New Communist Party celebrates 30 fighting years!

MEMBERS, friends and supporters of the New Communist Party gathered in south-west London last Saturday evening to celebrate the founding of the party in 1977.
Among the speakers was Jong In Song from the Embassy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, who delivered a message from the Korean Workers’ Party, retired MEP Richard Balfe, Ella Rule of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), Keith Bennett and a Young Communist from Poland. There was a message of support from the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist).
Jong In Song spoke of the current struggle of his party for direct talks with the United States. The armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 was just that – an armistice, a temporary halt to the fighting – signed between the government of the DPRK and the US and leaving them still technically at war. The DPRK is seeking a permanent peace and normalisation of relations.
On the issue of nuclear weapons, Jong said: “We seek the denuclearisation of the whole of Korea – the whole of Asia and the whole world.” And he spoke of the system of socialism that delivers peace, social justice and an end to humiliation for all workers.
Richard Balfe spoke of the early days of the NCP and his friendship with NCP founder Sid French through their joint work in the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society.
NCP President Eric Trevett spoke of the party’s history of struggle against revisionism and he paid tribute to members, including past members now deceased who gave their lives in the struggle for peace and communism.
A collection raised £778.10 – along with promises of another £1,800 to launch a special appeal for £30,000 for the New Worker.

photo: Andy Brooks at the celebrations

London news round-up

Boris to run for London Mayor

TORY MP Boris Johnson has decided to run as a candidate in the London mayoral contest next year. He has not yet been formally nominated by his party and will have to go through a selection procedure.
But it seems likely he will be chosen for his high celebrity status and well-known face to mount a challenge to Ken Livingstone’s hopes of winning a third term.
Johnson is known as an upper class jovial buffoon – not someone who is likely to be competent at running a vast and complex city like London.
But with disaffection with the Labour government running high and some of Livingstone’s policies – like support for London running the Olympics – very unpopular in some quarters, complacency would be a mistake.
Pensioners in particular would be in danger of losing their precious and hard-won freedom pass if Johnson became London Mayor – or for that matter of the mayorship fell into Liberal Democrat hands.
There is no evidence that Johnson has any clue what the freedom pass is or why it should be maintained.
His party is very much in favour of privatisation and would be likely to use London tax payers’ money to bail out the Metronet Tube company, which got its sums wrong when tendering for a Government contract to take on the repair and renewal of three major London Underground railway lines.

Don’t bail out Metronet!

THE RMT transport union is urging London mayor Ken Livingstone not to waste more public money on failed London Underground privateers Metronet and has called for the controversial public-private-partnership (PPP) contracts to be brought back in house. As the PPP arbiter announced that Metronet was likely to get an interim extra £121 million of the £551 million it has asked for to cover “cost overruns” on the Bakerloo, Central and Victoria lines over the next year, RMT renewed its call for the PPP contracts to be brought back in house.
Metronet is seeking £992 million for overruns for the first seven-and-a-half years of the BCV contract alone, and is expected to file a similar claim for its sub-surface lines contract.
“One-hundred-and-twenty-one-million is still £121 million too much, even if it is nowhere near the £2 billion more of taxpayers’ and fare-payers’ money that Metronet is looking for,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said last Tuesday.
“Even if the PPP was delivering everything expected of it, it would still be less than LUL delivered when it controlled infrastructure work in the public sector, and it would still be costing billions more.
“Metronet, and the PPP scam that has already allowed them to siphon millions out of the Tube network, have clearly failed and it is clearer than ever that these contracts should be brought back in-house before any more damage is done,” Bob Crow said.

Friends of Korea rebut media lies

LONDON’S Marchmont Centre filled up last Sunday as friends of Korea along with others simply curious about life in Democratic Korea took part in a forum last Sunday evening that followed a debate on north Korea at the main Marxism 2007 festival of resistance earlier in the day.
NCP leader Andy Brooks, Ella Rule and Michael Chant all focused on the nuclear issue in their opening remarks but the meeting rapidly broadened into a discussion on Korean-style socialism as members of the audience who had been to Democratic Korea gave eye-witness accounts of what they saw to rebut some of the popular misconceptions about life under socialism raised by some of the audience.
Friends of Korea Chairman, Harpal Brar, welcomed the frank and open discussion, which included at least eight people who had personally visited north Korea, that hopefully opened the eyes of those who simply believe the lies and nonsense of the bourgeois media while encouraging others to take an active part in future Korean solidarity events. This was the first fringe meeting organised by Friends of Korea but it clearly won’t be the last!

photo: Andy Brooks, Michael Chant and Harpal Brar

London news round-up

RMT warned of Tube danger

by Caroline Colebrook

THE RMT transport union last week had repeatedly warned of dangers before last Thursday’s derailment on the Central Line.
Investigators say a roll of loose tarpaulin could have caused the Tube train to come off the rails in the middle of the morning rush hour, injuring 40 people and trapping hundreds for hours.
Six of the eight carriages of the westbound Central Line train between Mile End and Bethnal Green stations were derailed when a sheet of tarpaulin stored by the side of the track came loose as trains passed at 35 miles an hour.
The driver reported he had seen the obstruction and put on his emergency brakes but the sheet got caught under the wheels on the right-hand running rail, taking six carriages off the track.
Around 350 passengers were trapped to two hours in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Another 450 passengers were stranded on the train behind. Eleven had to be taken to hospital but fortunately no one was seriously injured. Nevertheless many were distressed as, initially, some thought the crash was the result of terrorist activity.
One passenger described the scene: “It started to rock unbelievably, really violently, the carriage filled with smoke and we could see sparks and there was a smell of electrical burning as the driver was braking.
“People were shouting and the driver’s voice sounded really shaky – he said he did not know what we had gone over but that we had derailed.”
The driver then walked through the train trying to calm passengers’ fears. Another passenger said: “The worst thing was the heat. Some people were having difficulty breathing but when the emergency services arrived, those were the first to be led away.” Two hours after the derailment the passengers were led to safety along the track.
RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that it was the fourth incident in 18 months in the same area where private contractors were operating.
“This union has raised concerns over the bad storage of equipment by contractors in this area and wrote to London Underground back in April demanding an investigation yet nothing has been done.
“It has also been the third serious Tube derailment in less than four years, including the Chancery Lane derailment and the one at White City,” he said. RMT reiterated its call for London Mayor Ken Livingstone to take these private contracts introduced under PPP (public-private partnership) back in-house.
“Before Ken got elected as London Mayor he said he did not want ‘blood on his hands’ over PPP so now he has an opportunity to act in the interests of public safety.
“RMT is calling on Ken Livingstone to take these contracts back in-house before we have a disaster on our hands,” Bob said.

Jailhouse Rock

CAMPAIGNING folk singer Billy Bragg and Mick Jones, former lead guitarist with the Clash, have launched an initiative to get prisoners out of our overcrowded jails through rock and roll.
Last Friday the two went to Wormwood Scrubs in West London to hand over five guitars as part of Bragg’s Jail Guitar Doors campaign to provide instruments for inmates.
Bragg said: “We all believe people have to be punished for their crimes. I support punishment. But I also believe in rehabilitation. The question is, do we want to help people not to reoffend and to contribute to society? Getting them involved in music is one way we can do that now.”
The initiative has the support of Tim Snowdon, director of the charity Changing Tunes, which uses music to rehabilitate inmates in nine prisons.
He says the facts speak for themselves. “Sixty-one per cent of ex-prisoners reoffend within two years of release. But ex-prisoners who take part in a Changing Tunes programme have a re-conviction rate of between 10 per cent and 15 per cent.
“Most importantly that means there are fewer victims if crime, but it can also save people whose lives were in a spiral of destruction.”

Scotland Yard in new race row

THE METROPOLITAN Police force is facing serious complaints from a black, British-born youth worker of Somali parents after confidential surveillance tapes obtained by his lawyers revealed astonishing racist remarks from the officers in charge of his custody.
The supervisory officer described Fahmi Hassan as “an arrogant shit” and an “obnoxious Somalian”. The officer said Hassan “has lots of wants, lots of needs, lots of arrogance; nothing a good beating wouldn’t put right. Knows his rights, knows the law.”
One custody suite officer told his colleagues that Hassan was “an absolute knob head”. Then the sergeant adds: “There is a great film. Have you seen the film Black Hawk Down about an American helicopter that gets shot down in Somalia, Mogadishu.
“It is based on the truth. It is when the Americans very foolishly went into Somalia to suppress the warlords. There is no one in charge in Somalia. It’s just tribal factions. There’s no bugger in charge in Somalia.
“He’s a Somalian. They are very violent people I think. If you think about it, the ones who got out of Somalia are either the middle classes or the kids with guns. It’s that type of environment.”
Hassan had been arrested accused of assaulting a police officer and was cleared later at a magistrate’s court. Now he is suing the Met for wrongful arrest, assault and malicious prosecution.

