Though Cowards Flinch

Last week, when setting out 10 reasons why the best anti-cuts strategy for lefties is to stay positively engaged with Labour councils forced to make cuts, I wrote this:

It is, I suggest, perfectly legitimate to protest not just against a Council forced to make cuts, but against firms who should be taking a hit in their profits, while maintaining the services they agreed under contract (Reason 6).

Today the Liverpool Daily Post reports:

The kids are freezing, but the solidarity is just amazing.

They could be at home, snug from the sub-zero temperatures, but here they are, stamping their feet for warmth, keeping the fires lit with whatever they can lay their hands on, together against injustice. 

They’re here to win, and they’ll do what it takes.  

This is not the end. This is just the beginning.

And where is all this dramatic solidarity taking place? 

Not, on this occasion, against the backdrop of famous London scenery. 

This time, it’s outside a beans factory on the drab outskirts of Wigan.

Of course, I can’t do Laurie Penny as well as Laurie Penny can do Laurie Penny, and nor do I want to, but my point is obvious enough; the same kind of solidarity in action can be written up as a radical game-changing movement in one media luvvie-friendly environment, but hardly register as an event in another, less metropolitan, less journo-heavy one.

Or to be more blunt, the liberal intelligentsia is not as interested in traditional working class struggle as they are in middle class student protest.

The facts behind the Heinz factory strike are straightforward enough. 

Despite record profits this year, and 9% dividends to shareholders, Heinz managers are using the broad context of ‘austerity Britain’ to hold down wages below inflation, having imposed a pay freeze in 2009 because of ‘uncertainty’ about the international economy.  This includes explicit comparison to the low wage settlements across the UK, including the public sector, in a convenient reversal of the government-pushed line that the public sector has it cushy compared to the private.

All this comes from a company which makes great play of its Corporate Social Responsibility, but which has ‘downsized’ its international workforce from 36,000 to 29,600 since 2006. 

It’s a struggle between a big company intent on the exploitation of its workforce, and a workforce now prepared to hit back, who have gone through the whole strike ballot process, got 90% approval for strikes, and are now acting in solidarity.   

That is, it’s a fightback against the kind of injustice that Laurie Penny, in her more conciliatory latest piece (in response to Alex Callenicos’ critique), claims that is at the root of this new movement:

Alex Callenicos is right: students can’t do it alone. Of course they can’t. Nor can schoolkids, or workers, or people who are unemployed. That’s what class solidarity is all about, and solidarity has been the watchword of these protests…….The power of organised labour was undercut across the world by building in higher structural unemployment and holding down wages, by atomising workers, outsourcing and globalising production whilst keeping working people tied to increasingly divided and suspicious communities.

But it’s also a struggle between capital and labour, in a part of the country well away from both the mainstream and radical new media, which has had scant attention.

Any proper reporting attention that it has had has come primarily from the ‘hard left’ organizations Socialist Worker and The Socialist Party.

These are the very organizations of course, whose publications Laurie reviles. Or rather she reviles the people who choose to try and sell them; she does not seem too interested in what the newspapers themselves actually contain:

Some of their ideas, like the notion that one can truly change the world by standing on the corner of every demonstration selling copies of the party newspaper, are a little antique…

Now I’m not saying these newspapers couldn’t be better (to be fair, I’ve not seen them much in the last few years), and  certainly think they would benefit from being regionalized or even hyper-localised, perhaps along the lines of the Hackney Citizen, for example, and I also think the Socialist Worker could benefit from a conscious strategy to ‘drive’ readership from hard copy to the website over a specific time period.

Nor am I a supporter of either the SWP or the Socialist Party, because I do not have revolutionary aims; I am a really very moderate democratic socialist, committed to effecting changes in institutional power structures which redress inequalities between capital and labour, through a combination of participative and representative democratic means.

Nonetheless, I think the genuine efforts of committed organizations and individuals to bringing to wider public attention the kind of news, and the kind of news angle, so absent from the mainstream, deserve a bit more than a casual dismissal of the type Laurie provides.  These organizations do not, of course, claim or think that a newspaper in itself will create change; they see it as part of an overall strategy, and Laurie’s sarcastic simplification of what the SWP is about is hardly conducive to the broader conciliatory tone of the rest of her article

This sarcastic tone is, though, I fear, reflective of a more general tendency to dismiss ‘traditional’ leftwing organization and militancy, of the type which has actually often been quite effective over the years at defending working class interests (if not bringing a desired revolution).

Indeed, I am struck by the similarity in tone between what this confident new movement has to say about the ‘traditional’ left and what Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a hero of the 1968 Paris uprisings (the self-professed benchmark for the current movement) had to say in a book published just weeks after the main events:

Factory work, trade union ‘militancy’, verbose party programmes, and the sad, colourless life of their elders are subjects only for sarcasm and contempt. The same sort of disdain is the reason why so many students have taken a radical stand…(p.42, see also Dave’s fine article).

