Category Archives: Party Organisation

“Tories ousted by Labour coup?” Worcester or Westminster?

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Tories Ousted? What Coup? ….Westminster or Worcester….?

worcester newsSomething interesting happened recently in Worcester – The Labour Party, Lib Dems and Greens formed a coalition and ousted the Conservative leader who had led the council for seven years. This was because Worcester woman and man returned a council with No Overall Control.

During angry exchanges in the council chamber, deposed council deputy leader Councillor Marc Bayliss lambasted it as an “unprincipled coup by a new socialist alliance”, claiming it was about “national ideology, not the performance of the administration or leader.”“What the party opposite could not achieve through the ballot box, they are now forming through a shady deal,” he said.

Fellow Tory Councillor Andy Roberts, who lost his £5,985 role as cabinet member for finance, said it was a “shameless” agreement done behind their backs.

Some might be surprised at the reaction considering the situation following the General Election when there was no party in parliament with overall control. “Shameless agreement behind backs?” Who can forget the days following the General Election when it was unclear who would be the governing party? It seems that those Worcester Tories cannot see the parallels between Worcester and Westminster. Some might say that rather than a government with no overall control, this is a government out of control. Certainly, they are pushing through policies from no party’s manifesto.

The Tories act as if they had won overall control, a working majority. The Liberal Democrat vote was boosted by some centre left voters, who had trusted Clegg’s pledges. Those voters see little difference now between either members of the Coalition, the social democrat element of the LibDems having been engulfed by a government more right wing than Thatcher. The Tories realise this, and, clutching at straws hope for a Clegg replacement which might retain those votes which enabled this fudged coalition.

(New Statesman: Conservatives for Cable – Why the Tories want a new Lib Dem leader)

If it is to win the next election, Cameron’s party needs a Lib Dem leader who can win over Labour voters in Tory-Labour marginals. At present, after the defection of around a third of 2010 Lib Dem voters to Labour, the Tories stand to lose dozens of seats at the next election (Corby was an early warning) – there are 37 Conservative-Labour marginals where the third place Lib Dem vote is more than twice the margin of victory.

The suffering inflicted by this government will not be forgotten so easily by the electorate. What impact have the Liberal Democrats had on the direction of this extreme right wing government? What principles have been thrown away at the cost of power? During that seemingly interminable weekend immediately after the election and before the Coalition agreement, there were contradictions. Shirley Williams warned Nick Clegg about going into a coalition with the Conservatives. Paddy Ashdown spoke on Andrew Marr show, some excerpts here..

“The nation has spoken and in so far as we can determine what it’s said, it’s said you guys are … we’re going to give none of you power to govern alone; you’ve got to learn the habit of working together….”

“We want to preserve frontline services… “

“I don’t believe that anybody can now establish a new government who is deaf to the calls from the British people for a reform to our political system.”

Vince Cable said in December 2010, that he could quit the Coalition. Think Left’s “contradictions of Liberal Democrat Opportunism” examined the focus of Liberal Democrats on power over principle. Many Liberal Democrat voters and grassroots now look to other parties especially Labour, and must wonder why the party they worked for at the General Election have voted for a Bill leading to the break up and privatisation of the National Health Service? This was sold for a referendum on AV which was duly lost. Was this really a price worth paying?

“Why do the Lib Dems stay in the Coalition?”

  • We might well ask this question following the failures of AV and House of Lords reform, that being in government has not given them a ‘sufficient legacy’. John Kampfner’s extraordinary piece in the Guardian ‘The Lib Dems are in a stronger position than the Tories – but hide it well” – Cameron needs Clegg more than Clegg needs Cameron – so why won’t the Lib Dem leader show some muscle?’
  • The much vaunted Pupil premium was supposed to be ‘the reddest of the Liberal Democrats’ red lines’ with an additional £2.5 bn for the education of disadvantaged children. But, in fact, the pupil premium was ‘robbing Peter, to pay Paul’… the majority being recycled from within the education department’s budget’ – largely from the abolishing of EMA.
  • Another LD ‘achievement’ was to raise the personal allowance, ‘taking the poorest out of taxation’, but Patrick Collinson in the Guardian dismissed it as an ‘empty gesture’ As income goes up benefits will go down, and a million more basic-rate taxpayers are set to move into 40% tax band.
  • Lib-Dems claimed that they went into Coalition with the Tories because the UK was on the verge of becoming like Greece, and that the Labour government had irresponsibly overspent on public services. Not only was the national debt inflated by the of banking losses rather than by public spending , but this would never have been the case for the UK, with its own currency.
  • The popularity for the Lib Dems in 2010 by the younger generation, and by students in particular, was no doubt boosted by the pledge to abolish tuition fees, yet we learn Clegg intended to abandon the pledge well before the election.