Massive equal pay lobby

HUNDREDS of women employed by local authorities descended on the Houses of Parliament last Tuesday to lobby their MPs for proper funding for single status pay frameworks and equal pay for council workers.
The mass lobby – and accompanying rally – was organised by public sector unions Unison, GMB and Unite to protest at the lack of progress – 35 years after the Equal Pay Act and after 10 years of Labour government.
Unison head of local government Heather Wakefield said: “The fight for equal pay in local government is a century long.
We’re calling on the Government to put money where its mouth is and give women the money that they deserve.” She told a pre-lobby briefing rally that it was “an historic day”. We’re 10 years on from the signing of Single Status”, but there is still “a gender gap as wide as the Grand Canyon – it’s a scandal by any measure.”
And as lobbyers prepared to meet their MPs, Wakefield told them, to loud
applause: “It’s what women are owed – it’s not a favour; it should have been going in their bank accounts for years.”
Offering a potted history of the struggle for equal pay in local government – at around a century, much, much longer than most present probably realised – Wakefield paid tribute to the late Barbara Castle, who had brought in the 1972 Equal Pay Act under some duress, and told lobbyers to “keep banging the drum” for pay justice.
Dr Katherine Rake of the Fawcett Society told the rally: “Ten years into a Labour government, it is nothing short of a scandal that we have the biggest pay gap in Europe. At the current rate of change, it will take 80 years to close the gap for full-time workers and 140 years for part-time workers.”
Addressing the event, Diana Holland of TGWU Unite said that it was important to ensure that equal pay was not used as an excuse to bring down men’s wages – to “make equal pay a dirty word”.
And she said that a recent Equal Opportunities Commission poster summed up the situation with its slogan: “Get your daughter ready for working life – give her less pocket money than your son.”

Korea is One!

On 27th July 1953 US imperialism was forced to sign the armistice with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea that ended the Korean war.

The Irish peace process: the next step

By Theo Russell

The question of the British Labour Party organising and standing in elections in the north of Ireland came under the spotlight last week at a highly successful meeting organised by Islington North Labour Party on the future of the Irish peace process.
The meeting brought together Martina Anderson, a Sinn Féin delegate on the Northern Ireland Policing Committee and director of the party’s unionist outreach programme; Sammy Wilson of the Democratic Unionist Party; Rodney McEwan of the Ulster Unionist P and Paul Callaghan of the Social & Democratic Labour Party.
Martina Anderson, who spent several years in Armagh women’s gaol during the conflict, focused on the need to tackle poverty and deprivation affecting both communities in the north of Ireland.
She said there were 100,000 pensioners and 50,000 children living in poverty, and 3,000 people a year dying from poverty-related causes, and quoted accountants Price Cooper Waterhouse who described Northern Ireland as a “basket-case economy”.
Speaking of the class divisions in the north, she said “there are comfortable people in both our communities who want to keep our communities apart, who do not want a society predicated on equality and human rights for all the marginalised groups.”
Another key issue at the meeting was that of Irish unity. Paul Callaghan said the consequences of a divided country for past 80 years, and the conflict which arose from that, could not be ignored.
“The question now is to build a country which is reconciled with itself and bringing the unionist community into the mainstream of Irish political life, without which unity is impossible.”
He added that people in the north of Ireland should look to the Irish Republic’s National Development Plan when planning their own economic strategy.
The DUP’s Sammy Wilson disappointed everyone by speaking as if nothing had changed in the past decade. He said the unionist community was unhappy with “the release of terrorists, the actions of Sinn Féin ministers and attacks on the police. Sinn Féin wants to be in government while running guns, committing murders and running spy rings.”
He did however add that the DUP “wants devolution on a basis which would actually last.”
Rodney McEwan of the UUP claimed that “the British government made direct rule as uncomfortable as possible,” using cross-community issues such as the 11 plus exams and water rates to encourage the parties to make a deal on power-sharing.
But he sparked a lively debate when he called on the British Labour Party to “look seriously at organising in Northern Ireland” and “give people the chance to vote for a party of national power”.

photo: Sammy Wilson next to Martina Anderson

London Transport deal with Caracas

LONDON Transport commissioner Peter Hendy last week led a team to theVenezuelan capital Caracas to negotiate a deal – initiated by President Hugo Chavez – to exchange expertise in dealing with traffic congestion for oilfor London buses.
The evening rush hour in Caracas is nightmarish, with vehicles jammed in giant motionless queues, while hawkers sell beer to frustrated motorists;motorcyclists mount pavements, endangering the lives of pedestrians and police look on indifferently.London is to receive a discount valued at £15 million a year for oil for its buses – which will be passed on as half-price tickets for people on income support.
In return, London Transport leaders will pass on their experience and expertise at improving public transport and introducing congestion charging in Caracas.Hendy said it was unclear whether Caracas would gain an equal value benefit: “It’s clearly not the case that the expertise we have is so unique that you could never get it anywhere else. But if you did get it somewhere else you’d have to pay for it, and it might be of uncertain provenance.”
Meanwhile Metronet, one of the private companies contracted to carry out a huge overhaul of London Underground’s network in a public-private partnership, is seeking a review of its performance as the costs are soaring far more than it expected.Metronet is estimated to be heading for a £750 million deficit on the deal that could climb to over £1 billion.Metronet argues that Transport for London should share the extra costs because it has had to carry out work not specified in the original contract.
But TfL, backed by London Mayor Ken Livingstone, has blamed the overspend on management incompetence at Metronet.A TfL spokesperson said: “Evidently the extraordinary review process must not divert Metronet and their shareholders from the need to radically improve the company’s performance. The promised improvements to Tube track,trains and signals must be delivered on time and on budget.”

Fire cleaners awarded £7.20 per hour

THURSDAY’S meeting of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority saw contractor fire station cleaners awarded the London Living Wage of £7.20 an hour after a week of political disagreement.The previous week the fire authority’s Finance, Procurement and Property committee, voted against paying the London Living Wage and the matter wasreferred to the full committee.
Since then Mayor of London blocked the appointment of a number of Conservative and Liberal Democrat appointees to the body leading to both sides accusing the other of unlawful behaviour.Earlier this week the Mayor advised the London Assembly he had appointed an additional woman Assembly Member, Angie Bray, taking the number of femaleAssembly Members to two. Bray replaced one of those nominated by the Conservative Assembly group.
Speaking after yesterday’s decision the Mayor said: “This was a hard fought victory against those who prefer poverty pay to a living wage. The members of the fire authority who voted to apply decent wages to their cleaning staff are to be congratulated, but it shows there is a very sharp dividing line on this issue in London.”
Conservative Assembly Member (AM) and LFEPA Vice Chair Brian Coleman warned that the increase in pay could see four stations close.“Paying London Fire Station cleaners the London Living wage of £7.20, as Labour’s Val Shawcross suggested, is just ridiculous. A wage hike to those levels is equivalent to the cost of running four stations.“If we went ahead with this pay deal, the money would have to come from somewhere and she needs to say where. Do we close four fire stations to pay for it?”This claim was later denied by Labour AM and Chair of the London FireAuthority Val Shawcross.

Politics after Blair

from New Worker Correspondent

AROUND 200 people gathered in Euston, London last Saturday to hear speakers from the trade union and labour movement and to debate and discuss the future of politics in Britain after Blair in a conference organised by the Morning Star.
The opening plenary session was chaired by the Morning Star’s editor, John Haylett and the first speaker was Jon Cruddas MP – one of the candidates for the Labour deputy leadership. Cruddas spoke about rebuilding the Labour Party and regaining the 4.5 million votes the party lost between the general elections of 1997 and 2005.
He called for support for black and ethnic minorities, public sector workers, students coping with serious debt and manual workers.
He also spoke on the way that the neo-Nazi British National Party is winning votes from people who do not know where the BNP is coming from and who are turning to them from despair.
Cruddas blamed lost votes on the Iraq War debacle, a failure to defend multiculturalism, the privatisation of public services and the deterioration of working class housing.
In a debate on trade union freedom Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT transport union, declared: “Social Democracy cannot save the working class from the effects of global capitalism.” Brian Caton, general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association, reported to the conference that the prison service chief Phil Wheatley has taken his union to court five times, aiming to criminalise the union for defending its rule book.
Union lawyer Peter Hendy spoke of the struggle to regain trade union rights taken away by the Thatcher government – a fight he intends to take to the European Court of Human Rights.
In a debate about privatisation and public ownership, Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack spoke of the effects of free market capitalism that has been unleashed in Britain since the time of Thatcher and Reagan. “Public service has been sliced up and contracted out,” he said. And he predicted that Gordon Brown would be unlikely to change this.
Other speakers included Father Geoffrey Bottoms, CND’s Kate Hudson and Andrew Murray of Stop the War on a debate on peace.
Then Tony Benn, Dot Gibson of the National Pensioners’ Convention and Salma Yaqoob spoke in a debate on social equality. thanked
In the final plenary session John McDonnell MP thanked those who had backed his bid to challenge Brown’s accession to replace Blair – though the breakthrough failed to happen. And London Mayor Ken Livingstone spoke of next year’s mayoral election.
The prevailing politics in the conference were social democratic Labour and Communist Party of Britain revisionism and there was a complete lack of input from any Marxist-Leninist perspective.
Nevertheless it was a very intensive and worthwhile conference, covering lots of political issues with powerful contributions from union leaders and from the floor.

