Occupy London digs in!

By Caroline Colebrook

PROTESTERS from all over Britain and from many different backgrounds assembled around St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London last Saturday, intending to begin an indefinite occupation of Paternoster Square, immediately outside the London Stock Exchange.

 But their way was barred by a heavy police cordon. Paternoster Square, it seems, is private property, so they stayed put and began their occupation in St Paul’s churchyard.

 There were some verbal objections to the police cordon but no serious attempt to breach it. The demonstrators were peaceful, good humoured and totally non-violent.

 Yet within half-an-hour the City of London police reacted in a very heavy handed way and kettled the protesters, preventing them leaving or anyone else joining them until late in the evening.

 Police also tried to prevent the demonstrators sitting or standing on the steps of the cathedral in order to “protect” it.

 But the Reverend Dr Giles Fraser, canon chancellor of St Paul’s, asked the police to move on, because he “didn’t feel that it needed that sort of protection”.

 He declared himself a supporter of the democratic right to peaceful protest and said the aims of the protest were in keeping with Christian values.

 “This morning I read a bit from Matthew Chapter Six, about how you can’t serve God and money.”

 A wedding party booked for the cathedral that day had to make their way through the crowd.

 It was a noisy and colourful assembly with many inventive hand-written placards and fancy dress, including one who came as Jesus Christ with a placard declaring: “I drove the money changers out of the temple for a reason.”

 Many were wearing Guy Fawkes masks as part of the “Anonymous Group”.

 Other banners and placards declared the protesters to be the “99 per cent” or ordinary people, who are fed up with the remaining one per cent holding all the wealth and power.

 The occupation was part of a huge global event. On than day similar occupations took place in around 1,000 cities around the world, inspired by the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstration in New York, which is now in its third week.

 Speakers on the first day included Wikileaks found Julian Assange, after police had insisted he remove his “V” Guy Fawkes mask.

 By the end of the day around 300 protesters remained in occupation. They had brought tents, organised food, portable toilets and a series of activities. Megaphone announcements urged campers to pick up their litter.

 By Sunday the tone of the police had eased and a good relationship with the campers had been established. How long that will last when the City authorities demand the camp is cleared is another matter. But since it is on church land and has church support at the moment there is little police can do.

 By Monday the campers were still there in force and as the City bankers and as traders made their way to work after the weekend they were confronted by peaceful but persistent challenges to their ethics and their greed.

 By Tuesday the campers were inviting the City workers to have dinner with them and engage in discussions.

 A handful of the protesters have worked in the City and know its ways from the inside but have turned their back on it because of the damage that capitalism in its most extreme form is doing to the rest of the population of the world.

 John McDonnell MP, leader of the Labour Representation Committee called for support for the occupation and tabled an Early Day Motion calling on MPs to support the occupation – the real “big society”.

 He had intended to speak at the rally in St Paul’s churchyard but was prevented from reaching it by the police kettle.

 McDonnell described the protesters as “inchoate and incoherent” and from a wide spectrum but said they deserved the full support of the labour and trade union movement.

Awkward Question Time for Lansley

by New Worker correspondent

PROTESTERS angry about cuts to the NHS  marched on an East London university theatre last week to demonstrate against the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley's appearance on Question Time, the BBC flagship politics programme, which was being filmed there. The protest, outside London University’s Queen Mary College, was organised by the Lewisham Keep Our NHS Public (Lewisham KONP) that was formed in February as a local branch of the national campaign to save the health service from privatisation.

Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) is a broad based, non-party aligned campaigning organisation that seeks to defend the NHS as a publicly owned and publicly provided service that stays true to the founding principles of the NHS as a service that is equitable, comprehensive and free.

The NHS is under threat, as never before, from the Tory-led Coalition government’s Health and Social Care Bill, which aims to transform the NHS into a competitive market where "any willing provider" can bid against NHS organisations to provide health services, allowing the for-profit private sector to take over large swathes of our health service.

One of the demonstrators had a ticket to attend the discussion programme inside, where he was called on to present a question the Health Secretary. Strong feelings against the Bill were evident among the audience and most members of the panel, who included Ken Livingstone and doctor/journalist Phil Hammond, who writes on health issues for Private Eye.

London news round up

Sparks dispute stakes out Tate Modern

 

CONSTRUCTION workers campaigning against plans by a group of employers to cut wages by up to 30 per cent and tear up agreements on terms and conditions last Wednesday very early in the morning staged the latest in a long series of demonstrations outside London’s Tate Modern art gallery.

 The giant union Unite staged a demonstration of around 100 workers at the extension being built at the iconic former Bankside Power Station opposite the Millennium Bridge, just before the gallery opened to thousands of visitors.

 The key to the dispute is that seven rogue employers want to impose 30 per cent pay cuts and a worsening of employment conditions for thousands of construction workers by an arbitrary 7th December deadline – if they don’t capitulate, they face the sack.

  One of the “not-so-magnificent seven” contractors who want to impose the changes, T Clarkes Plc, has an electrical contract on the extension, currently under construction, at the Tate Modern.

 Unite regional officer, Vince Passfield, said: “By protesting outside such an iconic building, construction workers will be showing their employers just how fired up they are at the threat to de-skill their jobs and cut their pay by a third.

 "If these companies get away with this attack our members won't be able to pay for their mortgages or support their families.”

 Sparks also demonstrated on the same day outside Manchester Library.

 Similar demonstrations have hit construction sites throughout the country, including the Linsted Oil refinery, the Olympic Village in east London and last week Oxford Circus, where there were clashes with police.

 

Don’t destroy Remploy

REMPLOY workers descended on Parliament on Wednesday 12th October to urge MPs to keep their factories working, as the Government’s consultation into their future nears its end.

 The giant union Unite says that the jobs of 2,800 disabled workers are at risk because the Government would rather pull the plug and sell off the publicly-funded factories than invest in skilled jobs for disabled workers.

 The Government is currently consulting on the Sayce report, due to end in mid-October, which Unite believes is nothing more than a smokescreen to close Remploy’s 54 factories and throw 2,800 workers to the back of the dole queue.

 

No to posh parties in memorial gardens

 

MARITIME UNION RMT said last week that the proposal to hold Christmas parties for bankers in the memorial gardens to the merchant seafarers who have lost their lives since the First World War has been blocked by the Mayor of Tower Hamlets as a result of a protest campaign mobilised by politicians, unions, seafarers’ organisations and the local community.

 In a statement on the Tower Hamlets website Mayor Lutfur Rahman said: “The Council do not wish to cause any offence to any of the parties involved. As it [the proposed bankers parties in Trinity Square Gardens] no longer has the support of Trinity House and the maritime community I have put a stop this event."

 Ward Councillor and Cabinet Member for the Environment, Cllr Shahed Ali, added, "These gardens are an important part of the borough's heritage and I am extremely glad the Mayor has used his executive powers to stop this event taking place."

Afghan War: Ten years too long

Julian Assange slates imperialism

By Caroline Colebrook

THOUSANDS of peace campaigners filled Trafalgar Square last Saturday for a rally organised by Stop the War, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Muslim Association of Britain to commemorate the tenth anniversary if the war against Afghanistan.