Lib Dems would do well to consider these arguments from Hucknall’s Councillor Jim Grundy, against their support of this Tory government. The recent by-election in South Shields showed the measure of anger from the electorate, as the Lib Dems were annihilated.

i voted lib dems

Every day that the Liberal Democrats continue to support this government, they let down the British people. Crossing the floor of the House of Commons might just earn them some respect before they inevitably suffer death throes and subsequent extinction.

The Mysterious Disappearance of Jobs and Skills

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The Mysterious Disappearance of Jobs and Skills

When Norman Tebbit made a notorious comment that jobs could be easily found merely by hopping onto a bike, he made an assumption that it would solve unemployment because that’s father what his did, apparently. He repeated such advice this February by saying if Eastern Europeans migrate for work, why can’t the Brits?

How starkly this contrasts with what we are hearing Tory back benchers cry in the wake recent success of UKIP! Are we seeing a sudden surge to the extreme political right and 1930s divisions in society as ordinary people blame one another for high rates of unemployment, increasing poverty and unaffordable housing?

Deborah Orr (Guardian) comments: People are told EU migrants steal jobs – in truth bosses want cheap labour . People are told that immigrants stole their jobs. In truth, it was employers who wanted a ready supply of workers unused to the living conditions that it took the second world war for the ordinary people of Britain to achieve. The goal of neoliberal globalisation is supposedly a redistribution of wealth around the planet. It also, as the EU itself is discovering, redistributes poverty.

History has led to migrations of the workforce. In Cornwall, tin and copper had been mined for 4,000 years. Closure of the majority of Cornish tin mines forced whole communities to migrate in the 19th Century, leaving behind empty villages, graveyards surrounding them (Gwennap) the evidence that communities were once busy with industry.

tin_minerabove150Cornish tin miners faced

increasing competition

from alluvial mines abroad

Families were forced to move – or else starve. The simple fact was that the mine owners closed the mines, not because there was no longer a need for copper or tin. It’s because there was more money to be made elsewhere. Cheaper labour makes those looking to line their own pockets to ignore the plight on those who have come to depend on them – because they had the power to do so.

tin_mine203

In the 20th century a few mines survived, but the shortage of work put pressure on the working people. A row of differential pay rates resulted in a strike which pitched miner against miner, family against family, and only ended with the onset of WW2 and the greater demand for tin. Cornwall has never really recovered from the decline of this millennia old industry, and poverty exists there today.

  • How and when did these mine owners come to own the land and mines?
  • Why did such a few people have power over the many?
  • Who benefited from metals extracted from mines?

Removal of workers’ autonomy, their rights to sell labour for a living wage leads not only to their downfall, but that of everyone. The very rich may have the power to determine who shall have work and who shall not, yet their own very existence requires the same basic needs, provided by those workers. The race to the bottom, the search for the cheapest, poorest labour is fundamentally flawed, only a fool will argue otherwise.

Mankind’s survival has always involved work or labour – growing food, making clothes, caring for the community. Much of this work did not involve payment. Because of a division of labour, we can trade our skills, each contributing and receiving. Having a tradeable skill empowers us. If we can no longer cook a meal without a ready meal or grow our own food, we become yet more dependent on the supermarkets and their global supplies and speculation.

If we can no longer make garments, we buy-in fashion produced cheaply and unethically, thousands of miles away. In Bangladesh, cheap clothes come at human cost as health and safety of workers has no importance resulting in a deadly fire where hundreds died.

Yet, even now, the ConDemNation Coalition government aim to return UK to Victorian conditions, and have already removed workers’ right to health safety in the UK workplaces, and abolished the agricultural workers wages board. (See 114 year workers’ rights scrapped by Coalition government) Then UKIP, clearly trading on fear of unemployment and poverty, do not speak for working people. They are no party, but a bundle of individuals with extreme, bizarre attitudes, for example, Geoffrey Bloom, who advocates that employers should not employ women of childbearing age.

