The crisis that was born of greed, the greed of profits from the bankers and shareholders of those incredible products which had nothing to do with the real economy... It is a crisis that is undermining every community throughout the world. The bankers are forcing governments from Spain, to Portugal, to Greece, the US right through to the poorest countries of the world demanding that people pay with their services, public sector jobs, their very way of life.”

She went on to point out that “The people of Spain are standing up against it, people in Portugal, Romania, in Africa, the US, Asia are standing up to the demands of Conservative governments. It's the time for solidarity, it's the time for a shared commitment to collectivism. Solidarity is about sharing the wealth, building the common good.”

Brendan Barber in speaking about the big challenges that the trade union movement is facing and that the rally was about celebrating what the Tolpuddle stands for said “All these values of solidarity we're going to need that in the months ahead” and asked the rally to send a message of solidarity “to the trade unionists of Southampton, the teachers and trade unionists in the Civil Service who took industrial action on June 30th, to the half million people who marched on the 26th March to tell the government that there is an alternative.

Brendan warned the rally “That we are facing a government that is absolutely committed to cut public spending whatever the consequences but that we know the price is going to be paid by the poorest and weakest for a crisis that was caused by the richest and powerful. The price we risk paying is the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, the services we rely on from Sure Start centres to the vital caring services for the elderly and the living standards of just about everyone, with wages held down and inflation let rip and the threat to our pension system.”

He went on to say “We mustn't allow this government to try and divide public and private sector workers” citing the case of pensions where both government and major companies like British Airways were attempting to move pension indexing from RPI to CPI resulting is a 15% reduction in pensions.”

He called upon the movement to win that battle of ideas he pointed out that “Over the last thirty years we've seen the growth of inequality, living standards squeezed, we've seen our economy double in size yet for most ordinary people their earning levels have hardly increased at all.”

In the months ahead he said that there were going to be some major industrial battles to defend decent pensions, pay, living standards and protect jobs and concluded by saying that he was “confident that we will see the return of a Labour government committed to decent values and justice for the British people”

The weekend was more than just the Sunday march and rally there were may stalls from the trade union and solidarity movements. A radical history school dealt with topics such as the poor law, risings against enclosures, transportation including crime and punishment. The Prison Officers Association organised the Tolpuddle Freedom Hike from Dorchester Prison to Tolpuddle to raise monies for the POA Freedom charities. On each of the days from Friday through to Sunday a whole host of musicians and comedians entertained at the event organised by the South West TUC.

The Fall of the House of Murdoch

NONE of us were sorry to see the News of the World go under last week. The arrest of Rebekah Brooks, News International’s chief executive, for questioning in connection with corruption issues after a number of Rupert Murdoch’s chief henchmen jumped ship, will have brought wry smiles to veteran Fleet Street printers who fought the Murdoch empire to preserve free trade unions during the Sun dispute in the 1980s.
With a bit of luck the resignation of two high-ranking chiefs in the Metropolitan Police and the mysterious death of a former News of the World journalist who had spilt the beans on the phone-hacking scandal will end the sinister domination of the British media by this oligarch once and for all.
For over three decades politicians across the mainstream bourgeois consensus grovelled at the feet of Rupert Murdoch and his minions. Tory and Labour governments alike sanctioned the monopolisation of information by News International, which targeted working people with its relentless stream of racist and imperialist propaganda laced with vicious celebrity gossip that we now learn was obtained through phone hacking and pay-offs to the police on an industrial scale.
News International may have thought that it could fight off the legal challenges from high-profile victims like Hugh Grant and Max Mosley but it was on a certain loser once the depth of its corrupt involvement with the forces of law and order was exposed to wider public scrutiny.
The Establishment has now closed ranks to condemn the excesses of the Murdoch-owned media and Cameron, Miliband and Clegg are leading the pack in condemnation and demands for more regulation.
The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, was right to lead the attack and question the link between the Prime Minister and his former aide, who had been a senior member of Murdoch’s entourage. It is also clear that by any standards, even those of the bourgeoisie themselves, that News International is neither fit nor proper to own any newspapers or TV stations in Britain.
But there’s a hidden agenda behind the furore that has forced Parliament to summon Murdoch and his cronies to the Select Committee this week and that is to re-impose the media censorship we had to put up with until the 1970s under the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and the odious D-notice regime.
While there’s clearly a need to reform the toothless Press Complaints Commission, which does nothing to protect those who cannot afford to go to court, demands for more “regulation” can only stifle the freedom of the media. There is, in fact, no need for it. The issue is not whether what is reported was true but how the information was obtained in the first place.
Phone-hacking, mail interception and bribing the police are against the law and some journalists have already been convicted. More will undoubtedly follow.
There’s certainly a case for repealing Britain’s draconian libel laws that impose self-censorship on much of the media and can only be used by those rich enough to pay the immense legal fees court actions incur. The media must be free to comment on what it likes and report what it believes to be true. But that can’t continue to be monopolised exclusively by the representatives of the big bourgeoisie.
If nothing else the News International scandal shows the need for the unions to pool their resources to provide a voice for the labour movement to counter the barrage of propaganda rammed down our throats every day in the bourgeois media.
Our unions spend millions on bland house magazines that are rarely read even by their own members. The Labour Party, which dumped its own weekly in 1988, will spend millions at election time and rely on the half-hearted support of the Mirror Group rather than help fund an independent trade union and co-operative journal like the old Daily Herald, which they sustained for over 50 years.
But with new technology it can be done and it needs to be done because there’s plenty more like Murdoch ready to take his place.


New Worker editorial

Who's afraid of Jean-Jacques Rousseau?