Now I know that for many readers, pointing this kind of thing out may seem both old-man-bitter and overly defensive of what can indeed by the stymying bureaucracies of the left.

This is a shame, because I’m supportive of the student cause, and I’m impressed both by the tactical innovation shown, and by the way in which some links are being forged with a nascent wider resistance to the government.  When I visited the UCL Occupation a few weeks ago, my overriding impression was of a group of people who actually had a pretty good grasp of the wider context, and it seemed to me that they listened to Alex Callenicos (I just happened to be there when he spoke), as he lectured them on the links between the assault on tuition fees and the wider neoliberal projects, with polite ‘heard it all before’ disdain.

But it would also be remiss of me not to speak about the very real dangers I think lie ahead for the movement – a movement which, as I’ve noted, takes May 1968 as its benchmark, but seems happy at this stage to overlook the fact that the May 1968 movement did not in fact bring any lasting benefit.

Indeed, as David Harvey argues convincingly, the almost Hayekian aspiration to individual freedoms, did much to open the door to 1980s neoliberalism. And as I’ve argued, it was the spirit of ’68, when imported to the UK in the 1970s and early ’80s, which created the conditions for the short-term gains, but long-term losses of the New Urban Left.

In his magnanimous call for the trade union movement to unite with the ‘magnificent student movement’, Len McCluskey opens the door to a real engagement between the working class (at least the unionized segment of it) and student militancy.  This is a good thing, but it must be a two way engagement, based on respect; if the union movement is to be expected to get behind the students, then surely the union movement can expect support from the students.

In subsequent posts I’ll be getting into quite some detail about how student movement might identify legitimate and tactically appropriate targets for the kinds of protest at which they have shown themselves to be so adept in recent weeks.  This won’t of course be the whole range of possible actions, as I’ll be limiting myself to areas where I have a proper understanding of the issues and opportunities (e.g. local government and the NHS).

In the meantime, though, it would be good to see the same kind of expression of relative humility as Len McCluskey has expressed on behalf of the traditional trade union movement, also expressed by some of the de facto spokespeople of the student movement (whether or not they are actually students).

It may be a salutary reminder to those spokespeople that no-one I’ve spoken to in the last three weeks in my non-university, working class area, is particularly aware of the radical new student movement, and the idea that it is likely to change people’s lives for the better would be greeted with, at the best, a wry smile or comment. 

It is easy to get into a cycle of self-reinforcing hype about how important the student uprisings have been but, impressive though the actions have been, they have involved only a tiny percentage of the overall school/student population, and have gone largely unnoticed as a ‘social force’, as opposed to a bit of bother on the streets of London.  Indeed, as reflected  in this autobiographical piece at Latte Labour, many student activists may have been surprised at the lack of genuine interest in their activities shown my family members this Christmas.

If mutual respect between the current movement and ‘traditional’ working class structures and the accompanying necessary humility does not develop, however, history does show that the current movement, far from creating the revolutionary change that many involved now seek, may ultimately end up as a call for a vapid liberalism which fails to deal with the class inequalities that lie at the heart of all the social injustices now being committed by our Coalition government.

Recently I penned an article, published today on the Guardian’s Comment is free section, drawing on the consumer credit (regulation and advice) bill drawn up by Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow.

After writing it I had some notes left over which I want to jot down here.

During her adjournment debate held on 9 November in the House of Commons, Creasy noted that of those who use credit over their means, 26% are male, and 34% are women, and of that latter 34%, 50% are recently divorced. And with 1 in 10 people, according to Creasy, struggling to finance themselves until pay day, it is clear to see that desperation leads individuals to something which would put the willies in most people.

Creasy also informs us that 1 in 10 customers of legal loan sharks earn under £11,000 per year, and that even lenders playing by the book are able to okay loans at 272% APR (compared to 9-10% by mainstream lenders).

Tim Worstall, who popped up in the comments section of my article, made the point that all short term loans are going to be high in APR to cover the loan application process itself. Furthermore, loan sharks don’t make as much profit than, say Lloyds bank, so by his account they can’t be so bad (or, perhaps he doesn’t think that, but that legal loan sharks needn’t feel so immoral).

Now call me a Maoist protectionist Nazi Communist if you will, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that our government subsidise credit unions with the intention of making more individuals creditworthy, so they don’t end up lining the pockets of the likes of the chief executive of Provident – who recently stated that he expects growth in his target market as a direct result of the CSR.

This is not, as Mr Worstall has accused me of being before, because I am anti-market, anti-people making money. In actual fact, what informs my decision to dislike legal loan sharks, and want to campaign against sky high interest rates, has in recent times been contained by many conservatives and New Labourites alike – the view that having credit dependent and debt ridden consumers in the system is bad for a savings culture (and a savings culture is generally considered quite good).