RMT condemns Tube booking office cuts

"UNNECESSARY AND dangerous” plans by London Underground to close 40 ticket offices and to reduce drastically the opening hours of dozens more will be resisted, the RMT transport union said last week.
RMT warned that the proposals were the thin end of the wedge, and that no Tube booking office would be safe if London Underground was allowed to proceed with its first round of closures and cuts.
“These plans will be met with anger from Tube workers and passengers alike because they are unnecessary and dangerous,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said.
“We need to see more visible staff on duty at stations, but not at the expense of booking offices, which provide an essential service to the public way beyond selling tickets.
“The 40 ticket offices earmarked for closure are the tip of the iceberg, because London Underground Limited (LUL) wants to close many dozens more at weekends, during off-peak hours and afternoon peaks hours.
“These are straightforward cuts and they affect every Tube worker because they will lead to more ticket disputes, more assaults on staff, more stress, and more of our members working alone.
“We have already made it clear to London Underground that we regard these proposals as fully negotiable,” Bob Crow said.

Enough! Demo in London

Enough is enough! End the occupation!

AROUND 20,000 protesters last Saturday marched through central London, including a contingent from the London District of the NCP with the national banner, demanding an Israeli withdrawal from all Palestine lands occupied since the Six-Day War.
The demonstration, organised by the Enough Coalition to mark the 40th anniversary of that war, was supported by trade unions, community and Islamic groups and by progressive Jewish groups.
The march made its way from Lincolns Inn Fields to Trafalgar Square for a mass rally. Among the speakers was Palestinian Information Minister Dr Mustafa Barghouti. He said: "There is something wrong with the world when, before the leaders of nations, occupation turns to apartheid and nothing is done, when Israel is allowed to build a wall three times as long as the Berlin wall and twice as high, which divides Palestinian from Palestinian, not Palestinian from Israeli." He called for a boycott of Israeli goods.
Professor Immanual Hassassian of the Palestinian delegation to Britain said that Israel could not "be a democracy and an occupier at the same time".
Other speakers included Betty Hunter of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Unison deputy general secretary Keith Sonnet and former Israeli soldier Netan’l Silverman.

London fire service divided on cleaners' pay

LONDON Mayor Ken Livingstone last Monday called upon members of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) to ensure that the London living wage of £7.20 per hour is paid as a minimum to the fire authority’s cleaners, after members of authority’s finance committee were split over the issue.
The fire authority’s finance, procurement and property committee met on Monday to discuss awarding contracts for cleaning fire stations and other premises. But members were evenly divided on the issue.
Now it will now be discussed at the full LFEPA meeting on 21st June.
Three members voted against paying the London living wage to contract cleaners, whilst three voted to ensure that the living wage rate was paid.
The three opposed to the living wage were Brian Coleman Assembly Member (Conservative, Barnet and Camden), Bob Blackman AM (Conservative, Brent and
Harrow) and Cllr Maurice Heaster (Conservative, Wandsworth).
Ken Livingstone said: "This is the nasty wing of politics. It is scandalous that there was an attempt to block the payment of the London living wage to these cleaners.
"We are now seeing relentless attacks on policies to ease cost of living for Londoners on the lowest incomes, from votes on the London Assembly to abolish free bus and tram travel for children, to this attempt to block a decent wage for fire station cleaners.
"The meeting of the fire authority on 21st June should reject the arguments of those who want to pay cleaners a lower wage and I strongly urge fire authority members to vote to pay these cleaners the London living wage.
"The current figure of £7.20 per hour as a basic London living wage is significantly higher than the national minimum wage because of the high cost of housing in London."

Yellow River Piano Concerto 黃河鋼琴協奏曲(1969-70): IV 保衛黃河

Memorial to the Iraq War

by Stella Moutafis

THERE SEEM to have been a lot of art reviews in the New Worker lately – well (and you can trust me on this) it is not just to fill the pages!
The point is, there has been much to see in London recently in the field of art with some political content. And as “Art” can serve to explore and reflect on social and political ideas, it has been worth covering. The continuing imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have inspired a new round of politically conscious modern artistic expression and this is reflected in a new exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London.
The ICA was established in 1947 by a collective of artists, poets and writers to showcase and champion contemporary culture across a wide range of art forms and it consists of two galleries, two cinemas, and a theatre all on one site, plus a bookshop, cafe,and bar. Its mission is “to be a home of new arts, culture, and ideas”.
For this exhibition, 26 artists were invited to submit proposals for a memorial to the Iraq War, addressing the invasion and occupation of the country, its slide into civil war and the conflict’s relation to global jihadism and the “war on terror”.
The mostly young contributors come from various countries in Europe, the Arab world, Afghanistan, and the United States. With the stated aim to “encourage debate about how this episode in history might be remembered,” this exhibition is the result. Obviously, though, the conflict is very much still ongoing.
There is work in various mediums, on both Iraq and related subjects, such as the “war on terror” and the US concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay.
Just a few of the very varied works on offer include: The American artist Nate Lowman, whose presentation of burnt-out American petrol-pumps from the 1950s and 60s represents both the “American Dream” and what US involvement in the Middle East is all about and what makes that “dream” possible!
Afghan artist Lida Abdu has created a series of 10 postcards entitled A history of the world through ruins. Not at all “wish you were here” type images – but photos of destruction either directly or indirectly the result of the “war on terror” in Afghanistan.
Memorial 2007 by Swiss artist Christoph Buchel is an initially puzzling series of three rooms, representing a drug administration room waiting area, and an empty white room.The storyline is the supposed giving to users of powdered drugs and body ashes of victims of war, to induce a ‘trip’ to be experienced inside the white void. The faithfully-reproduced hospital details are instantly recognisable by those of us who have spent some time in such places!
Performance art, also on offer, includes “Fallujah”, which is we are told based on verbatim testimony from the heart of the war zone.
The venue for an exhibition on this subject is ironic - The Mall, London, being within an area that could be described as “British Imperialism Central”. Our supposed ruler is one of the ICA’s neighbours here; her home — Buckingham Palace is just round the corner.
There may well be visitors to Her Majesty who might benefit from some instruction in the subject of the inhumanity that imperialist states mete out in pursuit of their ruling class’ agenda. If so ,they should stroll across to the ICA for this exhibition....and, maybe, have some enlightenment!

The Memorial to the Iraq war exhibition continues until 27th June. The ICA is located on The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH. Galleries open daily 12pm – 7.30pm (9pm on Thursdays) during exhibitions and the admission price is £2.00.

Latest issue on Information Bulletin out now

Review


Confidence in the workers

by Ray Jones

Information Bulletin 2/2006 15, £5.00 plus 50p P&P, NCP lit, PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ.

“...I WISH YOU good work and a final word of great confidence. Confidence we feel presently in Portugal. Confidence in the workers and in our struggle. Confidence that, looking around this room we feel in the future of the world,” said Jeronimo de Sousa from the Portuguese Communist Party in a positive and up lifting welcome to this international meeting of communists hosted by the PCP.
Communists from all over the world came together in Portugal to inform, support, explain and debate; giving useful insights into their work at home and their take on the world situation. Their deliberations were strengthened by the presence of the communist parties of Cuba, Vietnam and China (as an observer) — parties which hold state power.
The contributions contain much of interest which enlighten as well as occasional eye openers and things that make you scratch your head — for example the failure of the Sudanese party to mention Darfur and the Communist Party of Britain’s implied claim to be leading the British labour movement in its country briefing.
Andy Brooks from the New Communist Party of Britain gave the bottom line when he said: “The communist movement is based on the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism. Its purpose is to equip the working class so it can establish working class state power and then build a socialist society. Bourgeois democracy is a fraud...Socialism is essential to eliminate exploitation, unemployment, poverty, economic crisis and war. Socialism is the only solution to climate change, pollution and global warming...”