 In October 2001 US President George Bush used the excuse of the 11th September attacks to launch a war on Afghanistan that he had been planning anyway.

 He dubbed it the “War on Terror” and also used this excuse to invade Iraq in March 2003.

 The Stop the War organisation was founded in response to the attack on Afghanistan and has campaigned against imperialist wars in the Middle East ever since.

 The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya have cost the lives of many hundreds of British soldiers and more than a million civilians in those countries.

 The rally heard a long array of speakers condemning the wars and saw films displayed illustrating the history of the struggle for peace on giant screens.

 Speakers included 106-year-old veteran peace campaigner Hetty Bower. She told the rally of how, in 1914 at the age of nine, her father had told the family: “It seems we are at war; this is where the lies begin”.

 “We were told the Germans were cutting off the hands of Belgian children. The lies have changed now but they still go on,” said Hetty, and she made a plea for world peace.

 Speakers included Joe Glenton, a former soldier who refused to do a second tour of duty in Afghanistan because he had realised that “The Afghan people were not the enemy, it was the senior officers ordering us to shoot them”.

 He quoted the First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon about “the war is being prolonged by those who have the power to end it”.

 Guardian journalist Seamus Milne spoke of a war “not on terror but of terror”.

 Singer Brian Eno delivered a long list of the costs of the wars and what that money could be used for.

 Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, attacked those journalists who propagate the imperialists’ lies used to justify the horrors of war.

 Billy Hayes, general secretary of the Communication Workers’ Union and Len McCluskey of Unite were among the speakers, who also included Bruce Kent, Tony Benn, George Galloway, Jemima Khan, John Pilger, Lindsey German and Jeremy Corbyn MP.

  Joan Humphries whose grandson Kevin Elliot was killed in Afghanistan spoke for herself and other families of soldiers who have died there. She laid the blame squarely at the feet of those who had ordered our army to invade Afghanistan.

 There were many writers, actors, musicians, academics and former soldiers who spoke – and schoolgirls new to peace campaigning.

 All around the Square there were stalls from different campaigns, performance events, art installations, and debates.

 One campaign called for the release of Shaker Aamer, a London resident whose wife and family live in Battersea, who is still held prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, and for the release of Babar Ahmad, a 37-year-old British Muslim who has been detained without charge in this country since August 2004.

 At around 4pm the crowd assembled for a short march down Whitehall to present a petition at Downing Street.

 As police tried to herd the demonstrators into pens some campaigners staged a sit-down across the road (most had been on their feet for over four hours), which prompted police to kettle the area for a short time but there were no arrests and the protesters dispersed soon after.

 Earlier that afternoon in a totally separate event a small group of English Defence League members had presented a petition at Downing Street. After this a couple of their members had wandered up to Trafalgar Square.

 But if they had hoped to disrupt the peace rally or try to provoke the many young Muslims there they failed. A small group of police officers kept them completely surrounded until they left the square.

EDL defied in Downing Street

 by New Worker correspondent

THE ISLAMPOHOBIC English Defence League last Saturday organised its women’s section, known as its “Angels” to present a petition to Downing Street calling on Prime Minister David Cameron to retract the remark he made when he described the EDL as “the sickest of all”.

 Around 50 EDL women and double that number of EDL men gathered in and around the Red Lion in Whitehall – but so did a counter demonstration organised by Unite Against Fascism and that outnumbered the EDL about three-to-one.

 A handful of the EDL women were allowed into Downing Street to present the petition – but not their chief organiser – she had forgotten to bring proof of identity.

 The petition attracted 780 signatures on the web site (though at least one person signed it five times and a quite a few including “Adolf Hitler” and “Eva Braun” are clearly spoofs).

 After presenting the petition the EDL supporters moved off to a brief rally outside the headquarters of the Liberal Democrat Party.

 One group of women taking part in the counter-demonstration told me that they had been attacked by a group of male EDL supporters on their way to the protest for carrying an anti-EDL placard. Police stepped in and prevented anything further developing.

Block the Bridge! Block the Bill!!

By New Worker

 correspondent

THOUSANDS of protesters, many of them doctors and other health service professionals, blocked Westminster Bridge last Sunday in protest at the Cameron government’s onslaught against the NHS. Many fear that the bill will lead to the wholesale privatisation of the health service and the end of the principle of comprehensive healthcare provided equally to all.

 Around 3,000 demonstrators, some dressed as surgeons, staged a sit-down protest on the bridge at 1pm, bringing traffic to a standstill on both sides of the Thames. The bridge, normally one of London's busiest, links St Thomas' hospital on the southern bank with the Houses of Parliament and the protest was called to highlight the Health and Social Care Bill, which goes to the House of Lords this week.

St Thomas’ is a leading teaching hospital and one of Britain’s oldest medical institutions. If the Bill passes, hospitals like St Thomas’ could be sold to private corporations, the staff put on private payrolls and beds given over to private patients.

UK Uncut, the anti-cuts group which organised the Block the Bridge, Block the Bill demonstration, said: "Today has brought together doctors, nurses, parents, students, unions, pensioners and children together in an unprecedented act of mass civil disobedience. We are occupying the bridge because the Bill would be bad for the NHS, bad for patients and bad for society."

            The protesters later held a "general assembly" in the middle of the bridge, similar to those organised by campaigners on Wall Street, where they discussed future demonstrations against the government's cuts.

Korean communists fighting history

Mun Myong Sin, Dermot Hudson, Michael Chant and Andy Brooks

By New Worker correspondent

NEW COMMUNIST Party comrades joined other communists at seminar last week at the John Buckle Centre in south London to celebrate the 66^th anniversary of the foundation of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK).

            The seminar at the London HQ of the RCPB (ML), called by the Friends of Korea co-ordinating committee, heard contributions from Korean solidarity activists on the achievements of the WPK and its great leaders Kim Il Song and Kim Jong Il, over the years.  

It was chaired by Dermot Hudson of the UK Korea Friendship Association and the discussion began with contributions from Michael Chant of the RCPB (ML), NCP general secretary Andy Brooks and DPR Korea London diplomat Mun Myong Sin on the importance and relevance of the Korean revolutionary experience to the world communist movement in the 21^st century.

The NCP leader praised the feats of the WPK and denounced the hostile propaganda of imperialism against the DPRK in his contribution, which focused on the relevance and meaning of independence and self-sufficiency in Juche thinking.

 Michael Chant spoke about the importance and significance of the WPK and the great role of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and Dermot Hudson gave a succinct history of the Korean communists’ revolutionary struggle from the beginning of the struggle against Japanese colonial rule in the 1920s.

After a round-table discussion the seminar concluded with the unanimous agreement to send a congratulatory message to Democratic Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Day of Action against ATOS

by New Worker correspondent

DISABILITY campaigners around Britain last Friday staged a Day of Action against the private company employed by the Government to conduct tests on the disabled with a view to getting as many as possible off of long-term benefits and on to the much lower Job Seekers’ Allowance.