Deskilling a population disempowers them, to say nothing of lack of self-respect, independence and the prospects of lives in poverty. Thatcherite policies of attacking trade unions, decimating British manufacturing, closure of coal mines, ship-building, car industries, clothing and so on, led to massive unemployment, and broken communities, just as in the Cornish tin mines. Even food is being imported unnecessarily, for cheapness, and recent the recent horse meat scandal exposed the dangers of lack on control and monitoring. Lack of investment in education and training will not create a skilled workforce.

The Labour Party are setting out plans for full employment

“For Labour, that goal of full employment has always been the foundation for getting our country back on its feet. It was for Atlee’s Labour. It was for New Labour. It will be once more for One Nation Labour. Today the goal of full employment is important for a very simple reason. The faster we return to full employment, the faster we can pay down our debt. And the faster we can put the “something for something” back in to social security.

The Tories’ problem isn’t just that they are failing, but that they lost a belief in full employment many years ago, and never rediscovered it. That means more money spent on unemployment, so there is less to go around for working people and less for care.

After three years of failure we’ve got to find new ways to break out of this viscous circle. Seventy years ago, we set out a new path to full employment. Just as the Beveridge Report is a still a good roadmap for today, so too is the 1944 White Paper on Full Employment. It teaches us to be radical reformers to bring down the costs of social security; building exports; supporting public investment; fanning consumer demand – and taking determined action on jobs. It is a long road, but tackling poor places would be a big first step to getting our country back to full employment.’

From the New Statesman

If the British electorate are concerned about unemployment, they also have a very clear sense of injustice. They see bankers’ bonuses, they see politicians benefit from lobbyists, seeking to line their own pockets rather than serving the people, as they were elected to do. This week Ed Miliband’s Labour Party has pledged to address the Tax Justice.

He’s specifically committed to:

■ Pursue a new global system where multinationals must publish their revenues, profits and other key corporate information useful to revenue authorities in each country in which they operate.

■ Force multinationals to publish such information in the UK even if international agreement cannot be found on the issue, as they do in Denmark.

■ Make it a legal requirement for multinationals operating in the UK to disclose details of any tax avoidance schemes they are using globally.

■ Seek reforms to “transfer pricing” rules to stop companies from shuffling money to other parts of their firm based in tax havens in return for spurious services.

■ Open up the ownership of companies sited in Britain’s tax havens to the UK revenue authorities, but also seek to allow developing countries access to such information.

Whether the popularity of UKIP is a blip, a protest, or anger, it certainly represents an alienated electorate. Those in work feel they are working for the benefit of the rich and powerful. Those without work have little hope of finding work which pays a living wage. Women are hit hard by childcare costs, and equality with men has taken a backward step. Cuts hitting the disabled will make it more difficult, if not impossible for them to work, and those who are old or ill live in fear. It is time to do things differently, let us hope for a socialist Labour government, with policies which will unite people once again.

References and Further reading

NHS “Choice” is no more than an Illusion

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NHS “Choice” is no more than an Illusion

By C J Stone, previously published here

I’ve had the same dentist for the last nearly thirty years, ever since I first came to Whitstable: Howard Paterson of Kelvin House in Nelson Road.

I think I can say that we’ve always got on – as much as you can say that about anyone whose relationship with you is entirely based upon them delving around on the inside of your mouth. At least he recognises me in the street, which is more than I can say for my doctor.

When I first went to see him Kelvin House was, like most dentists, an NHS practice. Over the years it went private, but it still maintained its existing NHS patients. I was one of them, and I’ve been going there ever since.

Until last week, that is, when I was told that I could no longer see Mr Paterson as an NHS patient, hence my sudden need to find a new dentist.

Actually it’s not only about the cost: it’s also the principle. I am an NHS patient, like my parents and my grandparents before me, and I always intend to remain so.

M~ p17ma01/11p clr/teeth

The case of dentistry shows the effects of privatisation on the Health Service. Prior to the 1980s we had universal dental care provided by the NHS. Since then we’ve seen an increasingly polarised dental care system, in which some people can afford to go private, while the rest are forced to make do with a second class service.

For years, until the opening of the Whitstable Dental Centre on Oxford Street, there wasn’t even an NHS dentist in the town.

The argument that is usually given for this is one of “choice”. It is the same argument being put forward for the opening up of the Health Service to private contractors which took place on April 1stthis year.

But this “choice” is an illusion. Choice only exists for those that can afford it, which means it isn’t a choice, it’s a privilege. Those that cannot afford it have no choice.

Meanwhile, the dentist I’ve trusted for 30 years is no longer my dentist, and I’m forced to start looking around for someone else.