By Ray Jones

JEAN-JACQUES Rousseau (1712-78) has long been considered to be one of the leading “philosophes” who provided the theory behind the great French bourgeois revolution of 1789 and who gave the revolutionary Jacobins their ideological basis for this world-changing event.
But these days he is largely ignored by our media and little known generally. It’s even been suggested lately by some bourgeois academics that perhaps he wasn’t so important after all.
It might be argued that Rousseau’s lack of limelight is at least partly the result of his success. Reading his main political works, Discourse on Inequality and On the Social Contract, much seems very familiar and common to the ideas we hear about us all the time – to the point of being almost boring.
They are written in relatively simple language (Rousseau was also a renowned novelist) but have been interpreted in many different ways and perhaps this hasn’t help his profile either.
But these factors surely don’t fully explain his relative neglect – after all he has been called the father of modern political philosophy.
That Rousseau was an influence on the French Revolution is undeniable. Maximilien Robespierre, a main leader of the revolution, wrote of him in his diary: “Divine man! It was you who taught me to know myself. When I was young you brought me to appreciate the true dignity of my nature and reflect on the great principles which govern the social order…”
Rousseau’s main ideas were accepted by the Jacobins: the basic equality of humans; that morality is innate within us; the importance of reason; that we originated in a “state of nature” prior to society; that society is a Social Contract that we enter into for our own good.
Perhaps Rousseau’s best known quote is, “Man was been born free and everywhere he is in chains”. This was a rallying call for the revolution and much of his writings were banned.
Rousseau believed that from a very simple society, little more than families, the development of the division of labour and private property had caused the growth of the unfair and oppressive societies he saw about him.
And although he did not think it possible, or desirable, to revert to a “state of nature” (and perhaps he didn’t think of it as an actual historical period) he believed it was possible to reorganise society and make a better world.
The object for Rousseau is to organise society so that the citizen and the magistrate complement each other, working together so that peoples’ innate morality can come through and the societies’ “General Will” could be implemented. The General Will being a collective construction not dependent on any individual but which all individuals follow for the good of all.
He believed the best form of this society would be a democratic republic – although he did not rule out other forms, even monarchy, being used in particular circumstances or a certain period of time. He also thought that it would only really work well with a small population in a small area where personal contact and communication were easy – similar to the ancient Greek states and early Rome which he, and the Jacobins thought well of.
It’s easy to see how revolutionary and incendiary these ideas were in a country still mired in the injustice and rigidity of late feudalism.
The growing petty bourgeois and intellectuals of France were groaning under the heavy taxation enforced by the King, whose failed wars had ruined the economy, while the aristocracy and the clergy paid almost nothing. The peasantry and the town poor, who were near starvation due to crop failures and oppressed by savage feudal laws and customs, were more than ready to follow them.
Rousseau’s personal example on religion was also radical. While believing in a creator God he was willing to switch from the extreme protestant Calvinism of his home city of Geneva to Roman Catholicism when he moved away and change back again when he wanted to regain his Genevan citizenship – just about as big a leap as you can make inside Christianity.
Robespierre and his supporters showed their religious rebellion by building the cult of the Supreme Being, a Deist movement, to replace the Catholicism which was a pillar of the old regime. But that did not stop him attacking those on his political left for atheism.
Clearly, for its time, Rousseau’s thinking was democratic and could legitimise the overthrow of tyrants. He supported the freedom of individuals but this freedom could only be within Social Contract and the General Will.
People who attack the General Will and the state (the “fabric of social right” as Rousseau puts it) cease to be citizens and become enemies of the state. They have declared war on it and if they are a real danger may be killed.
In May 1791, when the King was still on the throne, Robespierre made an impassioned plea against capital punishment and for the rights of the individual (to be fair most of his speeches seem to have been impassioned). In 1792 however he was arguing that then imprisoned King should not even be granted a trial but be summarily executed on the Rousseaunian grounds that the King had become an enemy of the state.
The King, he argued, had been dethroned for his crimes by the people and the General Will had been expressed. To give him a trial would be to open the matter to doubt; to do so and find him innocent would be in effect to find the people (the General Will) guilty which would be senseless. If it was not possible to find him innocent a trial would be a farce.
By 1794 Robespierre was calling in the Convention for the use of terror against the enemies of the state (the Republic) while using reason with the people. Nature, he said, echoing Rousseau, has imposed on every being the law of self-preservation. Just so with the state; the Republic must crush all internal and external enemies or be crushed. Terror is vital to insure that justice reigns: “The government of a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.” And this perhaps takes this Rousseauian theory to its limit on the subject.
Marx and Engels acknowledged the dialectical style of Rousseau and his importance for the French Revolution but were doubtful about the Terror which they thought was a tactic which came from weakness rather than strength.
Basically Rousseau was an idealist who did not have materialist roots to his philosophy, He realised that people were not naturally bad or sinful but erred in the other direction in thinking they are innately moral. He saw that problems arose from the division of labour and private property but didn’t realise they were the source of the main contradiction in society.
While Rousseau’s “state of nature” and Marx’s “primitive communism” can be compared, Marx saw the progressive historical stages of society (slavery, feudalism, capitalism, communism) based on the means of production which Rousseau was not, understandably, able to.
Some have equated the General Will with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat but the former is idealistic, semi-mystical, concept based on innate morality and a misguided idea of equality where as the latter is based on class realities and interests.
Nevertheless the ideas of Rousseau and his fellow “philosophes” served the need of the bourgeoisie in it hour of need. That they are ungratefully played down now is typical. In the same way they play down the role of Cromwell and the English Revolution, preferring to talk of the Glorious (and peaceful) Revolution of 1688.
They want to forget the revolutionary methods and theories which brought them to power and all their promises of liberty, equality and fraternity, which they have so obviously failed to deliver.

Twenty Years Ago...

... in the NEW WORKER

MAGISTRATES in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, have jailed a 39-year-old widow who was unable to pay a poll tax bill of £95.
There was no question of non-payment for political reasons – she offered to pay at £2-a-week from her weekly income of £57.
Demonstrations have taken place outside Holloway and Pentonville prisons in London, where non-payers have recently been jailed.
Croydon Against the Poll Tax has launched a new petition to save local democracy and restore the rights of communities and councillors.
“We found the collection of signatures much slower than when we started four years ago” campaigner Queenie Knight told the New Worker.
“Although councillors and town hall officials know the inroads on local democracy it has made no impact on the general public.”
“This is not surprising as the Government consultation does not cover the role of local government so the media concentrates on the council tax. “

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TANKS have returned to the centre of Algiers in a new government crack down on the opposition Islamic Salvation Front.
In confrontations with demonstrators at least two youths were killed by police gunfire.
Tension had arisen after the Islamic leader, Abbasi Madani, had threatened a holy war against the FLN government, which has postponed general elections and imposed a state of emergency for four months.
Abbasi Madani and his deputy, Ali Belhadj, have now been arrested and charged with inciting rebellion and the police have seized their Party’s headquarters.
The emergency was imposed at the beginning of June after bloody clashes with Islamic protestors, demonstrating against what they claimed was FLN manipulation of electoral rules.
The appointment of a caretaker government to supervise the deferred elections, under Sid Ahmed Ghozali, had led to a brief respite in the violence and a withdrawal of the army from Islamic Front strongholds in the capital.