  In Islington nearly 100 people with a wide range of disabilities, their friends and supporters staged a protest outside a British Medical Journal recruitment fair where Atos was attempting to recruit doctors – many of them newly arrived in Britain – and other medical personnel to become assessors.

  There were speeches from the Islington and national Disabled People Against Cuts groups, Winvisible, PCS representatives, Mad Pride, student groups, Queer Resistance, Right To Work and many more.

  Campaigners handed out leaflets, reminding possible recruits of their Hippocratic Oath: “First do no harm….”

  They have also put pressure on the British Medical Journal to refuse to take recruiting adverts from Atos on the grounds that working for Atos is contrary to the good health of the patients.

  Atos assessments have repeatedly ignored the evidence of GPs and consultants in preference to a short, computer-based test to assess people’s ability to work.

  Assessors are required to carry out assessments in fields in whish they are not qualifies, such as mental health.

  They have declared people with terminal cancer and many other very serious conditions as fit to work.

  A recent study by the mental health charity Mind found that 75 per cent of the people it surveyed said the prospect of work capability assessment made their mental health worse and 51 per cent said it had left them with suicidal thoughts.

  Some people with mental ill-health and other conditions have committed suicide as a result of Atos decisions.

  Those who are denied long-term sickness benefit and transferred to Job Seekers’ Alliance are compelled to prove they are actively seeking work or they face losing that benefit as well and could become completely destitute.

  A former employee of Atos said: “The job was making me sick. It is against my principles to treat people with long-term illnesses in such a disgusting way. So I had to give it up.

  “People go into those interviews and talk openly to you because you are a nurse and they trust you.

  “Then your skills are used against them, to take away their benefits and destroy their lives.”

  The Islington event was covered by Channel 4 and BBC radio. Many speakers made the point that attacks on the most vulnerable is all part of the Government’s agenda to make the people pay for a financial crisis they didn’t create.

  One speaker pointed out that more than 40 per cent of the people who appeal against Atos decisions have their benefits reinstated and that figure rises to 90 per cent for those who have legal representation.

  But Government cuts to legal aid, Citizens’ Advice Bureaux and other legal support is taking away vulnerable people’s only defence against wrong decisions by Atos.

  In Brighton 50 people joined the day of action. Several different groups were there including Brighton benefits campaign, Solidarity group, others.

  Seventeen towns and cities around the country saw actions and protests outside Atos offices, including Oxford, Hastings, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Chatham, Manchester, York, Leeds, Chester, Plymouth, Bristol, Glasgow and Birmingham.

CABLE STREET: THEY DID NOT PASS!

By Caroline Colebrook

 

AROUND 1,000 anti-fascists gathered last Sunday near Aldgate East Station in London’s East End for a march to a rally in the St George’s Gardens to commemorate the historic Battle of Cable Street exactly 75 years ago.

  In that battle local people including Jewish immigrants and Irish dockers fought side by side to prevent Sir Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists (known as the Blackshirts) from making a provocative march through the area, designed to intimidate the local communities, especially the Jews.

  The resistance was organised largely by the local Communist Party. The Labour leadership at the time opposed direct action on the streets; nevertheless many Labour rank and file members ignored their leaders and took part.

 Hundreds of thousands of local East Enders barricaded their streets to deny the fascists access.

 With the main routes into the East End blocked police tried to clear a way through Cable Street where fighting between local people and police became intense, with many arrests and much police brutality as residents threw all manner of objects from upstairs windows on to the police.

 Eventually police gave up and Mosley never did get to march through the East End. His aim to split local communities and foment racist violence instead united local people in opposition to fascism.

 This contrasted starkly to events just four weeks previously when the Islamophobic English Defence League also tried to stage a provocative march through the same area.

 On the occasion the police were on the other side, confining the fascists to a brief bad-tempered static rally near Liverpool Street Station – inside the City of London. They did not get to set foot in the East End.

 Last Sunday the new local immigrant community – of Bangladeshi origin – played a leading role in celebrating the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Oswald Mosley and stressing that the fight against fascism and racism continues.

 Their organisations included the Bangladesh Youth Union UK and the Altab Ali Memorial group. Altab Ali was a victim of a racist murder in Whitechaple in 1978.

 There is still a large Jewish community in the area and relations between the Jews there and the Islamic Bangladeshis are warm and comradely.

 There were many speakers at the rally including 97-year-old Max Levitas, a veteran of the International Brigades, and peace campaigner Hetty Bower, aged 106 that day. The rally sang Happy Birthday.

 Bob Crowe, general secretary of the RMT transport union, gave a rousing anti-fascist speech. He said: “Fascists feed off scapegoats. But if you create a society where everyone has a house and a job then you have a society where the fascist cannot live.”

 Other trade union speakers included TUC deputy general secretary Frances O’Grady and Gail Cartmail from Unite.

  The final speaker was Matthew Collins from Hope not Hate, who has recently had published a book about his experiences as a member of the National Front and BNP as a naïve and alienated youth before he realised that far from fighting for the white working class, these fascist organisations are profoundly anti-working class.

 He is now a dedicated anti-fascist activist and a class warrior for the whole working class.

 Matthew Collins closed proceedings in his usual witty way with a recollection of selling fascist newspapers just up the road in Brick Lane in the 1980's and early nineties and being given a rudimentary lesson in anti-fascism by an outraged local.

Vigil for Yemen at Downing Street

by New Worker correspondent

MEMBERS of the Yemeni community in London held a silent protest opposite Downing Street last Saturday to demonstrate against the killing of peaceful protesters in Sanaa by troops loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The vigil, timed to coincide with more mass protests in Yemen, was a silent one, with protesters standing with tape over their mouths with the message “Silence Kills” and placards listed the number of deaths and called for freedom rather than slaughter in the Yemen. Many held the red, white and black Yemeni tricolour and others had it painted on their faces.

Judge saves London fire engines

A HIGH Court judge last week granted an adjournment, delaying applications to wind up AssetCo, the private company that owns the fire engines used by the London and Lincoln fire brigades.

 This will give the company another month to negotiate a deal with its creditors to wipe out debts of over £100 million

 Mr Justice Floyd, sitting at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, granted applications to adjourn moves until 28th September to wind up the firm in favour of allowing the company to open negotiations with its creditors on a deal that will recover some of their lost investments.

 Last May the London Fire Brigades Union had expressed alarm at a move to bankrupt AssetCo, which owns London’s fire engines and 50,000 pieces of safety critical equipment.

 The union warned that any such move could see creditors move to sell the company’s assets to recover their debts.

 Northern Bank based in Belfast, had lodged a creditors’ petition – a move to bankruptcy – over a £1.3 million debt owed by AssetCo.

 The company warned shareholders it could only pay parts of its loans and informed them of the move by Northern Bank.

 The deeply troubled company is still in the running to secure a contract to train London’s firefighters. It is playing a key part in the Capital Training Solutions consortium, one of three preferred bidders to be chosen by the end of the year.

 Challenged by the FBU, the London fire brigade said its financial experts had examined each member of the consortium, including AssetCo, and confirmed the bidders were financially “stable”. This was only days after the company told shareholders it could not pay off all its loans.