Turnham Green peace market

by New Worker Correspondent

THE NEW WORKER and other New Communist Party literature sparked plenty of interest at last Saturday’s annual peace market at Turnham Green, West London.
Comrades from Southall NCP were kept busy raising funds for the New Worker: selling home-made marmalade, second-hand books and bric-a-brac. They were also busy talking to people and engaging in discussions.
The sunshine and relaxed, friendly atmosphere made for an enjoyable day; a profit of £60 was raised.

A new dawn in posters

by Stella Moutafis

A NEW DAWN came to the Chinese people with the foundation of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949. In the words of Mao Zedong, the people had “stood up” and achieved their independence.
There was - of course - much to be done in building the new socialist state. Artists at that time had work to do in educating and inspiring the working people. At a time of widespread illiteracy in China, the political poster was highly suitable in communicating the aims and ambitions of the people’s government.
From originals in paint or woodcuts these posters were mass-produced and distributed all over the country. The artists would be amazed that these “vintage posters” are still in existence. Their political posters were designed for instant impact and they had not been intended for posterity. But they are not only still around – they’re framed and sought-after by the patrons of up-market art galleries...such as those here in capitalist Britain!
The Chambers Gallery, near the Barbican in central London is currently showing an exhibition of Chinese political posters from the 1950s -70s. Launched in 2004, this gallery specialises in East European and revolutionary art. This exhibition is on show till 15th June and other exhibitions of interest are planned.
The 100 posters on display are described in the catalogue as being not just a collection of propaganda art from a bygone era – but representing a part of history.
The display is certainly impressive. Surprisingly well preserved; they are colourful and bold in style. Composed so as to convey a clear message to a wide audience, the mood is one of determination and optimism in facing the future. Subjects focused on are Mao Zedong and representations of the working people along with resolute opposition to attacks from the imperialist states.
We are given a window on Chinese history over the years. With events such as the 1950-53 Korean War covered and a succession of campaigns in which posters were used to broadcast exhortations to the people on the part of the people’s government.
We can see the enthusiasm for The Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, and glimpse part of the turmoil during the launch of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that began in 1966 and continued for another ten years.
All the posters on display are for sale – with price-tags of £300 upwards! So any reader who thinks the may have some Chinese or Soviet posters somewhere at home would be well advised to look them out — especially if in need of a bob or two...and I know of at least one Chinese poster at Party Centre!

The Chambers Gallery is located in the City of London, minutes from the Barbican Station, and is housed in a renovated art deco building at 23 Long Lane, London EC1A 9HL . It is open Monday to Friday from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm and admission is free.

Sack Metronet -- not Tube workers!

THE TUBE’S biggest union will be in dispute with failing privateer consortium Metronet if there is any attempt to cut even one of its more than 2,000 members’ jobs, RMT said last week.
As the troubled consortium announced plans to cut 290 posts under pressure from its bankers, RMT said that Tube workers will not pay the price for Metronet’s failure.
“It is Metronet that needs to be sacked, not our members,” general secretary Bob Crow said.
“Metronet’s death throes should not be allowed to decimate the skilled maintenance workforce that will still be needed long after Metronet is buried.
“If ever there was a case for euthanasia, this is it.
“We warned months ago that the consortium would try to claw back losses from its over-runs by cutting back on work if it failed to wring more money out of the public purse.
“We have already beaten off attempts to outsource jobs on the cheap, and we are telling Metronet today that if even one RMT job is axed we will be in dispute.
“Our members are out there every day trying to maintain and improve the Tube network despite rip-off contracts that have failure built into their very fabric.
“Metronet was handed a licence to shovel taxpayers and fare-payers’ money out of the Tube network by the million, and in return it has delivered failure and delay.
“For the sake of our members’ jobs, for the sake of the Tube and for the sake of London, Metronet must be sacked and infrastructure work brought back in-house under the direct control of London Underground,” Bob Crow said.

Revolution in the Himalayas

by Andy Brooks

Hoist the Revolutionary Flag on Mount Everest in the 21st Century: Second Wave Publications, London 2007, pbk, 43pp £3.50. Democracy, multi-party system and the withering away of the state under proletarian leadership: Second Wave Publications, London 2006, pbk, 88pp £4.00.

IN FEBRUARY 1996 the Nepalese masses took up the gun to end the feudal monarchy that had enslaved them for centuries. The revolt was led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), one of the wings of the Nepalese communist movement that rejected the parliamentary road that had briefly led to two minority communist governments in the 1990s, which proved powerless in the face of the intrigues of the bourgeois parties and the determination of the royal family to retain autocratic power.
The Maoists’ People’s Liberation Army rapidly established popular control over much of the Himalayan kingdom but their fight was largely ignored by the British communist movement partly because the CPN (Maoist) only maintained international links with communists who had a dogmatic and often sectarian attitude to the rest of the movement and largely because so little information about the struggle was available in English.
That all changed last year with the momentuous events in Kathmandu which forced the King to abandon autocracy, at least for the moment, and agree to talks with the Maoists and the other democratic parties of Nepal. Now there is a ceasefire and the Maoists are part of the provisional government and the King is desperately trying to fend off demands for his abdication and the establishment of a democratic republic. But who are the CPN(Maoists) and what do they want? Second Wave Publications has gone some way to answering this by publishing a series of pamphlets on the Nepalese revolution over the past two years.
The latest, Hoist the Revolutionary Flag on Mount Everest in the 21st Century, is an interview with Maoist leader Chairman Prachanda given in 2006 that covers their tactics, theory and practice during the armed struggle.
The second is a collection of theorectical articles by Prachanda and other Maoist leaders on the state and democracy together with two commentaries by Stalin. Both pamphlets are detailed specialist works but they are essential reading to anyone studying the Nepalese revolution.

Some Second Wave publications including Hoist the Revolutionary Flag on Mount Everest are available from Housman’s Bookshop in London. All can be obtained directly from:
Second Wave Publications & Distribution, BM Box 2978 London WC1N 3XX
Please add 50p for postage and packing if ordering by post.

Unions: Cruddas for Deputy PM

by Daphne Liddle

UNION leaders who failed to support John McDonnell in his bid for a chance to challenge Gordon Brown for the leadership of the Labour Party have finally stopped shuffling their feet and whispering in corners and declared their support for John Cruddas’ bid for the deputy leadership.
And the Dagenham MP is definitely looking the most promising of the handful of candidates that include Hilary Benn, renegade former union leader Alan Johnson, Hazel Blears and Harriet Harman.
Cruddas has identified three main, linked issues to campaign on: the shortage of affordable housing, large scale migration flows and the increasing economic insecurity of the working class.
He is the long-standing MP for Dagenham in Essex, lives in his constituency and has a good relationship with his local Labour Party and the voters. He has worked tirelessly in local broad ant-fascist campaigns which have succeeded in minimising the British National Party vote in his part of the borough. Cruddas’s approach is to acknowledge that the BNP in the past have made gains by concentrating on the issues that Labour has neglected – especially housing. He said: “The lack of affordable social housing units is the outstanding public policy failure … For years in our constituency we’ve been arguing that if we had 6,000 extra council units, we could deal with the pressures in terms of housing and transfers.”
Some of his rivals have also just discovered that there is a housing crisis in Britain now and that the working class are suffering because of it. Education Secretary Alan Johnson, who seems to be moving to the left in order to win support, is calling for councils to be enabled to build homes again – a measure that has been ruled out by the Governments of Thatcher, Major and Blair.
Hazel Blears wants cheap mortgages and more private home-ownership – which would push house prices up even more – while Benn is calling for a mix of rented and private homes to be built.
But the housing shortage has not come about by chance or neglect. It is a policy to suit landowners and speculators that pushes up rents, land values and house prices and has led to a boom in new private landlordism. Brown’s economic policies have fuelled this process.
Cruddas blames the policy that forces council to pay millions every year from council house rents into the central government’s housing revenue account. He said: “If central government said the council could retain this rent, we could purchase on the private market buy-to-let properties at a rate of 100 a year, and then we could use the rent money to reinvest and borrow against this stock. So it is not a case of waiting for new build, it is a case of being creative now.”
He rightly condemned the recent remarks by Margaret Hodge, which called for “native families” to be given priority over migrants in the allocation of council housing. This shameful call is a sop to BNP supporters. It divides the working class according to how long their families have lived in Britain and sets one part of the community against another while the shortage of housing is a deliberate ruling class policy that is hurting “natives” and migrants. Cruddas pointed out that the problem was “purely one of supply”.
Cruddas also addresses the issue of migration and accepts that the figures are larger than the Government acknowledges. He blamed both Tory and Labour leaders, saying: Both parties collude in ignoring what is happening … if the population is growing faster than the state finances public services, then you have got a problem.”
He called for an amnesty for illegal migrants “who have become the cornerstone of our flexible labour market” and for the £11,000 that each deportation costs to be invested in improving services. He has also called for a moratorium on new private NHS contracts, in line with the demands of the public sector unions that are backing him.
Derek Simpson, general secretary of the Amicus section of the newly merged union Unite, has said: “John Cruddas’ stated policies mirror our members’ desire for better job security, decent pensions, affordable housing and public services provided by the public sector.
“Jon is unlike any other candidate standing for the Deputy Leadership - he alone is calling for a change of direction in order to reconnect with the Labour Party’s core supporters.”
Unfortunately Simpson then added: “We have the pleasure of being able to announce that our political committee have taken the decision to support Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party and Jon Cruddas as Deputy Leader.”
London Mayor Ken Livingstone is also backing Cruddas.