Ocalan's prison writings

Review


By Andy Brooks

Prison Writings: The PKK And The Kurdish Question In The 21st Century
by Abdullah Ocalan, London 2011, 174 pp Pluto Press, £17.50.



ABDULLAH Ocalan was the leader of the Kurdish resistance in Turkey that was the focus for all progressive Kurds in the fight for freedom. Kidnapped in Kenya in 1999, Ocalan was tried and condemned to death by the Turkish authorities. Though this was commuted to life imprisonment, Ocalan remains to this day in prison on the island of Imrali. There he has written two books, in extremely difficult circumstances, making the case for the Kurdish people and proposing a new way forward to start the dialogue with Turkey and end the conflict that has claimed so many lives on both sides.
Some say that the Kurds missed the boat at Versailles in 1919 when the victorious Anglo-French imperialists carved up what was left of the Turkish Ottoman Empire after the First World War. The Arabs who had fought for Britain in the belief that they would get independence got promises that were never kept. The Zionists, who had supported the Entente against Germany and its allies, were allowed to settle in the new British “mandate” of Palestine. The Kurds got nothing.
Some lived in Iran, then a satellite of the British Empire. Others found themselves part of the new British “mandate” of Iraq headed by a puppet king imposed on the Iraqis after a nationalist revolt was crushed. Most Kurds remained in what became the Turkish republic, a bourgeois dictatorship led by General Mustafa Kemal, whose “Kemalism” dismissed them as “mountain Turks” and refused to recognise them as a separate nation.
When the Arabs of the Middle East broke the chains of colonialism after the Second World War the feudal Kurdish chiefs in Iraq sought the protection of the Shah of Iran and Anglo-American imperialism to strengthen their claim for independence. But in Turkey militant Kurds founded a revolutionary Marxist party, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and launched a guerrilla war in 1984 that for many years held the Turkish army at bay in a fight for freedom that still goes on today.
Following Ocalan’s arrest, the PKK declared a truce and offered to talk. But despite the virtual end of the uprising, the Turks still refuse to listen or even recognise that a problem exists.
In this second volume of prison writings, Ocalan reviews the entire history of the Kurds from ancient times to the modern era. He frankly talks about the problems and mistakes made by the PKK during the height of the guerrilla war and he appeals for a dialogue with the Turkish authorities to end the oppression of the Kurds, who live largely under Turkish military occupation.
Now no longer a doctrinaire Marxist, Ocalan rejects the old demand for “an independent, united and socialist Kurdistan” as neither a realistic nor practical objective. He calls, instead, for “a democratic country and a free homeland” wherever Kurds live and for his people to campaign for equal rights in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria in tandem with all the other democratic forces in those countries.
In Iraq the feudal Kurdish chiefs run an autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government under American protection. The Iranian Kurds have a regional government and a certain degree of cultural freedom within the Islamic Republic. But in Turkey, where the majority of the Kurdish people live, the Kurds are still denied even basic human rights.
In his prison writings Ocalan calls on the Arab and Iranian leaders and above all the Turkish government and the leading political forces in Turkey to begin the dialogue and resolve the “Kurdish problem” once and for all.
This is an important book that makes a serious contribution to understanding one of the key flash-points in the Middle East. It deserves a wide audience.

syrian anthem النشيد العربي السوري

Twenty Years Ago...

...in the NEW WORKER



WORKERS at Severn Trent Water are furious with their employers.
On the very day they gave an overwhelming “thumbs down” to an 8.75 per cent pay offer with strings, Severn Trent announced 15 per cent boost in profits to £249 million and increased dividends to shareholders by 18 per cent.
Those profits are at least 30 per cent above the level agreed with the Government on privatisation. Yet Severn Trent may raise its charges another 15 per cent.
Many water company executives gave themselves pay rises in excess of 50 per cent last year and company chairpersons are raking in pay packets between £110,000 and £150,000 a year.
“Severn Trent’s pay offer would have left 700 employees receiving less than the European low pay threshold whilst top executives have been getting rises of over £30,000”, Nalgo regional water officer Richard Burden said on behalf of the joint unions.

***********************

SEVEN Mongolian workers have gone on hunger strike in protest at the Government’s sell-off plans.
Employed by the public television repair company, in the capital Ulan Bator, the seven hunger strikers are demanding that workers should be given the option of buying their own company before it is sold.
Last year the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party followed Gorbachov’s road and paved the way for the restoration of capitalism in what had been the world’s second socialist state.
Now in coalition with non-communist parties set up by the reform leadership, the party is spearheading the drive to dismantle the socialist system.
Seventy per cent of the public sector is to be sold, including the vast herds of Mongolian cattle, which will be sold to private ranchers.
Once a major meat exporter Mongolia now faces food rationing and shortages of all kinds.