 Ben Sprung, London FBU regional organiser said: “The company, which owns and maintains our fire engines and 50,000 pieces of equipment, is staring bankruptcy in the face. We could end with all London’s fire engines and kit being put up for sale to settle the debts.

 “Profits have crashed; the share price has collapsed and top staff, including a new finance director, have recently left.

 “It now can’t keep up all its loan payments and there is a move towards bankruptcy.

 “London fire service first said it had guarantees this could not happen but could not produce them. Now it says it has contingency plans if it does happen but they won’t say what they are.

 “There is a serious crisis looming and the only ones raising public concerns are the capital’s firefighters. It is a scandal that the ownership and maintenance of critical equipment is in the hands of a company which has reached this state.

 “There are serious issues of public safety here. The fire authority needs to set out what it has done and what fallback plans it has. The mayor needs to get a grip on this before it’s too late.”

 Currently the Mayor’s office, the heads of London Fire Brigade, AssetCo and its creditors are engaged in emergency negotiations to keep the fire engines on the road.

 They will probably reach a deal but it will probably end up with London council tax-payers footing the bill.

 The creditors named include state-owned Halifax Bank of Scotland which is owed £12 million and energy company, EDF, which suggests AssetCo may not have paid fuel bills for premises they run in London.

 Others include FD Direct, the Inland Revenue. They will still be big losers.

  FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said: “Privatising emergency services is stupid and dangerous. The long, slow death of AssetCo is a perfect illustration of this.

 “We still do not know what is going to happen to London and Lincolnshire’s fire engines.  They are, we believe, going to be the property of AssetCo’s creditors when AssetCo finally goes under.  I call on the London Fire Brigade and the Government to bring the fleet and their maintenance back into public ownership.”

Keep religion out of government

By New Worker correspondent

MILITANT atheists took to the streets of London last Saturday for a march and rally in the capital calling for an end to religious privileges and for European institutions to remain secular.            Several hundred people took part in the march organised by the Secular Europe Campaign that was originally launched in 2008 to challenge the enormous power and influence of the Vatican within the European Union. A similar protest was held in Rome the same day against the huge three billion euro tax exemption the Vatican enjoys.

But the British campaign is broader and "aims at representing all the issues around secularism and human rights, including opposition to state-funded faith schools, rejection of religious tribunals and support to equal rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender citizens."

Marco Tranchino, who is organising the Secular Europe Campaign, said: “Wherever the Pope goes now he will be sure to face criticism and protest. We want to keep the impetus going that started last year at the Protest the Pope event, and encourage all people who believe in separation of religion from the state to join us.”

Tranchino says that the Vatican has far too much influence on the institutions of the European Union and it was time for that to be challenged.

“We have the support of feminist, gay and secular groups from all around Europe and large numbers of individuals who are following us on social network sites. We hope that this will send a message to the governments of Europe and Great Britain that alarm is growing at the undue influence of religion on political decision-making. We want a secular Europe where there is room for everyone, whether they have a religious belief or not, where policy is directed only by elected politicians, not by priests who are answerable to no-one.”

Fighting talk at the TUC

by Daphne Liddle

THE ANNUAL conference of the TUC in London this week has set in motion plans for massive public sector strikes to defend pensions, including at least one, and possibly several, national strikes in November that could involve over two million workers.

This is in the teeth of threats from the Con-Dem Coalition to bring in new anti-union legislation and the disapproval of Labour leader Ed Miliband.

Len McCluskey, general secretary of the giant union Unite, set the tone. He said: “This debate could be a ritual. We have it every year. Unanimously vote for the composite and then get on with working within laws which we do not really expect to be changed.

“It is time — past time — that we took a different approach. This composite makes it clear what is needed. Let me read just one sentence from it:

‘Congress calls on the TUC to develop an industrial strategy of resistance so that workers are not left to fight alone against draconian laws and exploiting bosses.’

“What does it mean? It will mean learning from the student movement’s struggles to support decent education.

“It will mean building on the impetus of the magnificent trade union march for an alternative this year, the biggest in our movement’s history.

“It will mean learning from our best fighting traditions. But it cannot mean meekly accepting the laws as it stands. Unite has spent enough time going in and out of courts arguing for the basic right of employees to collectively withdraw their labour. At British Airways and elsewhere.

“Of course we must win the argument for trade union rights. Use the language of fairness and freedom which resonates with those who are not our members. But let’s also say — if tax avoidance is lawful and unpunished. Let’s plan for anti-union law avoidance in the same spirit.”

He added that “coming to the end of 13 years of Labour government with the Thatcher laws still in place is a stain on Labour’s record. And a betrayal of its historic mission and purpose of advancing working people’s rights....

“Law is an essential thing for a civilised society of course. But class law, pushed through a parliament full of expense cheats, by a cobbled-together coalition which no-one voted for is not going to paralyse me and it should not paralyse our movement.”

McCluskey promised to bring Wisconsin to Westminster if the Government tried to outlaw the strikes. “Our rights — including the right to organise and struggle together for a better life for working people — are not the gift of ministers or judges. They are ours to assert.”

GMB general secretary Paul Kenny said: “We will give them the biggest campaign of civil disobedience their tiny little minds can ever imagine. Bad laws have to be broken,” he said. “If going to prison is the price for standing up to bad laws, then so be it.”

Ed Miliband made a bland speech that was more union-friendly than any made by Blair or Gordon Brown. But he was heckled when he called for strikes to be postponed until negotiations had finished.

Bob Crow of the RMT said: “You can’t play political games when workers are facing the biggest all-out attack on their rights and their livelihoods since the war. A Labour leader who doesn’t stand by the workers is on a one-way ticket to oblivion.”

Matt Wrack, the leader of the Fire Brigades Union, said he thought the speech was “pretty feeble”, adding: “It was almost like he wanted to tick a box criticising strikes.”

Union leaders also had plenty of anger over Prime Minister David Cameron’s response to last month’s riots, with references to the “feral ruling class” and a return to Victorian values of the “undeserving poor”.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber spoke of the riots: “The Prime Minister chose to describe these events as ‘criminality pure and simple’. But it isn’t so simple and what happened in August actually revealed deep fractures within our society.

“A society that ranks among the most unequal anywhere in the developed world; where a super rich elite have been allowed to float free from the rest of us; where a generation of young people are growing up without work, without prospects, without hope. None harder hit than the black youngsters held back by an unemployment rate approaching 50 per cent.

“And yet as they have retreated to Victorian language about the undeserving poor, they have said nothing about moral disintegration among the rich. The financiers with huge assets sneakily channelled through the tax havens. The out-of-control traders and speculators who razed our economy to the ground. The super rich tax cheats whose greed impoverishes our schools and hospitals?.“And in a year when we commemorated the 25th anniversary of Wapping, let us say loud and clear that moral standards must apply to you too Mr Murdoch.”

They did not pass!

By Caroline Colebrook

THE ENGLISH Defence League (EDL) boasted that their planned march and rally in the East End of London would be a national event marking a turning point in the fortunes of the far-right violent Islamophobic organisation of neo-Nazis, football hooligans and other thugs.