On Fascism and Facts – UKIP – The Strategic Adversary?

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Fascism – the Strategic Adversary?

From Prue Plumridge

‘The strategic adversary is fascism … the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behaviour.  The fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.’

Michel Foucault.

Alex Andreou wrote in the New Statesman’ ‘The danger with extremism is that, when filtered through eyes and minds of reasonable people, it appears ridiculous. The reasonable assumption is that others will view it through the same filter and find it equally ridiculous. But, while The Reasonable laugh, support for extremist views creeps up. Because what The Reasonable fail to notice is that fear and insecurity have a way of robbing others of reason.  Instead, if you find yourself nodding in agreement with a couple of items on Ukip’s long list of empty promises, remember all the other things you will also be signing up for. They represent a particularly insidious brand of extremist; Bigotry Light, if you will – all the hatred of normal bigotry, but none of the calories.’

In the days prior to the local elections there was a lot of media attention given to UKIP aiming at discrediting their ideas and policies. If I am cynical I imagine this attack originating in the corridors of power in the Conservative party and right wing media in an attempt to woo back wavering supporters.  In the aftermath there are those who are saying  that the subsequent swing towards UKIP in the elections is simply a protest vote against the coalition or, in these difficult times, as support for its policies on immigration and the EU which have become the whipping boys for all the country’s ailments.  However, we would do well to look beyond UKIP’s rhetoric and dreams of  a return to a glorious past, a time of empire, Judeo-Christian values and so called Britishness.  Behind the fluffy and ill-thought out policies presented by Farage and his party hides something much more unpleasant which senior UKIP members take great pains to try and deny.

farage images

It is time that the public woke up to the problem of right wing extremism which is lurking underneath that very reasonableness.  I imagine that in pre-war Germany Hitler’s economic promises seemed very reasonable to a people who had been crushed by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles after the first world war, and those who were willing to turn a blind idea to some of his crazy ideas about the Jews and Roma peoples, the disabled and mentally sick and the creation of a pure Aryan race.

Apart from the fact that the party opposes gay marriage because apparently it undermines the rights of Churches and Faiths (but obviously not the rights of gay people to be treated equally) various candidates have soiled the UKIP copybook with a variety of extreme and nasty comments:  women should resign from their jobs if they want to have a baby;  women of child bearing age should not be employed because maternity rights are too draconian; there should be compulsory abortion when a foetus has been detected with Downs Syndrome or Spina Bifida; the unemployed should not be allowed to vote; physical exercise in schools can prevent homosexuality; Dr Julia Gasper was reported as saying in the Daily Mail that there were links between homosexuality and paedophilia;  Winston McKenzie (the Culture spokesperson) likened adoption by same sex couples as child abuse; Kim Gandy, a former UKIP activist, joked on Facebook that elderly people should be euthanised when  they became a burden; Maggie Chapman said ‘muslims have sex with camels’ and that pakis go home for Christmas and spread Christmas cheer with her ‘egg-nog for nig nogs.’  And let’s not forget that nazi salute!

What is even more disturbing is that the Party is a member of the Europe Freedom and Democracy group which has links to far right parties.  Nigel Farage is co-president of the group along with  Francesco Speroni a member of the Lega Nord in Italy who described the multiple murderer Anders Breivik as someone whose ‘ideas are in defence of western civilisation.  It matters not that sometimes the party has distanced itself from such comments. What matters is that there are such people  within the party who have expressed such disgusting views at all within what seems to be becoming more than just the fringe ‘clowns and fruitcakes’ party described by David Cameron and Ken Clark.

It is shocking that following the local elections it seems that some people in their voting choices have moved even more to the right than the Conservatives. I ask myself whether they are aware of some of the extreme opinions that have been expressed by members of the party or indeed do they actually  know what UKIP stands for (apart from their views on immigration and the EU)?    They might be surprised.  Just a brief look shows an ill thought out political agenda which has little substance and seems more like something jotted down on the back of a fag packet whilst in the pub.   Even one of their own MEPs  has suggested  that it might be better to buy a set of ‘off the shelf’ policies to fill the manifesto vacuum.

How about their proposals for: 

  • A flat tax rate of 25% which would give a 14% tax cut to the wealthiest whilst costing the treasury billions
  • An increase of 40% in defence spending including the purchase of new aircraft carriers, fighter jets and nuclear missiles.
  • A prison building programme (to house a rising population of criminals) which again would cost billions (and the scrapping of the Human Rights Act.)