The Lenin Museum in Finland

The Lenin Museum in Tampere, Finland is the best known Finnish museum abroad. Within the first decade of the 21st century, over 136,000 people found their way to the Lenin Museum.
The Lenin Museum in Tampere, founded in 1946, is the oldest remaining Lenin museum of the world (another can be found in Vyborg, Russia). The Museum is housed in the historic Tampere Workers’ Hall, where the Russian Bolsheviks under the guidance of V I Lenin held their conferences in 1905 and in 1906. Lenin and the former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin also met for the first time in this Workers’ Hall in 1905. The Lenin Museum is owned by the Finland-Russia Friendship Association.
Though most visitors are Finns, the museum is increasingly attracting a large number of visitors from abroad interested in the life and times of the Bolshevik leader. In 2010 10,868 guests from 78 countries made their way to the Lenin Museum ,from all continents, and even as far as Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
The Lenin Museum now provides guide booklets and websites in Chinese language because of the increased number of Chinese visitors (218 last year) and a member of staff is now learning Chinese to help provide a better service for Chinese guests in the future.
The museum has its own shop which sells books and souvenirs, including works of Lenin and other ideological thinkers of the revolutionary movement, Soviet posters, badges, busts and Russian art works.
The Lenin Museum has two permanent exhibitions; Lenin’s Biography and Lenin and Finland. The first one colourfully depicts the life of V I Lenin from his childhood to his last days as the revolutionary leader of Soviet Russia. The other describes the numerous connections between the Finnish people and Lenin.
Together with the permanent displays a number of special exhibitions were held in 2010 including Lenin’s footsteps, Socialist realism in Finland in the 21st century and Photographs from revolutionary Cuba.
The website of the Lenin Museum is another popular service, largely in Finnish but including information in English, Russian and Chinese.
The Lenin Museum is the member of the International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI). In 2010 it cooperated with several institutions including the Lenin Museum in Vyborg in Russia as well as with the governmental museums in St Petersburg, Moscow and Krasnoyarsk.

The Defeat of the CPI(Marxist) in West Bengal

THE RIGHT-wing swept the Left Front out of West Bengal in India’s legislative assembly elections in May. West Bengal, India’s fourth largest state in terms of population, with 90 million people, had been administered by the CPI(M)-led Left Front since 1977 without a break.

By Kumar Sarkar

The defeat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was expected, but not quite to the same extent as it actually happened. From my limited, though very recent, knowledge of present day West Bengal's urban and rural life, the opposition to the Left Front, stemming from frustrations in the urban areas, was massive, due primarily to extensive unemployment. The discontent in the rural areas has been a recent phenomenon, after the bureaucratic handling by the Left Front government of land acquisition to promote industrialisation. Otherwise, the support for the CPI(M) amongst the rural poor had been extensive after the “Operation Barga” (the code name for land distribution amongst the landless peasants). But, after that, the CPI(M) ran out of steam and did not do anything significant to weaken the semi-feudal rural life. “Panchayat” or the local level village administration was, of course, a big achievement, but this was not used with any vision for the future.
The socio-economic development of Indian society reflects uneven regional development. In this, West Bengal, Kerala, Andhra and Tamilnadu have a rich history of peasant struggles. The situation in Tamilnadu changed, for which I do not have good knowledge. Most of the Andhra communist leadership went to the side of various Naxalite groups and Andhra had been, until recently, a stronghold of the Maoists. Kerala and West Bengal have been the two bastions of the CPI(M).
In Kerala, the CPI(M) has a largely agrarian base of many radical peasant struggles. West Bengal is unique in many ways because of its early pre-colonial industrial development and consequent development of a significant middle class of “bhadraloks”, who control the self-styled revolutionary parties. They are comparable with Western petit-bourgeoisie, but remaining half-feudal in their socio-political outlook. They can be divided into two sub-classes: comprador and progressive or democratic. It is the latter sub-class that has been the backbone of the CPI(M) in West Bengal, which is the most democratic part of India.
Failing to grasp the essence of the uneven developments, the character of the semi-feudal and comprador bourgeois Indian society, and encouraged by understandable electoral successes in democratically advanced West Bengal, the CPI(M) has been gradually transformed into a reformist party, not comparable even with the Western Social Democracy. It has developed an all-India electoral strategy in which Bengal is attributed an "exemplary" role, which is supposed to attract the rest of India to follow suit!! And after 34 years, even the adjoining states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odishi and Assam still live in the predominantly feudal times and have not seen many red flags except in Bihar and the tribal areas. And, of course, the decimation of the CPI(M) now is in the heartland itself!
With the abovementioned all-India strategy, the CPI(M) became a full-fledged party of “parliamentary cretinism”. With seven successive terms of electoral victories for the West Bengal Legislative Assembly over 34 years, achieved mainly by rural land distribution and to some extent by coercive practices in the urban areas and with a massive and largely disciplined membership, winning elections became the sole objective.
Within the narrow boundaries of a regional administration, in a fake federal system with member states having no real fiscal powers, soon it became impossible to satisfy the demands of the unemployed in the urban areas without initiating large scale industrialisation, which, again, could only be provided by the compradors! The problem was made worse by acquiring lands, paradoxically from those who had earlier been given lands, forcibly and using an archaic colonial act!!
With the class-consciousness emanating from 34 years of Left Front rule, the peasants firmly and militantly resisted such acquisition, led by the very forces, wearing the mask of populism, which had been cornered for three decades. An incredible irony indeed! The initially declared objective of using the Left Front government as an ”instrument of class struggle”, soon became, inevitably, an instrument of class collaboration!
To this can be added the antithesis of 34 years of continuous rule, the personal behaviour and high handedness and arrogance of thousands of cadres, and large-scale corruption of leaders, many of who have no ideological interests in the communist movement.
The electoral battle was fought almost entirely within the limits permitted by the ruling classes, represented by the regional Trinamul (Grassroots) Congress and the all-India Congress party. While the Trinamul wore the mask of populism, conveniently, to counter the leftwing signboards of the governing combine, the issues raised were naturally confined to good governance, law and order, corruption, education and jobs for sons and daughters of the bhadraloks and place of West Bengal in the all-India league table of capitalist exploitation.
Alongside this there was also the issue of the land acquisition policy for industrialisation to pacify the rural voters. Unashamedly the CPI(M) treated the issue of tribal struggle, led by Maoists in the western parts of the state, as a central issue of terrorism and law and order and asked for help from the Centre to crush it. Under these circumstances, the bourgeois media was highly successful in sending out waves of skilfully designed “news” item against the Left Front, and became instrumental in befooling even the most faithful that a “change” would be in their best interests, at least for one term.
The “electorate” chose the direct representatives of the bourgeois-semi feudal forces rather than their indirect bhadralok apologists. And, surprise, surprise, the bhadraloks have already promised, “to play the role of a responsible and constructive opposition” to feudal and comprador forces!!
The defeat of the CPI(M) creates an unforeseen political crisis. Tactics, which appear to be inappropriate, at least from outside, have prevented revolutionary communists from using, appropriately and positively, the heightened class consciousness in the countryside, originating from the Left rule, and accommodating this into an all-India strategy that has three inter-related components:

(a) Regions with land reforms completed;
(b) Regions with almost unchanged feudalism and;
(c) Tribal areas where production relations are older than feudalism.