 They intended to hold their march through Tower Hamlets’ Muslim community. But that community, along with anti-fascists from Hope not Hate, trade unionists and other activists campaigned for a ban on that march that that was aimed at bringing provocation, hatred and violence to the East End.

 They produced a 25,000-signature petition to Home Secretary Theresa May.

 The police have officially still failed to recognise the EDL as an extremist organisation but, after the riots of last month, the Metropolitan Police decided to support the request for a ban on the march.

 But the EDL still insisted on their statutory right to a static demonstration.

 Meanwhile Unite Against fascism organised a big counter demonstration.

 One the day the whole area of Aldgate and Whitechapel filled up with hundreds of police vans – including contingents from Strathclyde, Norwich Cumbria in the morning.

 The UAF demonstration began at 11am in the east of the area attended by several thousand, including groups of Muslim youths from the local community, who patrolled their own streets. More mature members of the Muslim community also patrolled as official stewards with a main aim of keeping the peace and preventing damage or injury.

 The EDL demonstration was not due to start until 2pm and reports came in of large numbers arriving and causing trouble in pubs around the Kings Cross area and that members of the RMT transport union had closed access to the Tube Station to keep them out of London’s Underground.

 Then there were reports that some had reached the pubs around Liverpool Street, close to Aldgate. But it was getting on for 3pm before a small group appeared waving flags, shouting and gesticulating.

 They were soon joined by others but there were never more than around 1,000 at the official protest. Some stragglers and late-comers ended up wandering lost around the area.

 The thousands of police surrounding the EDL halted them in the main road in front of the Aldgate Tower for their rally.

 The UAF and their supporters marched up to the end of Whitechapel High Street but were kept well apart from the EDL.

 EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon arrived disguised as a mock rabbi. After removing his disguise he have a speech in which he boasted that he was breaching the conditions of his bail, imposed recently at Luton and South Bedfordshire Magistrates’ Court. He had appeared there for an alleged assault during a demonstration in April in Blackburn.

 Police charged into the EDL crowd to arrest him and there was some confusion over whether they had succeeded but by evening Yaxley-Lennon was definitely in custody. According to latest reports he has begun a hunger strike in protest at being denied his “human right” to insult, provoke and beat up those who disagree with him.

 After a couple of hours it dawned on some of the EDL members that their protest was not actually in Tower Hamlets. The Griffin that marks the City of London boundary was a couple of hundred yards to the east of the EDL rally. They were still in the City; they had not even set foot in Tower Hamlets.

 A few tried in vain to charge the heavy police cordon. Thunder-flashes were thrown and there were heavy scuffles and 16 arrests. Eventually police escorted them away across Tower Bridge and into waiting coaches.

 Later that evening a rogue coach full of EDL supporters strayed down Whitechapel High Street, where it stopped outside the mosque as those on board shouted insults and abuse.

 The coach was soon surrounded by angry Muslim youths who broke some of the coach windows. An EDL woman was injured in the fracas that followed but was rescued by Muslim stewards from the mosque.

 Police soon flooded the area, commandeered a bus, put the EDL members on it and sent them out of the area. According to some reports it then broke down, according to others the driver became so exasperated he simply stopped it and walked away.

 Once again the EDL passengers were on the street and 44 of them were arrested.

Migrant domestic workers protest

HUNDREDS of migrant domestic workers gathered last Sunday in Old Palace Yard, Westminster to demonstrate against the Government’s proposed changes to the domestic workers’ visa.

 The British government has proposed to change the domestic workers’ visa and remove some of the most fundamental rights of migrant domestic workers, which could leave them vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and human trafficking.

 At present migrant domestic workers have some protections. They are allowed to change their employer without losing their immigration status, meaning if they are mistreated, they can leave and find new non-exploitative work to support their families.

 They can seek justice through the police or the employment courts without fearing they will be deported.

 If these rights are removed, unscrupulous employers will know they can abuse and exploit with impunity.

 Justice 4 Domestic Workers, the domestic worker led group organising the rally, and supported by Kalayaan and Unite the union in demanding that the Government does not return slavery to Britain and that:

•           Domestic worker visa rights are retained, including the right to change employer and recognition as a worker covered by employment legislation;

•           Those who come to the UK with diplomats have these same rights;

•           The UK government ratifies and implements the International Labour Convention on domestic workers

 Marissa Begonia, chair of Justice 4 Domestic Workers, said: “Where are we heading if the minimal protection we have is about to be removed, back to the century of slavery?

 “The domestic worker visa has been our escape route from abusive employers and enabled us to rebuild our lives from this exploitative situation.

 “The UK government acknowledged the need to protect migrant domestic workers in 1998 and implemented the domestic workers’ visa. Why take back what is proven as the best protection of some of the most vulnerable workers?

 “We urge the Government to uphold the honour and dignity of the United Kingdom and improve the current working and living conditions of domestic workers. The more vulnerable the worker is, the more protection they need.”

 Jenny Moss, community advocate at Kalayaan, said: “Removing the vital protections associated with the domestic worker visa will undoubtedly lead to an increase in abuse, exploitation and human trafficking. It is shameful that the UK government intends to return us to slavery for the sake of knocking 1,000 people from their net migration total.”

 Diana Holland, Unite assistant general secretary, said: “The domestic worker visa was introduced with all-party support to right a very serious wrong. It is horrifying to contemplate a return to the slavery and bonded labour before the visa. This Government cannot brush the issue of slavery under the carpet.”

Education workers to lobby MPs

AROUND 25,000 teachers and lecturers are expected to gather at Parliament on Wednesday 26th October in a mass lobby to protest against savage pension cuts in the education sector.

 The action is part of a joint campaign by seven leading education unions to draw attention to the myths surrounding the debate on pensions and to the severity of the cuts being proposed.

 The campaign, Decent Pensions: Securing the Future for All, aims to have a representative at the lobby from every school in the maintained, academy and independent sectors in England and Wales as well as from colleges and post-92 universities (approximately 25,000 in total), and many institutions are expected to send groups of staff to swell numbers even further.

The lobby is being held during the half-term holiday to avoid interrupting schoolchildren’s education and causing disruption for parents. But the seven unions have not ruled out further industrial action if the Government continues to erode pensions.

  Information is going out this week to schools, colleges and post-92 universities along with petitions to be signed by staff on behalf of their school or college.

  Organisers of the campaign issued this statement: “The fact that thousands of teachers and lecturers from around the country are giving up a day of their half-term holiday to come to London to lobby MPs shows just how high feelings are running. The profession is absolutely united in condemning the scandalous way pensions are being ransacked to pay off the national debt.

  “The public has a right to know that cuts could ultimately affect the quality of education for young people as high calibre graduates re-think their career choice. We will also be challenging the myths about how public sector pensions impact on taxpayers.

  “Teachers and lecturers never take strike action lightly and for this reason the lobby has been organised during half term, to ensure there is no disruption to pupils or parents.

  “However if the Government continues to erode pensions, which they know are both affordable and sustainable, teachers will be left with no option but to take further action, including strike action.