More racist nonsense from Hodge

THOUGH THE LOCAL elections were bad news for Labour we can console ourselves with the fact that the neo-nazis failed to make the breakthrough they had been predicting. The British National Party (BNP) had boasted that it would increase its number of councillors from 49 to 100. It ended up with no net gains at all. This was largely due to the consistent work of the broad anti-racist campaign in the working class estates targeted by the fascists in recent years.
But just when we thought the fascists had their backs against the wall, Margaret Hodge, the worthless Labour MP for Barking, has given them a new lease of life when she blamed immigrants for the housing crisis last Sunday. This isn’t the first time that this Blairite junior minister has played the racist card.
On the eve of the London borough elections in May 2006 Hodge claimed that eight out of ten white working class voters in her constituency would be tempted to vote for the BNP because “no one else is listening to them” about concerns over housing, asylum seekers and jobs in Barking and Dagenham. It was a publicity shot in the arm for the fascists who won 12 seats in the borough.
Britain once was proud of its great council estates and its policy of welcoming refugees seeking asylum. Hodge herself is the daughter of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who settled in London. Now she tells us that immigrants should go to the back of the queue in the allocation of council housing regardless of need.
To his credit, Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for neighbouring Dagenham has condemned Hodge’s comments as “inflammatory”.
“We’re in danger of racialising arguments over housing allocation rather than concentrating on the need for greater social housing provision,” he said. Cruddas, unlike Hodge, has thrown his weight behind the local anti-racist movement, and that alone makes him the most credible candidate in the race for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party.
Barking and Dagenham is not the capital of the Fourth Reich and the overwhelmingly working class population are not racists or admirers of Adolf Hitler.
In the 1920s the London County Council built the largest council estate in the world in Dagenham. It was a centre for the motor industry, chemicals and small arms. But, like many other traditional working class towns, it has suffered from decades of neglect under the Tory and New Labour governments. The factories have closed. The giant 300-acre Ford plant, that once employed tens of thousands making cars, has largely gone. What’s left just makes diesel engines and gear-boxes.
Barking and Dagenham has a relatively poor, ageing and elderly population and income levels are among the lowest in the capital. Last year Barking and Dagenham saw the largest rise in London for rates of unemployment. Employment rates overall are below the European Union threshold. Many residents are engaged in temporary, low-paid employment outside the borough. All of this makes it fertile ground for the racist lies peddled by the fascists who claim that immigrants and asylum seekers are given favoured treatment for homes and jobs.
There is a housing problem in the borough as most of the stock was sold-off during the “right to buy” frenzy of the Thatcher years, which also saw the imposition of rules that restricted councils’ investment in housing, preventing them from subsidising it from local taxes or reinvesting the money from sales into new housing.
The solution is to lift all the restrictions on councils and allow them to build new affordable and secure council homes for rent with life-long secure tenancy; to allow the right of anyone who needs or wants to rent public housing to do so without time limit or means testing.

photo: Dagenham against the fascists

Cleaners lobby London debate

RMT TUBE and rail cleaners last Saturday converged on the Queen Elizabeth II conference to hammer home their message that the time has come to end poverty pay on the capital’s transport network.
Together with families and supporters, the cleaners lobbied the Mayor’s “State of London” debate.
RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “The Mayor has called this conference to discuss how everyone can benefit from London’s success.
“A good start would be to end the scandal of poverty pay and ensure that the people cleaning London’s stations and trains get paid at least the London minimum wage of £7.20 and get at least 28 days’ paid holiday.
“The cleaning subbies are parasites who make their money by employing people on rock-bottom rates and awful conditions, and the time has come to give them their marching orders and bring all cleaning services back in-house.
“The unity of our members across the capital has already prevented more than 200 ISS cleaners being made compulsorily redundant, and we will be holding Metronet to the commitment we squeezed out of them to bring their cleaning back in-house.
“No city that tolerates the abuse of workers on poverty pay can claim to be a world leader, and no-one can wash their hands of their responsibility to end the scourge of low pay on the capital’s transport networks.”

NHS beset by bandwagoners and privatisers

by Stella Moutafis

IN EPSOM we have the dubious privilege of always being represented by a Conservative MP and the current MP, Chris Grayling, is well-known locally for jumping on any passing bandwagon – if it looks likely to raise his profile!
So he has been active in the campaigning that is happening here over an issue of major concern across the political spectrum – the future of our local hospitals.
On the 5th May, Grayling joined local hospital staff in a major protest event, organised by the public sector union Unison and local campaigners.
A hospital bed was pushed through the streets from St Helier Hospital in the Sutton area to central Epsom. This was followed by a rally and delivery of a letter of protest to the Epsom General Hospital (EGH) administration.
It was the second such event in the last year, part of a long-running campaign as these hospitals have had an uncertain future for some time.
A plan to close both and build a new super-size hospital has apparently been shelved. But they both face almost certain downgrading, with the controlling Trust planning to axe ever more beds, and possibly up to 500 staff, in a bid to make savings of £41 million!
Unfortunately the turnout was well below what had been hoped for - with the Epsom rally attracting a feeble 200 or so. Geoff Martin of the pressure group London Health Emergency, was one of the speakers.
He said that it is not feasible to cut £41 million from a local NHS budget without cutting services to a “dangerous level”. He also maintained that “politicians are responsive to public pressure”.
It seems more likely, though, in view of his small audience, that local people are weary of having their views ignored! Two of my neighbours, who work at Epsom hospital, were there.
A hospital porter and a secretary in the pathology department – they have been getting increasingly frustrated at the uncertainty – and continual changes at their place of work.
Members of the Residents’ Association, which controls Epsom and Ewell Borough Council, were busy handing out draft letters to the hospital administrators in support of their own pet scheme for EGH.
Local businessman Adrian White has offered to “buy out EGH” and then run it as a joint NHS and private hospital. He is the proprietor of Denbies Wine Estate, near Dorking, which produces quality wine and is a popular local visitor centre.
It could be argued that moving into healthcare provision is a natural progression for his activities – in other words if his hospital can’t make you better, then at least his wine might make you feel better!
But, joking aside, this is an alarming proposal. Are we seriously to consider going back to the dark ages when hospital treatment was only guaranteed to the well-off -- with the rest of the population reliant on charity?
Meanwhile members of the Unite union (Amicus section) who work at the National Blood Transfusion Service took part in a protest demonstration outside the Blood Centre in Birmingham High Street on Friday 11th May and all day Saturday 12th May.They were be protesting over plans to concentrate the work of processing and testing blood into just three centres in England and closing the other eleven centres.
A consultative ballot of Unite members working at the centres showed that 81 per cent are in favour of industrial action.
Kevin Coyne, Unite’s head of health, who attended the demonstration said: “Hundreds of technical and scientific staff jobs are being put at risk and these highly skilled jobs cannot just be recruited or relocated to different parts of the country. The NHS and the nation have invested millions in training these staff and now propose to just dispose of them.
“The blood supply for the Midlands would be put at risk in an emergency as the nearest centre will be in Bristol, depriving the Midlands of blood and the geographical gaps in the service will also mean long delays for the vital testing of blood for many thousands of people.”