The revolutionary process that has unfolded in the tribal areas is likely to resonate eventually in the areas of (b), creating its own dynamics. As for the areas of (a), the process may require some skilful initial use of electoral politics, with West Bengal being an appropriate component.
But to do so systematically, the issue of the democratic revolution as characterised by the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920 needs to be re-opened in the 21st century. The concept of democratic revolution in post-colonial and semi-feudal countries, with a big comprador bourgeoisie as distinct from its original anti-feudal European “counterpart”, and as a prelude to socialist revolution, remains a relatively undeveloped area in Marxism. The example of India elucidates this problem.
In India, an ex-colonial country of semi-feudalism and comprador bourgeoisie, there is still no “proletarian” working class of the Western type. As per official statistics, 43.9 per cent are self-employed (mostly agricultural, followed by wholesale and retail sales), 39.3 per cent are casual labour (mostly agricultural, followed by construction work) and 16.8 per cent are waged/salaried (mostly manufacturing, followed by community services). As per fields of work, 46 – 52 per cent of the working population is agricultural, 34 per cent is in the service sector and 14 per cent is in the industry, dominated by textiles; 65.8 per cent work in enterprises having fewer than 10 workers. 43.6 per cent are employed in seasonal or ad hoc type of enterprises [35.9 per cent of the total population is available for work, 63.5 per cent of the 15 – 59 age category; 9.4 per cent of those who are available for work are unemployed, 4.9 per cent in the 15 – 59 age group] (Source: Government of India, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Labour Bureau, October 2010). A large number of people are engaged in pre-capitalist mode of productions. All categories of workers have a dual character with a constant “backward” link with their peasant roots.
Of course this makes the worker-peasant alliance very convenient. In my last visit about two months ago to a Bengali village, about 20 miles from the large town of Howrah with its extensive small scale industries, I came across a growing trend of young members of peasant families daily commuting to Howrah to work in a sheet metal manufacturing factory. Some of these probably work sometimes as agricultural wage labourers.

Twenty Years Ago...

...in the NEW WORKER


Rolls Royce workers lobbied shareholders of the aerospace group last week.
Some workers who own shares entered the group’s annual general meeting to make their criticisms.
The 34,000 workforce had been angered when the company issued them contract termination notices in order to impose a pay freeze.
Threats of legal action and industrial action forced the company to back off, but it still wants the pay freeze and 6,000 aerospace job cuts.
Trade union negotiators were meeting the company as we went to press.
Workers at the Leavesden site, which is threatened with closure at a cost of 1,760 jobs, are preparing detailed proposals for keeping at least the engine plant open.
Rolls plans to sell the site, which it recently purchased from the Ministry of Defence, a move reminiscent of the British Aerospace-Royal Ordinance scandal.
Lord Tombs, Roll’s chairman, announced he would cut his salary by 10 per cent, from £150,000 to £135,000 in 1991.

Soviet soldiers have clashed with nationalist militias in renewed tension in the Baltic states.
No-one was killed but the Lithuanian and Latvian authorities claim Soviet soldiers held their militiamen at gunpoint and then burnt down the border check-points which they have illegally set up across their frontiers.
The Soviet forces, Black-Berets from the Interior Ministry, were involved in bloody clashes with nationalist groups last year.
The nationalist regimes have demanded their withdrawal from the Baltic region.
In Moscow attention is focusing on the forthcoming Russian Federation elections.
Yeltsin is leading a high-profile campaign, promising to retire from public life if his challenge fails.
His rival, Soviet President Gorbachov, is trying to remain in the limelight by giving publicity to the private visit of former British premier Margaret Thatcher, who has arrived fresh from a similar jaunt in South Africa.

TWENTY YEARS AGO...

...in the NEW WORKER


THE NATIONAL Association of Local Government Officers last Monday resumed pay talks with employers on behalf of 500,000 local government members.
They are claiming a rise of 12 per cent of the Council of Europe decency threshold of £9,330, whichever is greater. Around 38 per cent of their members are paid less than this threshold.
Nalgo is also seeking to make the adult rate payable at 18 instead of 21, reductions in the working week and increases in annual leave.
This claim was first submitted in January, giving the employers a long period of consultation on the claim and the unions expected a first offer by the beginning of May.
So far the employers have made no offer and are divided on whether or not to make an offer by the end of this month.
This would be likely to anger the membership and lead to calls for strike action as happened in 1989, when a programme of one-day stoppages and selective strikes by Nalgo members won a substantial pay award.

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YUGOSLAVIA stands on the brink of civil war, despite the talks between the Serbian and Croat leaderships and the army has demanded sweeping powers to stop the ethnic violence.
Fighting between Croat and Serbian nationalist militias led to many deaths last week. At least one soldier died in clashes with Croat nationalists. The national army, in which most officers are Serbs, may also disintegrate if the crisis worsens.
Hungary is believed to be arming the Croat militias who accuse Romania of backing the Serbian-Montenegran front.
Yugoslavia’s constitution provides for a presidency that rotates among the individual republics and is virtually nominal.
Yugoslavia’s worsening economy and its unworkable federal constitution have produced a situation like that in the Lebanon with nationalists leaders from every community and religious group set on establishing local centres of power.