  “We urge the Government to listen to the message that this lobby sends. Teachers cannot stand by and see their pensions eroded for purely political reasons. It is entirely possible to avoid further disruption but for that to happen the Government needs to negotiate fairly.”

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ANTI-FASCISTS WIN EDL MARCH BAN

by Daphne Liddle

ANTI-FASCISTS last week were delighted to learn that the Government has finally decided to ban a planned march by the Islamophobic English Defence League (EDL) through Muslim areas of Tower Hamlets.

This follows months of campaigning by Hope not Hate and a petition with over 25,000 signatures, backed by leading trade unions and local community activists.

But what finally moved Home Secretary Theresa May was the rioting a few weeks ago, which showed up how precarious is the police hold on keeping control when large numbers of youths defy them.

And it was the Metropolitan Police who finally asked for a ban.

But the ban May has imposed is a blanket ban for one month on all marches within six east London Boroughs: the City, Tower Hamlets, Newham, Waltham Forest, Islington and Hackney.

Some activists are concerned this will also rule out an anti-fascist counter demonstration and any other anti-cuts or anti-war demonstrations. They argue that anti-fascists should not rely on the state to stop the fascists but should do this by mass labour movement and local community action. They point to the crowds who came out and succeeded in stopping Mosley’s Blackshirts in 1936 — almost exactly 75 years ago.

But those working class and community masses, led by the Communist Party, fought mainly with the police who were trying to force a way through for the fascists.

This time the police are on the other side. They will be stopping the fascists from marching.

The EDL, according to latest reports, has insisted on its right to a static demonstration in Whitechapel Sainsbury’s car park. But it will be heavily “kettled”.

And if large numbers of anti-fascists flood the area next Saturday there is a real danger of an enormous three-cornered fight breaking out — which is exactly what the EDL want — and what the local community of all religions and ethnicities does not want.

Retired Searchlight editor Gerry Gable told the New Worker: “This is a crazy idea. Who do they think is going to stop the EDL? Look at the balance of forces. Starting a fight with the police would be completely insane.”

And the current Searchlight editor, Nick Lowles, wrote on the ban on the march: “This decision is a victory for common sense. The EDL clearly intended to use the proposed march to bring violence and disorder to the streets of Tower Hamlets.

“Their plan has been foiled.

“While the EDL might still decide to hold a static protest they will not now be able to march through residential areas and, most importantly, march past the East London mosque. A static protest will be far easier to police and it will probably also discourage a lot of EDL supporters from travelling.”

And he thanked the 25,300 people who signed the petition, the hundreds of people who donated to the campaign fund and the dozens of people who came out campaigning in Tower Hamlets.

The EDL are mixed collection of out-and-out neo-Nazis, football hooligans, former squaddies and a few bigots who have been taken in by their pretence that it is only Islam that the EDL wants to fight.

They have recently lost their Zionist supporters and the EDL is full of factional rifts. But this makes it more unpredictable. It is notoriously violent and was admired by Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Breivik.

Our place in the sun!

NEW WORKER readers took a chance on the weather when they turned up for the Metropolitan supporters group garden party in Charlton last weekend. But rain did not stop play and comrades were able to enjoy good food and drink throughout the afternoon while the discussion ranged from the part played by the hidden hand in the union movement to role of Soviet and Anglo-American commanders in the Second World War. Our paper was not forgotten either and over £50 was raised for the New Worker.

Sick Society

PRIME Minister David Cameron and former Prime Minister Tony Blair have been arguing over whether British society is deeply sick or just a bit off-colour around the fringes.
For once Cameron is right, British society is deeply sick and the rot comes from the top. The disease is capitalism and it divides the human race into the ruling class who have endlessly increasing wealth, comfort and ease at the expense of the working classes face lives of increasing poverty, debt, drudgery, unemployment, poor housing, poor education and lack of opportunities.
Under Blair’s government working people did get some amelioration in the social wage, better public services, access to higher education — though it was Blair who introduced student tuition fees.
There was a complex network of support services for the disabled involving benefits and services from the NHS and local government. It was often a fight to get it but it was a legal entitlement.
There was access to legal aid to secure justice, not just in criminal cases but in housing, benefits, family law and immigration. There were advice centres for working people to direct them and support them in getting grievances resolved.
There were youth services and dozens of inner-city projects aiming to steer young people away from street crime while their debt-enchained parents were forced to work so many hours they were left with little time for their children.
It was still a very unequal society and the wealth gap was growing steadily.
But the thousand-and-one services smoothed off the worst of the rough edges and made it just about tolerable. And workers on the whole just want to get on with their lives and feel secure from one day to the next. It takes a lot of pain to drive them to contemplate either rebellion or revolution.
But Cameron’s cuts — way beyond what was necessary to deal with Government debt and driven by right-wing Tory ideology — are supplying that pain. For a long time workers in Europe or even the United States would wonder at how passive and resigned the British working class has been, how much they have put up with that would have sparked anger and uprisings elsewhere. In other countries such measures as car clamps and street CCTV cameras never worked because they were automatically vandalised by outraged citizens as soon as they appeared.
Blair’s education policy of sending hundreds of thousands of young people into universities — ultimately at their own expense — gave people the illusion that they could rise in society and become middle class. In reality it was a way of keeping unemployment figures down and at the same time ensnaring young people into a lifetime of debt and passivity.
Both Blair and Cameron are promoters of the obscene proposition, dominant now throughout the global ruling classes, that poverty is a choice — that the poor are too lazy to make the most of their lives and their misfortunes entirely of their own making because they have “the wrong attitude”.
Dozens of self-help books promote this idea, telling people they must keep a positive (meek and acquiescent) attitude, change everything about themselves to fit in with what their capitalist bosses want, give their whole lives over to work and wealth will inevitably come their way. When this fails to happen they are told it is they who failed — not that they have been failed by capitalist society.
Cameron’s approach sweeps these illusions aside. His cuts are pure, ruthless class war. And they hurt the most vulnerable in society.
Young workers can see that those at the top — the bankers, MPs, top police officers, the Murdoch set — are all in it to make as much money as they can for themselves and to keep it to themselves. They can see how sick this society really is at the top.
They are a couple of generations away from the levels of class consciousness of the workers who built the trade unions, created the labour movement and fought for state welfare but they are starting to learn.
Those who are being hastily imprisoned for their role in the recent riots — 90 per cent of them have neither a job nor a place in higher or further education — will come out a lot less naïve than when they went in. For a start they’ll find a way to deal with street CCTV cameras.
But it is up to us to help them achieve a proper class political perspective, the importance of education, agitation and organisation — not just to defend themselves from ruling class vindictiveness but to go on the offensive against our truly sick ruling class.