And where, in this age of austerity, is this money to be magicked up from – well apparently it will all be paid for when we leave the EU freeing up £8-9 billion but which, in actual fact, would barely cover half the proposed defence spending let alone fund the Party’s other crazy spending ideas.

And speaking of the EU, UKIP’s promise to exit the EU holds great attraction for those who ask the question ‘what did the Union ever do for us?’   So much rubbish has been spouted about bendy bananas, curved cucumbers and chunky carrots that we fail to see the wider picture. Apart from a wide ranging programme which includes regional economic funding,  employment, public health, health and safety, equal opportunities and environmental legislation, over 50% of trade worth £450bn a year is done in Europe and 3.5 million jobs are reliant on the EU.  Over 100,000 businesses  export to the EU, 94,000 of which are SME’s .  Over 80% believe that the market delivers significant benefits to them.  A recent poll of British businesses showed that 90% of them favour continued membership.   The UK has also benefited substantially from 45 free trade agreements with countries outside Europe which have been negotiated by the EU and if we were to exit the UK would have to renegotiate on a country by country basis.  Over 50% of companies investing in the UK cite EU membership as a reason.  Of course the EU is not perfect and reform must come if it is to have a future but UKIP harks back to a glorious Great Britain existing still in some other time warp ready to be re-invented, without even considering the effects of such an exit on our economy.   On a more personal note Farage might well rejoice at what the Union has done for him since he openly boasts that he has claimed £2million in expenses whilst bemoaning the amount of tax-payers money going to the EU.

The party is sceptical about climate change, rejects scientific opinion on the issue and is inconsistent in its pronouncements.  It opposes efforts to combat climate change, supports coal fired and nuclear energy along with shale gas extraction and fracking whilst opposing wind power and other renewables. Its intention will be to scrap all subsidies for renewable energy and cancel all wind farm developments.  And yet, despite stressing the need for clean technology in coal fired power stations, it opposes the EU’s directive to close polluting coal fired stations claiming that ‘it won’t make a scrap of difference to global emissions of greenhouse gases’.  As a party they have the worst attendance, voting and work performance of any political party across the EU according to figures for the last three years to July 2012.  And despite lots of fine words and support for legislation against fishing discards,  when it came to it Nigel Farage did not vote and the rest of the UKIP MEPs abstained.  To end on a wacky note they also want to ban the showing of Al Gores ‘An Inconvenient Truth in schools.  It seems that if they don’t believe in it then no-one else should hear about it and make up their own minds.

In education UKIP intend to bring back grammar schools and operate a voucher system which parents can spend in the state or private sector whilst in the NHS it  plans to franchise out key services including hospitals and GP surgeries to companies and charities and create a voucher system to allow people to opt out of the NHS system entirely.  It is also proposing to reduce employment rights, bring public expenditure down to 1997 levels by making cuts of £77 billion with a loss of 2 million jobs, scrap employers’ NI with the revenue to be recouped from Corporation Tax, VAT or reduced welfare.  All of these policies can be seen as creating more division, reducing the safety net and further impoverishing some of the most vulnerable in society.

And yet more worryingly with their views on immigration (whilst refuting  the charges of closet racism) they have nonetheless tapped into a reservoir of hate which appeals to some people’s fears about an uncertain future.

They ignore the valuable contribution made to the UK economy by immigrants and the fact that they are less likely to claim benefits than those who were born here.   UKIP intend to end the active promotion of the doctrine of multi-culturalism which it claims has divided society and has also spoken of forced repatriation or assimilation – a policy which shadows that of the far right BNP.  The idea that there is something that might be defined as a homogenous British culture is misleading – our culture has over centuries been an amalgam of influences from the  Romans, Danes, Angles and Saxons, and Normans, to India and modern Europe more recently.  It is not static but a fluid affair not to be defined by a bundle of old fashioned stereotypes which figures bulldogs, Winston Churchill,  god, queen and country. Our ability to live together and respect each other has come a long way in the last few decades and whilst there is still much to do the idea that we can impose something defined as British culture or values is a mistaken one.

Some may say that these are reasonable policies and we may laugh on the other hand, as Alex Andreou says, at the open expression of such extreme ideas and put them aside as simply unwise.

But we should not forget Martin Luther King’s words ‘our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter’.  Fascism will creep up on us and when we least expect it, when our defences are down,  it will pounce upon us with disastrous consequences.

Sources