The Scottish Elections

By our Scottish Political Correspondent

IN THE AFTERMATH of last year’s general election, in which Labour reversed the trend in England, members thought they had a fair chance of reversing the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary elections that saw the Scottish National Party form a minority administration with 47 MSPs, only one more than Labour’s 46. When the formal campaign for the 2011 election began this seemed unlikely as Labour’s lead in the polls faded away. After an insipid and accident-prone campaign by Labour it was clear that former Royal Bank of Scotland economist, First Minister Alex Salmond, was staying put in his official residence.
However it was not until the early hours of Friday morning that the extent of Labour’s defeat and the Nationalist triumph became clear. The final results saw the SNP secure an overall majority with 69 seats, Labour came a distant second with 37, the Tories had 17 (two down from 2007), the Liberal Democrats, despite frantic efforts to distance themselves from the coalition, dropped to five seats from their former 16. Two Greens and an Independent (a former Nationalist) retained their seats.
Labour lost a lot more than the reduction of nine MSPs implies. As only 73 MSPs were elected for constituencies with another 56 being elected on a top-up party list system some of their losses were compensated by gains on the lists. Under this system the former Tory leader lost his Edinburgh constituency seat, but will reappear as a regional list MSP. However, none of the Labour constituency MSPs were also on the regional lists, so those new Labour MSPs are not exactly inspiring figures or intellectual heavyweights.
Remarkably the percentage of people voting Labour declined only by a microscopic 0.5 per cent, but the fact that only one in 200 voters deserted Labour was of no help as the SNP vacuumed up votes from disaffected voters from all other parties, thus causing Labour to lose the sort of seat where they used to weigh the Labour votes.
As has became the norm in the three previous elections to what comedian Billy Connolly called the “pretendy wee parliament,” the election saw only about half the electorate inspired to rise from their sofas to the polling stations. Turnout was particularly low in working class areas; in one Glasgow constituency turnout was a just under 35 per cent. The highest turnout was 63 per cent in a leafy former Tory seat won by Labour.
On the fringes of the election those standing for left-wing parties did not make any significant impact. Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party, the Scottish Socialist Party and their former comrades in Solidarity stood in all the regional lists. Political train spotters can find full details of their votes at the bottom of the results tables among those for the Pensioners, Christians, UKIP and single issue candidates.
Curiously enough, of these three left parties the one which did the best was the SLP which, in contrast to the other two, has virtually no visible presence in Scotland. In Glasgow George Galloway, standing as a Solidarity-backed opponent of the cuts failed to win a seat, doubtless much to the relief of the remaining Labour MSPs whom Galloway cruelly, but accurately, described as having a struggle to become nonentities.
In Donald Dewar’s old constituency of Glasgow Anniesland, the incumbent Labour MSP lost to the SNP by a mere seven votes. This was the sole seat in Scotland contested by the Communist Party of Britain, whose candidate who polled 245 votes. He was quoted in the Morning Star as saying “... the defeat of Bill Butler, a consistent left-wing Labour MSP, is a blow to the whole left in Scotland”. That may be the case, but if so why oppose him in an election? In the west of Scotland there were many right-wing MSPs who would have been better targets.
The fascists, in the form of the BNP and the curious Scottish Homeland Party (who want to prevent Turkey joining the European Union, hardly a vital issue to Scots) all did badly. However the BNP’s small vote was always greater that the two Trotskyite parties.
Until a dramatic change of tack in the last week of the campaign, Labour more or less ignored the SNP and spent most of its time and energy attacking the Con-Dem Coalition. Given that David Cameron was not actually standing this was a big mistake. Labour’s few attacks on the SNP focussed on their plans to hold a referendum on separating from England as being a distraction from more mundane economic questions. Opposing such a vote was clearly an error, given that if a referendum actually been called it would have seen a resounding defeat for the Nationalists.
What of the future? The insipid Labour leader Iain Gray, who only just survived election night, is standing down as leader. The pool of talent to replace him is not great. For what it matters, the leader of the Liberal Democrats also fell upon his sword, leaving four other MSPs in the running. This leadership contest is unlikely to be riveting viewing.
Trying very hard not to gloat, El Presidento, Alex Salmond in his victory speech, claimed that he would “govern for all the ambitions for Scotland and all people who imagine that we can live in a better land”. These pieties bring to mind Margaret Thatcher’s quoting St Francis on the steps of Downing Street when she was first elected Prime Minister and promising to end strife.
Salmond’s previous administration did indeed introduce some welcome minor reforms such as abolishing prescription charges for the few not covered by exemptions, but his main policies are not progressive. He and his normally Tory backers want the Scottish Parliament to have control of taxation in order to reduce Corporation Tax on multi-national businesses. Tellingly, shortly before the election Salmond’s main attacks on the Tories focussed on their plans to levy a tax on oil companies.

Fifty Years of Human Spaceflight!

Review



By Theo Russell

Yuri Gagarin - The First Spaceman by Vix Southgate; First Orbit, directed by Christopher Riley; Little Eagles, by Rona Munro.