Rough Justice

CAMERON’S LAW

by Daphne Liddle

THE RECENT RIOTS IN London that spread throughout the country gave the ruling class a scare. And now the bourgeois state machine, through the courts, is responding vindictively and handing out draconian custodial sentences to hundreds of people — most of whom were first offenders.
More than 2,770 people have been arrested in connection with last week’s riots; 1,277 suspects had appeared in court by last Tuesday and 64 per cent had been remanded in custody, compared to the 2010 remand rate of 10 per cent for serious offences. And two young men have been sentenced to four years in prison for using Facebook to incite a riot that never happened in Cheshire.
Paul Mendelle QC, who used to chair the Criminal Bar Association, told BBC Five Live: “When people get caught up and act out of character, in a similar way, there is a danger that the courts themselves may get caught up in a different kind of collective hysteria — I’m not suggesting violence or anything like that — but in purporting to reflect the public mood actually go over the top and hand out sentences which are too long and too harsh.”
There have been calls for rioters who are council tenants to be evicted and the London Borough of Wandsworth has already served an eviction notice on the family of one rioter. Similarly they are calling for rioters who are on benefits to be cut off.
These proposals are in total opposition to the international convention on human rights, which bans collective punishments — punishing a whole family for the offence of one member.
unequal
And it also puts council tenants and benefit claimants in an unequal position before the law. They would be liable to a far harsher punishment than someone not a council tenant or claimant who is found guilty of an identical offence.
Rendering people homeless and destitute is a very harsh punishment — even mass murderers in prison get food and a roof over their head.
The civil rights group Liberty said: “We fail to see how leaning on magistrates to lock up youngsters and evicting entire families — innocent siblings and all — from their homes — is justified.
“Crude spite is flawed, both in theory and practice, and will lead to more prob lems than it solves. Shutting down entire phone and social media networks — punishing innocent users and those warning others of violence — is as useless as it is disproportionate.”
defended
Prime Minister Cameron has defended the harsh sentences and claims that the courts are acting independently. But the Con-Dem Coalition and the media are exerting heavy pressure on magistrates, many of whom have been sitting day and night trying dozens of cases with little rest. What they are dishing out is anything but carefully considered justice.
And we are seeing staggering levels of hypocrisy from the Con-Dems. A letter in last Tuesday’s Evening Standard accused London Mayor Boris Johnson of breaking shop windows during a Bullingdon Club binge. And Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has a conviction for youthful arson.
But these are minor offences compared to the vandalism against the fabric of our society being committed by the cuts this government is making for ideological reasons and that are worsening the country’s economic position by closing down so much economic activity.
The Con Dems and the media claim that the soft approach to dealing with delinquent youngsters is the cause of the “break down in society”. But the opposite is true.
It is no coincidence that there were no riots under the Labour government but that when we get a Tory-led government that implements savage social cuts we do get riots.
In previous centuries London had a long history of rioting and the London Mob was famous for it. It largely disappeared in the last century as the state welfare system grew in response to demands from the organised working class and labour movement — the sort of benefits that are now disappearing.
The riots have never been a race issue, they are a class issue. Various bourgeois pundits have ascribed them to poverty and to culture but they avoid the use of the “c” word — class.
They are the inarticulate anger of the true proletariat — those who have nothing to lose but their chains and no means of making a living except by selling their labour power on a fragile and temporary basis in a market rigged against them.
The fact that some better off opportunists joined in the looting does not change this.
The tragedy is that these young people are so inarticulate, have so little political perspective and are not yet organised. But they’re learning fast.

Youth rebellion explodes

New Worker editorial

TORY governments and inner-city riots seem to go together. And everything that David Cameron has done since he came to power just over a year ago has laid the grounds for the spontaneous explosions of youth anger and rebellion that have rocked London and now other major cities in Britain.
The job cuts, the benefit cuts, the youth service cuts — and the police cuts have swept away all the carefully constructed but fragile bridges and pathways out of poverty and deprivation that community members, youth workers, advice and counselling services had been constructing since riots of the 1980s.
Now today’s inner city youths are right back where their parents were a generation ago with no present, no future and being bullied by the state.
The police in their turn have their morale at rock bottom. The Con-Dem Coalition praises them and gives words of support while stabbing them in the back with job cuts, funding cuts and swingeing cuts in civilian support services. Then the Met Chief Constable, Sir Paul Stephenson and his number two both resign under allegations of bribery and corruption — and another police chief in Cleveland is suspended under allegations of corruption.
Public respect for the police has plummeted and the lower ranks are feeling the brunt.
The Government also swept away some of the regulations regarding stop-and-search and disgruntled young police officers have been using thus tactic to make a life a misery for youth throughout London — especially black youth.
The killing of a young black man in Tottenham last Thursday — followed by rumours that he had been shot while on the ground, sparked anger. The Independent Police Complaints Commission immediately began an inquiry. After literally hundreds of deaths in custody, the community knows that the role of the IPCC is to keep all information suppressed until the victim is forgotten by all but the grieving family. And after the cases of John Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson they do not trust the police.
But police at Tottenham police station could have defused the whole situation last Saturday if they had consented to a serious discussion with the family and supporters at the peaceful protest there. Instead they remained in their fortress for hours until a rumour began that a police officer had struck a teenage girl at the protest. Then everything exploded.
This is a rebellion, not a revolution. It has no leaders, very little political consciousness, no focus, no structure and no direction. The young rioters have not yet struck the ruling class with anything except fear. They have hit a lot of petty-bourgeois shopkeepers and some people in their own communities have been made homeless.
Mostly the youngsters seem elated at the helplessness of the over-stretched police to stop them and making the most of it while they can to grab some of the consumer goodies they thought they would never be able to afford.
It is not a race riot — black, white and brown youths have been running together. Their parents are Afro-Caribbean, Nigerian, Somali, Indian, Pakistani, Irish, every community you can think of. And their parents are bewildered and afraid. Mainly they are low-paid, very hard up inner city workers who lead lives of debt-saddled drudgery and deprivation.
But there are extreme right-wingers who will try to portray it as a “race war” and there is a danger of right-wing vigilantism.
And there is a much bigger danger. In the enclaves of the ruling class now and officers’ messes up and down the country there will be heated debates about what a hopeless milksop that Cameron is and plans being formed to step in.
Cameron has few options. He does not have enough police to enforce a curfew — and that would upset business in our 24/7 cities. The army is too small and mostly abroad fighting unnecessary wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. He does not have enough water cannon or people trained to use them.
Even worse, probably at the moment many members of the public, politically naïve, would welcome a “strong” force to intervene and “restore law and order” and we could wake up with a new Government that is fully fascist and racist before the organised Left has got its socks on.
One thing is certain, the police absolutely now must ban the provocative EDL march planned for 3rd September through the Muslim communities of London’s East End.