London's political cartoon gallery

by Stella Moutafis

POLITICS – it is a part of life that can be depressing - but can also be amusing. Humour is something humans are hard-wired for - and politicians are generally seen as fair game!
This is often expressed in the form of cartoons - and these can also be a vehicle of political comment. The work of political cartoonists, past and present, offers us insights into popular feeling about individuals and events in the news.
In London we are fortunate in having a gallery dedicated to this artform/political commentary. The Political Cartoon Gallery claims that it’s the world’s only centre dedicated to political cartoons and caricature and it hosts exhibitions and offers original cartoons and related merchandise for sale.
The work of Jimmy Friell (1912 -1997) has recently been the subject of an impressive exhibition here – an exhibition inspired – we are told – by a recent description of Gordon Brown as being of Stalinist ruthlessness.
And Friell was the in-house cartoonist for the Daily Worker for 20 years, joining the paper’s staff in 1936.
He worked under the pseudonym “Gabriel”, which he chose because he wished to ‘herald the end of capitalism”. It seems a bit dubious for a socialist to characterize himself on the basis of a Biblical reference. But to use another Biblical reference Friell “fell by the wayside” when in 1956, he resigned from the paper due to his opposition to its line on the Soviet intervention in Hungary that year!
Unfortunately, that exhibition is over. But it is well worth while considering a visit to see the vast array of cartoons on display and to check out for future events. The displays cover two floors and the gallery has it’s own café and well as a shop that offers a range of stock that is probably unique.
There is a selection of books with compilations of the work of various leading cartoonists. Of particular interest is a book published by the gallery itself: Do Cowards Flinch, a cartoon history of the Labour Party byAlan Mumford with a foreword by Neil Kinnock no less which will set you back £19.99 for the hard-back edition.
On a lighter note, along with the predictable mugs and postcards there are bound copies of such highly-esteemed periodicals as Viz and the Beano!
Our heritage of political cartoons over the years is to be cherished and hopefully, one day the New Worker’s own “Boxer” will be duly celebrated!

The Political Cartoon Gallery is at 32 Store Street London WC1E 7BS and it’s open from 9.30 - 5.30 pm Monday to Friday and 11.30 - 5.30pm Saturday. Admission is £1 which you get back if you buy something.

photo:a Gabriel cartoon from 1953 -- how did he feel about it after 1956?

Breaking the chains of capitalism

THE LONDON District of the New Communist Party last week marked May Day with a meeting in Marx House on the topic of “Smashing the Chains of Capitalism”.
The meeting was chaired by Neil Harris, who gave a brief history of the celebration of May Day as International Workers’ Day.
Comrade Tushar from the South Asia Forum spoke on the development of the working class struggle in India and how it has taken 87 years for the Indian Communist movement to realise that it needs its own strategy for revolution.
He said that society in India is divided along four fundamental lines: caste, class, ethnicity and gender and that the communist movement must address these issues.
Comrade Taimur Rahman from the Communist Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of Pakistan (CMKP) spoke of the parallel development of the communist movement in Pakistan and Bangladesh, working for much of the time in conditions of illegality where suspected communists could be arrested, tortured and murdered by the state.
He spoke of the damaging divisions that arose from the split between the Soviet and Chinese parties in the 1960s and how in the end they too concluded that revolutionary strategy must be built on the conditions prevailing in Pakistan rather than trying to copy too closely the example of other parties.
Michael Chant of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) spoke on fight wage slavery and on the illusions of bourgeois “representative democracy”.
NCP general secretary Andy Brooks wound up the speeches with a detailed history of May Day. He recalled the struggles in 1856 for the eight-hour day; the struggles for trade union legality in Toronto in 1872 and the fight in Chicago in 1886 for the eight-hour day, which led to violence, the framing, imprisonment and legal murder of six trade union leaders.
This was followed by informal socialising and discussion and a collection which raised £45 towards the cost of the meeting.

photo: Taimur Rahman makes a point

Rally for migrant rights

THOUSANDS of people last Monday took part in a rally in Trafalgar Square, including trade union and religious leaders, to call for an amnesty for illegal immigrants and the opportunity for them to become regularised citizens. The Strangers into Citizens campaign called for the regularisation of rejected asylum-seekers and those who have over stayed on their visas and who have been resident in Britain for more than four years. The campaign wants them to be given permits to stay and work and the opportunity to work towards full citizenship.
The campaign follows similar events in the European Union and in the United States and highlights the serious exploitation of those who are in Britain illegally – undermining labour protection legislation and the loss of income tax revenue that these people would pay if their situation was regularised.
Dave Prentis, general secretary of the public sector union Unison, said: “These workers already make an enormous contribution to our country, which will grow further when they are allowed to work without fear, pay taxes and make use of the skills and training that they bring from around the world.”
The major trade unions are calling for the promotion of more humane immigration rules, encouraging respect for asylum seekers and migrant workers, tackling racism in the workplace, combating the threats posed by far right groups and developing more cohesive communities.
Many faith leaders were also present to lend their support. The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, who celebrated the special mass, said he was in “no way” intending to encourage future illegal immigration.
But he said many illegal immigrants had already been in Britain for years and “their rights should be protected”.
He continued: “Many of them are married, settled down and so they live in a kind of shadow land. That’s not right and it’s not fair.”
Addressing the rally, he said: “Our Government and the governments all over the world must treat migrant workers with justice and with dignity.”
Others at Trafalgar Square included the Anglican Bishop of Southwark Dr Tom Butler, Labour deputy leadership contender Jon Cruddas, Jack Dromey from the Transport and General Workers’ Union, and Baroness Shirley Williams.

May Day in London

CIVIL SERVICE strikers were present in large numbers on London’s traditional May Day march last Tuesday, with the Public and Civil Service Union’s open-top battle bus leading the march.
Thousands of marchers took part in the event, including trade unions, political and community groups. London’s international communities were well represented as usual, especially Turkish and Kurdish communist and workers’ parties. NCP supporters gave out a special May Day leaflet and sold New Workers during the march.
The numbers present in the fine sunshine well exceeded most people’s expectations for a week-day march. It was colourful with hundreds of flags, banners and placards as well as bands, choirs and other musicians.

photo: assembling in Clerkenwell Green

MAY DAY!

Racist arson in Eltham

by Caroline Colebrook

OSMAN Atasagun, the owner of a the Cactus Tree restaurant in Eltham High Street, south east London, earlier this month returned from a holiday in Europe to find his business had been set alight and racist graffiti had been scrawled on the building.
A staircase leading to the first floor of the Mexican-style restaurant had been badly damaged and the walls of the ground floor and backyard were scrawled with racist graffiti, including swastika symbols and death threats.
The fire was spotted in the early hours of 12th April by a worker at a petrol station opposite the restaurant who alerted the fire brigade, who arrived and had the blaze under control within 35 minutes.
Atasagun told the local press: “I was very lucky not to be in there. It makes me mad as I didn’t deserve it. I’ve never had any problem with anyone.”
He said he believed the attack may be related to a threatening letter sent to him and to other shop owners four months ago.
The letter told them: “Get out from Eltham, get out from UK. If you don’t we are going to take you out from our country. England only for the British people. Give our country back to us.” It was signed by a group calling itself EBG.
Atasagun also said: “I think it was a warning. The fire was a personal attack to me but I’m more worried about my kids.
“Eltham is a racist place. We need to make it more secure. If it happened to me then it will happen to someone else tomorrow. People like me are not safe, even at night-time.”
In a separate incident Balakrishnan Kandiah, who runs the Wine Barrel off-licence, also in Eltham High Street, reported that on Good Friday six youths, aged in their 20s, beat up one of his customers and smashed £500-worth of his stock. They fled when police arrived.
He said: “I was at a counter and they threw a bottle at me. They come into my shop and fight. I do feel a victim.
“We have a lot of trouble and some action needs to be done.”
He commented on the fire at the Cactus Tree: “If it happened to them it could happen to us.”
Police are treating the fire as a racist incident.
Eltham gained notoriety in the early 1990s after the racist murders of Rohit Dougal and Stephen Lawrence. Since then it has become a much more mixed and relaxed place but its reputation attracts some racists to the area and there does seem still to be a tiny hardcore of serious vicious racists in Eltham.
Before the arson attack, Dev Barrah of the Greenwich Council for Racial Equality’s Racial Attack Monitoring Unit (Ramu) had spoken to the New Worker on the problems of sustaining anti-racist work in the area.
He explained that is took time to educate senior officers in the police and in the local authority of the steps that are needed to counter racist violence, “You get everything working smoothly, and then they get posted; you get a new person in the job and you have to start from square one again”.
He added that some of these officers had a genuine interest in solving the problem while others saw “doing a few months in community liaison and countering hate crimes as a necessary addition to their CV on their path to ‘higher things’.”

Enfield school handed over to American company

SALISBURY School in Enfield, north London, is to be handed over to a private United States company, Edison Schools, to be managed for three years.
Edison Schools won a £900,000 contract – the first of its kind to provide direct hands-on management, namely to provide a head teacher and two deputies for Salisbury School for three years. As part of the deal, the incoming management team is supposed to improve test and GCSE results and reduce exclusion rates.
The National Union of Teachers rejected the plan as a waste of money.
Private companies have bid for and won contracts to run local education authorities and offer support services – and some individual schools since 1997.
And private firms are involved in running schools through the Government’s flagship academy programme.
Edison currently has partnerships with 50 other state schools in Britain, but to provide training and consultancy services rather than become their management team.
This deal is particularly unusual because the school is not judged to be failing, although it was in special measures up until 2003 and draws pupils from areas of economic and social disadvantage.
But it does have very high rates of exclusion, with an average of 200 pupils out of a school population of 1,200 being excluded a year, according to the new head teacher Trevor Averre-Beeson.
NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott said the contract was a waste of money. “Money would be better spent on children’s education, whether it be more teachers, better resources or improving sports facilities, far better than lining Edison’s pockets.”