SPACE enthusiasts and scientists from around the world came together last month in a global celebration of the new era of space exploration which began with Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight, on 12th April 1961.
Writers, broadcasters and scientists from Britain were at the forefront of several projects aimed at giving Gagarin’s flight the momentous commemmoration it deserves, and to encourage young people to learn about space exploration and astronomy.
Yuri Gagarin – The First Spaceman is a comic, or graphic novel, style book detailing the flight as it happened, aimed at schoolchildren by Vix Southgate. Vix is an author and illustrator specialising in science-based stories, and also administrator of Yurigagarin50.org, a website promoting Gagarin events around the world.
The book, which combines text and comic strip, recounts that Gagarin was an ordinary boy who witnessed his village being occupied by the German invaders, and grew up to be a skilled worker.
“He grew up as a farm boy and saw the horrors of war. He went to live in Moscow to become better educated and he trained to become a foundryman at a steelworks. He went on to technical school and joined a flying school, later becoming a pilot in the Soviet military. He joined the space programme and became the first man in space.”
Vix’s website (http://www.vixsouthgate.co.uk/) also contains valuable resources designed for school teachers and links to websites Gagarin space exploration and astronomy.
YuriGagarin50.org contains lots of fascinating information about the Russian astronaut, his space flight and his visit to Britain in 1961 and pulls together other people’s memories of the day.
The film First Orbit, launched on YouTube 12th April is a remarkable international collaboration directed by Christopher Riley. It opened on over 1,000 screens around the world in more than 75 countries, including UNESCO HQ in Paris, Boeing HQ in Seattle, and the European Space Agency’s Columbus Control Centre near Munich. It has now been viewed over 2.8 million times on in almost every country on Earth.
The film, which took almost five years to bring together, is a collaboration between the European Space Agency, Roscosmos, Nasa and the ISS.
It combines original footage of Gagarin’s training and flight with film shot by Italian astronaut and photographer Paolo Nespoli from the International Space Station (ISS), matching as closely as possible the orbit followed by Gagarin's Vostok 1 spaceship.
It also uses historic audio recordings of the entire mission, which many thought to be lost, and is probably the first time it has been heard outside of Russia.
The music accompanying the stunning shots of the earth from space was composed by British musician Philip Sheppard, who also wrote the music for the Olympic Handover Ceremony at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
First Orbit can also be downloaded from the website by anyone applying for permission to show it to a group of people.
The ISS is itself in many ways a continuation of the Soviet space programme, and its full name in the space industry is “ISS-Zarya”. Zarya, “dawn” in Russian, was the first module of the ISS. It was launched in 1998 from the same cosmodrome – the famous Baikonur in Kazakhstan – as Vostok 1.
While the United States has provided most of the funding and built most of the modules, the ISS is a genuine international undertaking involving Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and Canada. Five of its 15 modules are Russian-built and another, Nauka (Science) is due to be added next year.
The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, regards the ISS as the continuation of a "permanent Soviet human presence in low-Earth orbit", and there can be no doubt that it would have taken many more years to develop without the pioneering work of the Salyut and Mir space stations on long-duration human spaceflight.
While the Soviet Union clearly saw the military potential in developing space flight from the beginning, it also actively pursued the use of space flight for peaceful scientific purposes. Today, 50 years after Gagarin’s flight, Russia and many other countries still oppose the militarisation of space.
One addition to the contributions made by Vix Southgate and First Orbit to the Gagarin celebrations, the play Little Eagles recounts the life of Sergei Korolyev, the extraordinary genius and Chief Designer behind the Soviet space programme. The play, by Rona Munro, is being performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Hampstead Theatre, North London, until 7th May.
The 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight not only marks the beginning of a new era in human history, but reminds us of the positive contribution and the peaceful international cooperation still being made possible through the exploration of space. Projects such as First Orbit and Yuri Gagarin – The First Spaceman and Little Eagles are helping to bring those inspiring ideals to a new generation.

photo: Vix Southgate

Twenty Years Ago

...in the NEW WORKER


Politicians began arriving at Belfast’s Stormont Castle last Tuesday to make preliminary arrangements for talks on the political future of the occupied Six Counties of northern Ireland. The talks are billed in most of the media as “historic”.
Much is being made of the participation of both unionist and nationalist parties. The Financial Times said: “It is the first time nationalists and unionists have sat at the same table for 15 years”.
The talks will be opened by the British Government’s northern Ireland Secretary Peter Brooke and the Irish Government is expected to take part at a later date.
Speaking at a meeting of Sinn Fein’s Executive Committee, Sinn Fein president and West Belfast MP Gerry Adams said:
“Contrary to media reports and political criticism Sinn Fein is not critical of the current British process simply because we are not involved. If it held out hope of a permanent and peaceful solution we would welcome it.
But we are not naive ... We believe in Irish independence not only for ideological or even patriotic and democratic reasons – it also makes sense.
Partition and British involvement has not worked. It has been a catalyst for conflict. Irish Independence, an end to the British connection, can be a catalyst for peace and justice
This is the stated view of all other Irish political parties except Unionists. This is the basis on which we judge the Brooke process.
Our collective experience persuades republicans that in spite of Brooke’s November speech in which he claimed Britain has no ‘selfish, strategic or economic’ interest in the north, it is in reality Britain which is setting the agenda setting the current political agenda underpinned by a re-affirmation of the Unionist veto”.

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Twenty Years Ago

...in the NEW WORKER






The Trades Union Congress may agree the affiliation of the Electrical and Plumbing Industries Trade Union this week.
The 4,000 strong EPIU was formed when the EEPTU was expelled from the TUC in 1988. The EPIU was given observer status in 1989 but was refused full membership.
The TUC says the EPIU is now self sufficient and no longer dependent on other unions. Holding sections for EPIU members set up by the TGWU, MSF and GNB general unions will be disbanded.
Some members of the general council had hoped a way could be found for the EEPTU to return but that is extremely unlikely.
Leading members of both the AEU engineering union and UCATT building workers union want merger with EEPTU. A rat race could develop to carve it up.

Mikhail Gorbachov has returned empty-handed from Japan to face renewed demands from all quarters for his resignation.
The visit was a failure. Gorbachov had been seeking some £15 billion worth of Japanese aid to stave off the economic collapse of the Soviet Union.
But he was unable to meet the Japanese demand for the return of some or all of the Kurile islands, which Tokyo has set as their price for propping up his ailing regime.
The Japanese government had been expecting a major concession from the Soviet side over the Kurile islands, whose strategic and economic importance and history as part of Russia until 1905 led to their re-incorporation into the Soviet Union after the victory over Japan in 1945.
Many suspect the Soviet leader had privately indicated his willingness to meet Japan’s demands. But the intervention of his rival, Boris Yelstin who controls the Russian Federation made this impossible.

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Historic opportunity for communists

By New Worker correspondent

COMMUNIST and workers’ parties from all over Europe met in Brussels on 11th and 12th April to exchange views on the response of the movement to social and political processes across the continent. Representatives of 38 parties from 31 countries, including the New Communist Party of Britain, took part in the conference held in the European Parliament in the Belgian capital. Mirta Castro, head of the Cuban delegation to the European Parliament, ambassador to Belgium and Luxemburg and representative of the Communist Party of Cuba, was also present at the meeting.
The conference was opened by Aleka Papariga, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), who said that there was now a historic opportunity to direct the thoughts and actions of the peoples in struggle towards working class power.
But she stressed that that even if a pro-people majority in parliament was elected in one country and a government was formed on this basis, it would still not be able to overcome the limits of the basic laws of capitalism if it did not resolve the central issue of the socialisation of the basic means of production, withdrawal from the EU and Nato, nationwide planning and workers’ control from the bottom up.
NCP general secretary Andy Brooks represented the party at the conference and in his intervention he stressed the NCP’s opposition to the imperialist attack on Libya and its support for the massive anti-cuts protest in London last March. He called for mass industrial action against the cuts to build the resistance to the ruling class offensive.