Threat of Police State

By Daphne Liddle

PRIME MINISTER David Cameron has authorised the use of water cannon and rubber bullets to quell the youth rebellion that has spread throughout the country.
Following a meeting of the national security council Cobra, Cameron said that police throughout the country are being issued with baton rounds (rubber bullets) and will have access to water cannon at 24-hours notice.
Meanwhile the Con-Dem Coalition claimed on Wednesday morning that flooding London’s streets last night with 16,000 police officers succeeded in preventing a fifth consecutive night of disorder and looting throughout the capital – though looting and arson continued in Canning Town, Barking and Tottenham.
Cameron made no attempt to disguise his hatred and contempt of the young rebels, referring to a “part of our society” that has “no respect”.
This is rich coming from a man who has, unprovoked in any way, for the past five months rained terror and mayhem down on the innocent citizens of Libya.
And after the parliamentary expenses scandal, the Murdoch media corruption scandal, the resignations of Met chief Sir Paul Stephenson, and his deputy, from their positions at the head of the Metropolitan Police, it is hard to know who these young people are supposed to feel respect for.
And when they see before them the unrestrained greed of the top bankers who take billion pound bailouts from the taxpayers and pocket most of it themselves in bonuses – while they face huge cuts in their living standards and life prospects – it is not hard to understand that the hatred and contempt between those at the top of our society and those at the bottom is mutual and growing.
This is not a race issue – young people of every race and ethnicity are involved and united. It is a class issue.
Cameron can count himself lucky that most of these young people have little political awareness, venting most of their anger in looting big stores and those of petty bourgeois retailers.
Violence erupted on Saturday evening in Tottenham four days after the shooting of a young man suspected of drug related offences. Initially the police claimed the man had been killed in an exchange of gunfire.
Now we know that only one bullet was fired, the one that killed Mark Duggan and then ricocheted into the radio of one of the police officers present. Some say that Duggan had been dragged from the minicab by the police and thrown on the ground before being shot.
The family of Mark Duggan and supporters wanted answers from the police and held a peaceful demonstration outside Tottenham police station. Police ignored their demands to speak to a senior officer for over four hours.
Then, after rumours that an officer had struck a teenage girl protester, the violence exploded. As more joined in it turned to looting. And as police seemed unable to stop it young people throughout the capital saw that police were unable to stop them and went out to share in the rebellion.
The Labour Representation Committee issued a statement, giving the background to the young people’s anger: “In March Haringey Council approved cuts of £84 million from a total budget of £273 million. There was a savage 75 per cent cut to the Youth Service budget, including: closing the youth centres; connexions careers advice service for young people reduced by 75 per cent; and the children’s centre service reduced.
“Haringey has one of the highest numbers of children living in severe poverty, and unemployment in the borough is among the highest in the UK. In London as a whole, youth unemployment is at 23 per cent….
“In Haringey, you are three times as likely to be stopped and searched if you are black; and over two-thirds of those stopped are under 25.”
Some are already suggesting that slowness of the police in tackling rioters in London while allowing fires to get a firm hold before making it safe for fire engines to approach was part of a hidden agenda to stampede the general public into accepting more draconian powers to repress all forms of protest during the
chaotic times ahead as the economy of western capitalism crumbles.
This week’s events demonstrate how quickly Britain’s passive and demoralised young working class can change their mood once they get a little confidence. But the only protection against the vicious backlash to come is to turn their anger into organised resistance that can end the whole rotten system once and for all.

Defending the right to protest

By New Worker correspondent

Campaigners showed their support for arrested students and anti-cuts protesters outside Westminster City Court in London on Saturday. The protest was organised by the Defend the Right to Protest campaign in support of those arrested at Fortnum & Mason occupation in Piccadilly during the TUC anti-cuts demonstration on 26th March and students arrested on the previous anti fees protest.
Activists were told by a senior police officer during the Fortnum & Mason occupation that they would not be detained if they ended their occupation. But they were promptly arrested when they left the building. Police later confirmed that the arrests were for intelligence gathering purposes.
The police originally charged 138 people with aggravated trespass. All their mobile phones, which contained details of secure networks and email accounts used to mobilise and organise actions, were confiscated.
The Defend the Right to Protest campaign is demanding that all prosecutions brought against protesters be dropped and that an inquiry be held into the process that has led to punitive sentences being meted out by the judiciary to those already convicted.

News roundup

RMT on Bombardier ‘fit-up’

RAIL UNION RMT last Tuesday issued a fresh call for the Government to reverse the decision to award the Thameslink fleet contract to German company Siemens in preference to Bombardier in Derby as the union revealed that over £15 million of taxpayers’ money was spent on advisers engaged in the tendering process.
RMT is calling on the National Audit Office to include the advisers and consultants costs in their investigations into the contract – particularly as these well-paid advisers totally failed to include the wider costs to the British economy in the tendering evaluation despite the fact that it is standard practice in other European countries.
The latest scandal around the Bombardier fit-up comes hot on the heels of evidence last week that the Government could simply rule out Siemens as preferred bidders without any comeback whatsoever as a result of the company’s track record globally of being involved in corrupt business practices.
There is no reason why the Government could not now award the work the only remaining and approved bidder, Bombardier in Derby.
RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “The news that over £15 million of taxpayers’ money has been soaked up in advisers and consultants fees to oil the wheels of the Bombardier stitch up just adds insult to injury.
“This is money that could have been invested in defending train manufacturing jobs in the UK instead of filling the pockets of City consultancy spivs. It’s time to bring this whole shabby exercise to a close and for the Government to step in and award this contract to the Derby work force. We are sick of the catalogue of excuses from various ministers and we are demanding urgent action.”

Rickshaw congestion warning

THE TRANSPORT union RMT last week warned that central London will be “jammed solid” with unlicensed and dangerous rickshaws as we head towards Olympics, with the authorities refusing to lift a finger to clampdown on the unregulated trade.
RMT London Taxi Branch has a clear position of opposition to rickshaws in London and last month RMT parliamentary group convenor John McDonnell successfully objected to the TFL London Local Authorities Bill at Second Reading – specifically on the grounds that it would lead to the continued proliferation of unlicensed, unsafe rickshaws clogging up central London.
This was an important and significant victory in the battle by RMT Taxi Branch to end the London rickshaw trade all together.
Now the RMT is demanding urgent action to clear the rickshaws off the busy streets of the capital before there is a fatality.
RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “There is a very real danger that the whole of central London could be clogged up with unlicensed and unregulated rickshaws in the run up to the Olympics if the authorities don’t get an urgent grip on the situation.
“Alongside the threat to the livelihoods of our licensed taxi branch members there is also the threat of serious injury to unwary members of the public who have no idea that they are climbing into uninsured and unregistered vehicles on London’s busy streets. We have heard reports of rip-off fares of as much as £50 for a journey of a few hundred metres.
“Our taxi branch is demanding action now before this chaotic situation spirals out of control and we will be leading a campaign on the streets and in Parliament to raise public awareness of the rickshaw threat and to force the authorities to end this trade before we have a tragedy on our hands.”

London nurse wins landmark equal pay case

THE PUBLIC sector union Unison helped a nurse win a landmark equal pay claim against City & Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust.
The Trust failed to justify Gloria Emmanuel’s pay being lower than her male comparator’s, a maintenance supervisor.
The first test case in the equal pay claims against NHS Trusts – of whether employers can justify paying women less than men under the old Whitley Council pay system – will have implications for thousands of claims being pursued.
Bronwyn McKenna, assistant general secretary of Unison, said: “This is a landmark case that should send out a clear signal to employers that it is not right to pay women less than men….
“Women are bearing the brunt of the Government cuts, as well as facing a rising cost of living. It is unfair to force women to take home less than a man for doing the equivalent job.
“This victory will have implications for thousands more NHS women workers’ cases.”