Strangers into citizens rally

THE GIANT public sector union Unison is urging members to join in the largest ever call for justice for migrants at a national day of action and celebration in London on 7th May.
Participants are being encouraged to show their true colours by turning out in a Union Jack T-shirt or with a flag to a rally in Trafalgar Square.
There, London’s faith, trade union, business and civic communities will stand together in support of the Strangers into Citizens campaign for immigration reform.
The campaign is calling for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants who have made new lives in Britain.
It proposes a two-year work permit for those who have been here for four years or more, with leave to remain granted at the end of that period, subject to employer and character references. compelling
Organisers say the case for one-off regularisation as part of the Government’s overhaul of immigration policy is compelling – on humanitarian, economic, fiscal and administrative grounds.
The midday rally is just one of a string of events taking place in London on the bank holiday, all celebrating the contribution of Britain’s migrants.
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: “Unison has a clearly established policy of supporting respect for migrant workers and an amnesty for paperless workers. I would therefore urge all branches to support the walk to Trafalgar Square and the rally afterwards, which is being organised by Strangers into Citizens.
“While the precise demands being made by Strangers into Citizens around amnesty do not reflect specific union policy, this represents an opportunity to show broad based support for fair treatment for migrant workers and for some form of amnesty for paperless workers.”

Strangers into Citizens: 11 am, assemble Westminster Cathedral Piazza 12:30 pm, rally Trafalgar Square 7th May 2007.

Finding common ground in the north of Ireland

by Theo Russell

CONNOR MURPHY MP, the new Sinn Féin Minister for Regional Development in the Northern Ireland Executive, was in Westminster on Tuesday night to give an update on the recent dramatic developments in the peace process.
He recounted that as the 26th March deadline for restoring the Assembly and Executive approached, the Democratic Unionist Party, whose Executive and Officer Board had already agreed to power-sharing by sizeable majorities, asked for a six-week delay to keep its members on board.
Sinn Féin said it would only accept this delay if the DUP made a strong public commitment to power-sharing. By the time Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley appeared together on 26th March, their statements and a programme of work and events for the next six weeks had been agreed.
The two parties also discussed common issues, such as water rates and the promised financial peace dividend, and the fact that both parties represented working class areas and farmers in rural areas.
They also discussed various elements who might try to undermine progress. And it was agreed to keep lines of communication open in order to react jointly to any threats.
Murphy said that the North-South Ministerial Council had already worked on enhancing the role of the All-Ireland bodies, but its work was limited while only Northern Ireland Office officials instead of elected ministers were involved.
On policing, Connor Murphy said Sinn Féin had met twice with chief constable Hugh Orde, and next month the party’s Ard Comhairle (executive) will meet to appoint five members to the PSNI Policing Committee.
Sinn Féin is urging its local communities to co-operate with the PSNI, and although some in the PSNI recognised the need to overcome the force’s negative legacy, Murphy said the process would be “very slow and difficult”.
There are many promising areas of co-operation, such as the strong lobby from education bodies, including Unionists, for Sinn Féin to see through the changes it began under the previous short-lived Executive. That post has now gone to Catriona Ruanne MP.
The leader of the Unionist farmers’ organisation has already met with new agriculture minister Michelle Gildernew and has “absolutely no problem” working with Sinn Féin.
Murphy pointed out that the huge savings on security in the north had not been transferred to civilian spending. Years of under-investment in infrastructure have left the sewage and water systems are in a dire state.
He said Britain has a responsibility to contribute towards building a modern infrastructure, including an education system to produce a highly-skilled workforce.
Asked about issues people in Britain could take up, Murphy pointed out that the British presence still remains in the north, the British government still favoured the union, and is still responsible for issues such as truth recovery and collusion.
He said that Sinn Féin wants the British government to support Irish unification and an end to Britain’s last significant colonial role.

Looking deeper at Marxism

SIXTEEN COMRADES took part in last weekend’s New Communist Party spring national weekend school that covered Party building; the Multipolar World; Keynesianism and Bourgeois feminism.
Though most came from the Greater London area, one comrade came from Bristol two travelled down from Colchester and two others from Woking to listen to openings by Andy Brooks, Neil Harris, Daphne Liddle and Alex Kempshall and take part in the discussions that followed. And the New Worker was not forgotten – the school raised £138 for the fighting fund!

photo: Andy Brooks and Alex Kempshall

Solidarity with the Nepalese revolution

by Rob Laurie

LAST WEEK the British South Asia Solidarity Forum held a public meeting in support of the Nepalese revolution at London’s Conway Hall. Despite the fact that the planned speaker from the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) had to return to Nepal before the meeting, the audience enjoyed an inspiring range of speakers under the chairmanship of the Pan-Africanist leader Explo Nani-Kofi.
The main speaker was Peter Tobin from the journal Labour & Trade Union Review who gave the audience a detailed eye-witness account of the general strike early last year which saw the King of Nepal being forced to abandon his absolutist powers.
The strike saw even soldiers’ wives participate in anti-monarchical demonstrations. Such was the widespread opposition to the King the United States saw no point in continuing to prop him up. (At present His Majesty is struggling to maintain even his position as a constitutional monarch). He made the point that while the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) and the Communist party of Nepal (Maoist) have been involved in often bloody conflict they, and other parties, have united to get rid of the King.
Theo Russell of the New Communist Party spoke next focussing largely on the Indian dimension to the events in its smaller northern neighbour. Reactionary forces in India fear the example of the workers and peasants of Nepal especially as the Maoist Naxalite movement has large support among the Indian peasant farmers.
Ella Rule of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) stressed the importance of the role of the Maoist party and said that the events in Nepal were a wonderful example for people here and in other oppressed countries. The evening was not solely dominated by the top table. While one member of the audience thought it was unwise for the Maoists to lay down their arms and go into government, most of the audience welcomed the recent course of events.

photo: Theo Russell makes his point

RMT wins tube dispute!

THE RMT transport union last Friday called off strike action by more than 2,000 Metronet Tube maintenance workers has been after the company this withdrew plans to transfer RMT members and posts to other companies.
In a dramatic about-turn Metronet informed RMT this afternoon that posts and individuals it intended to transfer to Bombardier would now remain in-house, and that it would not bring forward any further plans for outsourcing.
The company also agreed that escalator refurbishment would be brought back in house, and that it would also enter talks aimed at bringing cleaning contracts and lift refurbishment back in-house, and at ending all biometric booking on and off“This is the sensible outcome we sought for from the start, and it means quite simply that there will be no outsourcing of our Metronet members jobs,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said.
“Our Metronet members deserve congratulating for standing solidly together to defend their organisation, jobs and conditions and to prevent further dangerous fragmentation.
“Their stand, in the face of hostile media attention, has been vindicated by the outcome of this dispute.
“I would also like to thank the other Tube grades who stood shoulder to shoulder with their engineering colleagues,” Bob Crow said.
The RMT also issued a statement welcoming a suggestion to re-integrate the rail network in Scotland.
As reports emerged of talks between Network Rail and Scottish Labour leaders over the possibility of the government-underwritten company taking over Scotrail operations, RMT renewed its call for a moratorium on the failed private-franchise system.
“We have argued from the start that fragmentation was the fundamental fault-line opened up by rail privatisation, and re-uniting track and train under Network Rail makes sound sense,” Bob Crow said.
“For the first time in a decade it would bring train and track back under a single, directly accountable body with a single command structure, and could provide the blueprint for ending the nightmare of rail privatisation once and for all.
“It would also mean that the huge subsidies going into rail operations would be spent on improving services rather than on lining shareholders’ pockets.
“Bringing the industry back together again will make it clear exactly who is responsible and will end the ugly spectacle of legal buck-passing in the aftermath of the disasters that privatisation has brought about.
“Public money should no longer be wasted on a franchise system that is discredited, inefficient, costly and dangerous, and it is time to bring the failed experiment to an end.”