Brussels European Communist and Workers Parties Conference April 2011

Joint Statement

The communist and workers parties which participated in the European Communist Meeting in Brussels, 11-12 April, exchanged their views on the ongoing deep crisis of the capitalist system and denounce the imperialist aggression against Libya. This war, in the conditions of the capitalist crisis, is a continuation of the barbaric assault which capital has unleashed at the expense of the working class and the popular strata of our countries through savage anti-people measures. The imperialist intervention of the USA, NATO, and the EU in Libya is yet another crime of the imperialists at the expense of the peoples. The false pretexts which the imperialists use cannot conceal the truth that the inter-imperialist competition for the control of natural resources in Africa, the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Caspian is intensifying. We demand the cessation of the imperialist war, that the bases be closed and every kind of assistance for the implementation of the imperialist plans be stopped. Also in the case of Libya we consider that the people must have the right to choose its path of development on its own, without foreign interventions.

At the same time in the name of “competitiveness” with other imperialist powers, the bourgeois class of the countries of Europe generalises the anti-worker measures. They reduce wages and pensions in the name of the crisis in order to ensure the profitability of capital. In many countries savage reductions of labour and trade union rights are being promoted, unemployment is on the rise, the right to strike and other trade union freedoms are being undermined, xenophobia is strengthening while the poor farmers are being wiped out in favour of the big farmers and monopoly groups. The historical limits of capitalism are being demonstrated objectively, as it cannot solve the basic problems of the peoples.

The bourgeois class is very well aware of the fact that the main enemies of their strategy, the main opponents of the capitalist system are the communist and workers’ parties. For that reason in many countries they intensify the anticommunist threats, persecutions and bans.

However, there is only one way for the peoples. Only through the struggles of the workers for the working class- people’s problems, for the political power of the working class, we can pave the way for social progress, for socialism.

The communist and workers’ parties of Europe are against the membership of new countries in NATO, struggle for the withdrawal of their countries from NATO having as a goal the dismantlement of NATO.

We salute the massive struggles of the class-oriented movement that are taking place in many European countries. The peoples are benefited by the growth of the current that challenges the anti-people political line, the imperialist organisations, and the capitalist path of development itself.

The communist and workers’ parties which participated in the meeting decided to further intensify their activity and coordination.


СОВМЕСТНОЕ ЗАЯВЛЕНИЕ

Коммунистические и рабочие партии, принявшие участие в Европейской коммунистической встрече, организованной в Брюсселе 11-12 апреля, обменялись мнениями относительно развивающегося, глубокого кризиса и осудили империалистическую агрессию против Ливии. В условиях капиталистического кризиса, эта война является продолжением варварского наступления капитала на рабочий класс и народные слои наших стран, посредством применения жёстких антинародных мер. Империалистическая интервенция США, НАТО и ЕС в Ливии – очередное преступление империалистов против народов. Лживые предлоги империалистов не могут скрыть истины – обострения межимпериалистической конкуренции за контроль над природными ресурсами Африки, Ближнего Востока, Восточного Средиземноморья и Каспийского моря. Мы требуем прекращения империалистической войны, закрытия военных баз и отказа от участия в реализации империалистических планов. И в случае Ливии, мы считаем, то народ должен избрать собственный путь развития без давления иностранных империалистических интервенций.

В то же время для обеспечения конкурентоспособности по отношению к другим империалистическим державам, буржуазный класс в странах Европы осуществляет антирабочие меры. Во многих странах, как членах ЕС, так и в других для обеспечения высоких прибылей капитала сокращаются зарплаты и пенсии. Попираются трудовые и профсоюзные права, растёт безработица, урезаются право на забастовку и профсоюзные свободы, усиливается ксенофобия, в интересах крупных землевладельцев и монополий разоряются бедные крестьяне. Налицо объективные доказательства исторической ограниченности капитализма, его неспособность решать основные проблемы народа.

Буржуазный класс прекрасно знает, что основной противник его стратегии, основной враг капиталистической системы – это коммунистические партии. Поэтому во многих странах отмечается рост угроз, гонений в отношении коммунистов и вводятся запреты на коммунистическую идеологию.

Но для народов нет другого пути. Только борьба трудящихся за трудовые и народные права, за политическую власть рабочего класса открывает путь к социальному прогрессу, к социализму.

Коммунистические и рабочие партии Европы выступают против вступления новых стран в НАТО, борются за выход своих стран из НАТО, имея целью развал НАТО.

Мы приветствуем массовую борьбу рабочих и народа, борьбу классового рабочего движения, которая ведется во многих европейских странах. В интересах всех трудящихся, чтобы народы стали решительней оспаривать антинародную политику, империалистические организации и сам капиталистический способ развития.

Коммунистические и рабочие партии, принявшие участие во Встрече решили усилить свою деятельность и координацию.

Parties

1. Communist Party of Styria [Austria]
2. Communist Party of Belarus
3. Workers' Party of Belgium
4. New Communist Party of Britain
5. Communist Party of Britain
6. Party of the Bulgarian Communists
7. AKEL-Cyprus
8. Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia
9. Communist Party in Denmark
10. Communist Party of Denmark
11. Communist Party of Estonia
12. Finland Communist Workers’ Party for Peace and Socialism
13. Pole of Rebirth of Communistes in France
14. Union of Revolutionary Communistes of France URCF
15. German Communist Party(DKP)
16. Communist Party of Greece
17. Hungarian Workers' Communist Party
18. The Workers' Party of Ireland
19. Communist Party of Ireland
20. Communist Peoples' Left, Italy
21. Socialist Party of Latvia
22. Communist Party of Luxembourg
23. Movement of People's Resistance, Moldavia
24. New Communist Party of the Netherlands
25. Communist Party of Norway
26. Communist Party of Poland
27. Communist Party of Russian Federation
28. Communist Workers' Party of Russia - Revolutionary Party of Communists
29. Communist Party of Soviet Union
30. New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
31. Communist Party of Slovakia
32. Communist Party of Peoples of Spain
33. Communist Party of Sweden
34. Party of Labour, Switzerland
35. Communist Party of Turkey
36. (EMEP), Turkey
37. Union of Communists of Ukraine