London news round-up

Cleaners call Ken’s bluff

RAIL and Tube cleaners last week staged a demonstration outside City Hall calling for a “living wage” of £7.20 an hour.
The protest comes after mayor Ken Livingstone announced that the amount should be set as a minimum for those working and living in London.
The transport union RMT says maintenance companies should set minimum standards of pay on subcontractors who employ the cleaners.
But the firms say they already work with subcontractors to ensure fair pay.
A spokesperson for the mayor said: “The living wage should be paid by the maintenance companies, Metronet and Tubelines, to these employees from the huge profits they make each year from the Public Private Partnership.
“The cost should not fall on London taxpayers and passengers,” he said.
RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “Low pay among Tube and Rail cleaners is an absolute scandal and we insist on decent minimum employment standards.
“That means £7.20 an hour as the absolute minimum and a guarantee of 28 days’ holiday.”

Stop the fascists

The British National Party last week announced it is to stand a record 880 candidates in the May local elections and they believe they can win 100 seats. John Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham where the BNP won 11 seats last year, has warned that the fascists are targeting poorer areas and hoping to take votes from Labour.
The anti-fascist organisation Searchlight has identified 92 wards that could fall to the BNP.
The most effective way of stopping this happening is to join the growing army of active anti-fascists and trade unionists going door-to-door, countering the lies and disinformation that the BNP canvassers are telling people on their doorsteps. It is important that every one of our readers who can should join them. Contact the campaign on the www.hopenothate.org.uk

Fighting against bonded labour

by New Worker correspondent

AROUND 60 people – friends, family, campaigners for peace and human rights – and others gathered in Blackheath last Sunday to celebrate the 79th birthday of Mukhtar Rana and to raise funds for the Peace and Human Rights Trust, which is fighting to free bonded labourers in Pakistan.
Mukhtar has spent his life campaigning for trade union and civil rights in Pakistan; he has been jailed after clashes with government on several occasions, once for five years. Amnesty International adopted him as a prisoner of conscience and he is now living in London but still campaigning against bonded labour.
Last Sunday he was joined by fellow Pakistani exiles and campaigners Khyum Bhat and Amanullah Khan, founder member of the People’s Party of Pakistan and a campaigner against imperialism.
Amanullah’s brother Ehsanullah Khan was to have attended; he too is a political exile now living in Sweden, but the British authorities failed to give him a visa in time for the event.
The event began with a buffet lunch – a feast of great curries and assorted salads and fruit.
Then came a superb rendition of South African revolutionary songs and the Internationale by Lizzie, a singer from the left-wing choir Raised Voices.
That was followed by a showing of a documentary film about the plight of the bonded labourers in Pakistan. The labourers and their supporters fight an uphill legal battle with landlords and factory owners. But even when the labourers and their families are freed, there is another battle to find them somewhere to live and to provide food, shelter and, most difficult of all in the Sindh desert, supplies of clean water. That’s what the fund raising was about.
Speakers, including Mukhtar himself, Khyum Bhat and others spoke of their legal battles in Pakistan and of bonded labour and slavery throughout the world – even in the western imperialist countries.
After the event Amanullah Khan told the New Worker about the plight of his brother and their whole family. Bonded labour is outlawed in the Pakistani constitution but both brothers were charged in 1995 with “economic sabotage” for campaigning against it, which is a form of high treason and carries the death penalty.
Ehsanullah founded the Bonded Labour Liberation Front. But the power of the landlords and factory owners is strong and is supported by the ISI, Pakistan’s state security force. Two of the Khan family sisters have been murdered and the whole family had to move to Baluchistan.
The two brothers in Europe continue to campaign but cannot return to Pakistan without risking summary assassination by the ISI.
The event was a great success and raised several hundred pounds to help to provide clean water for the liberated bonded labourers.

GMB slam Lewisham PCT

THE GMB general union has made a strong criticism of Lewisham Primary Care Trust over its failure to make proper provision for nursing care to people covered by the trust over the four-day Easter bank holiday.
GMB gave the PCT until 2.30 pm last Friday to give the union a guarantee that it would provide the necessary level of nursing care cover, over the Easter but no such guarantee was given.
GMB had been alerted to a possible shortfall in nursing cover over the Easter holidays within the trust by nurses employed by the trust who belong to GMB’s sister organisation and nursing specialist, the Community and District Nursing Association (CDNA).
CDNA reports that its member nurses have been told by the human resources team at the trust that they will be forced to take holidays over Easter, leaving a potential shortfall in nursing cover for patients recovering from operations in their own homes needing Community District Nursing Care.
The enforced reduction in staff numbers will increase the workload on already stretched nurses, who will be unable to cope.
GMB says that management must realise that just because they can finish at 5.00 pm on Thursday before a bank holiday and return to work on Tuesday at 9.00 am that nurses who provide patient care must continue to provide patient care.

RMT says Ladbroke Grove key lessons not learned

KEY LESSONS from the 1999 Ladbroke Grove tragedy have not been learned, the RMT rail union said last Friday as a £4 million fine was handed down to Network Rail for Railtrack’s role in the crash, which left 31 people dead and 400 injured.
Privatisation, fragmentation, the absence of train protection and the lack of corporate accountability were at the heart of the Ladbroke Grove tragedy, and each problem remained to be dealt with, RMT said.
“It is only right that the survivors and the families of those killed have heard the catalogue of failings that led to the disaster aired in court, but it was the wrong people in front of the judge,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said.
“The Railtrack executives whose negligence led to the Ladbroke Grove crash walked quietly away a long time ago.
“Until we have an effective corporate manslaughter law that puts bosses whose negligence leads to unnecessary death and injury in the dock and facing the prospect of prison, justice will not be done, no matter how big the fines.
“After Clapham in 1988 we were promised automatic train protection, which would have prevented Ladbroke Grove and saved 31 lives, but we are still no nearer getting it because it is deemed too expensive.
“The Cullen inquiry into Ladbroke Grove insisted that the regulation of rail safety should be in independent hands, but that process has been thrown into reverse and key safety areas have been handed back to the commercial interests that will always put profit first.
“Cullen also pointed to the crucial role played by the guard in the aftermath of Ladbroke Grove, but only this week we have learned of plans to do away with guards on busy commuter lines in and out of London,” Bob Crow said.

John4leader!

by Rob Laurie

LAST Saturday saw the John4Leader campaign hold a large rally in London’s Shaw Theatre. National Union of Journalists general secretary Jeremy Dear presided over the event as hundreds of people enjoyed a day of speeches and entertainment in support of left Labour MP John McDonnell’s bid for the leadership.
After Jeremy Dear began by taking the Mickey out of Michael Meacher’s belated entry into the Labour leadership contest.
Then veteran left Labour campaigner Tony Benn headed a long list of speakers. He focussed on the likelihood of George Bush launching an attack on Iran in the near future while Tony Blair is still in office.
Benn expressed scepticism about British government claims that the ship on which the 15 Royal Navy sailors were detained was in Iraqi waters. He recalled that in a similar incident the Foreign Office belatedly had to make an apology to Iran for trespassing. “In any case,” asked Benn, “What are we doing in Iraqi waters?”
He concluded by deploring that while in America the Democrats in Congress have demanded that Bush set deadlines for withdrawing the troops, in the British Parliament Labour MPs are making no such demand.
Another former MP, Alice Mahon, made the same point about supine Labour MPs failing to deplore the introduction of super casinos or make any protest over Israel’s bombing of Lebanon.
Leading figures from the more militant trade unions made clear their support for McDonnell. Matt Wrack from the Fire Brigades Union, John Leach from RMT and Andy Reed from ASLEF all pledged their support. Unfortunately neither the FBU nor RMT are presently affiliated to the Labour Party.
The RMT was predictably expelled because some branches had affiliated to the now split Scottish Socialist Party and the FBU broke with Labour in disgust over their pay dispute.

isolation

While the leadership of these unions is campaigning actively, their self-imposed isolation does not help matters.
However former Labour Party general secretary Jim Mortimer deplored the failure of many unions, such as Amicus, which formally support McDonnell but do little to support the campaign.
A number of general secretaries imagine that Gordon Brown will be more amenable to trade union concerns than Blair and are anxious not to upset him by allowing anything as vulgar as an election to impede his progress to Number Ten.
Jeremy Corbyn MP urged the audience to tirelessly lobby their own MPs to ensure there is a proper debate about the future direction of the Labour Party.
When John McDonnell himself spoke he claimed to have 25 MPs certain to nominate him, with another 10 not yet ready to go public. It is clear that a great deal of grassroots pressure is needed to reach the figure of 44 nominations from MPs, which will secure him a place on the ballot paper.
Owen Jones of the Socialist Youth Network ridiculed Blair Loyalist Chris Bryant MP, who early in McDonnell’s campaign violently denounced him for being an extremist in advocating re-nationalisation of the railways – a policy supported by the Labour Party Conference. From the other end of the age spectrum Dot Gibson of the National Pensioners’ Convention urged Labour councillors to do more to resist Government policies rather than implement them.

The anthem of the USSR

A Paul Robeson classic