Regardless of a person’s first principles, markets can’t run themselves, and so it seems appropriate to operate them – as best as possible – to bring about good. Forging a mechanism to limit the amount an agency can charge as interest, while using state subsidy to make more people creditworthy, while we simultaneously battle to cut credit dependency altogether, sits perfectly well with me.

Free marketeer Damian Hinds, MP for East Hampshire, who attended Creasy’s debate, made three points in response to the bill: it is not necessarily party political to support (or even, I suppose, take issue with) the bill; it is not necessarily new; and it is not in conflict with a diverse market. If this friend of the market can agree, why can’t others do the same.

The setting is the UK in the 1930s. It was hoped that depression in basic exporting industries – and, thus, working class unrest – would soon disappear and output be even with production. In short, it was hoped the UK could be more like the US, where reduction in socially necessary labour time was matched with an abundance of goods to sell on the market and where consumers consumed en masse (Fordism, not Marxism).

Instead, unemployment in Britain reached 3 million – 23% of all insured workers – in 1933 while output was commensurate with the slow and erratic recovery. There were restrictions placed on production rather than a more desirable reduction of costs, tariffs and cartels for fear of over-production, and a country pulling its hair out.

An economy assisted by the state became very appealing to members of parliament on both sides of the house. Harold Macmillan – then a backbench Tory MP – remarked of the mood in the thirties: “the structure of capitalist society in its old form had broken down, not only in Britain but all over Europe and even in the US”.

No, he wasn’t advocating socialism, but he, like so many then, and so many today, did feel that in order for capitalism to remain, it must be helped out by a very visible hand. I’ll no doubt have my knuckles slapped for this, but Marx was right when he asserted capitalism would come to destroy itself; perhaps what he didn’t anticipate was that government would periodically come to its rescue.

The tendency of British investors to export capital into the colonies meant that many industrial plants in this country were left to dry; much the same argument can be said about manufacturing now as it could both in the seventies and the thirties – basic industries were not moving fast enough to maintain pace with the rest of the world. As such, manufacturing was left lacking while Japan, Germany and the US reaped all market rewards.

Even when production saw a recovery in 1934, unemployment remained relatively high to the extent that one in every eight people able to work could not.

This was a reality for the high skilled too, not to mention the so-called middle class. Noreen Branson and Margot Heinemann in their book Britain in the Nineteen Thirties point out the rise of the Middle Class in the mid-thirties was, strictly speaking, the increase of clerical, technical and administrative jobs, still affected by unemployment and of comparable wages to more traditional skilled labour.

Nobody can deny it is to the credit of trade unions at the time that real wages remained pretty steady after the crisis prior to the 1930s. Employers were simply unable to make wage cuts in line with the fall in prices – it would have been poison. Much like Britain of the seventies, the streets could be awash with concerned peoples at the drop of hat. On 21 September 1931, striking teachers caused the government to retreat on reducing wages in the public sector, and admit certain “classes of persons” were unfairly affected, while everybody was “in this together” to quote that familiar phrase.

Surprisingly for the government at the time, action had been taken by the Royal Navy after having their wages cut from 4s to 3s. Whitehall realised the error of their ways, backtracked, and further strike action called off on the promise no pay cut exceeded 10%, with no victimisation.

The latter promise was subsequently broken when 36 ringleaders were sacked and the Incitement to Dissatisfaction Act was later realised, with the aim of curbing subversive influences in the armed forces. In spite of this, however, the affair had a lasting effect on the working class movement who used it as proof of industrial action effectiveness.

The unfortunate grouping at the time were the unemployed. They were promised cut to benefit would not exceed 10%, though according to Branson and Heinemann it was more in the region of 20%. In June 1931 the Royal Commission advocated heavy reductions to benefit payments in their interim report (it was from this report too that a reduction in real wages was floated – in spite of unsettled opinion on it. The Macmillan report of July, which advocated this position on wages, even had as signatories Sir T. Allen of the cooperative movement and Ernest Bevin of the TGWU/TUC). It wasn’t until November 1933 that the Unemployment Bill, Part II restored the standard 10% cut in benefit.

Worse still, agricultural workers and domestic servants who lost their jobs were entirely excluded from benefit and would have to apply to the local Poor Law Authority – making times extremely tough had they no other means of securing money.

The cuts at the time were carried out so as to save the pound from collapsing, and as per usual everybody was in it together. Though, of course, some more than others. Strike action was the method of choice for keeping the government to check on the fairness of cuts, and indeed they were forced on some occasions to revise their sums and admit they had come down over-zealously on some over others.

It’s early days yet, but who can say what will happen in the future when people start to question the legitimacy and fairness of the cuts set by today’s coalition government.

David Allen Green, on his Staggers blog, recently penned two very provocative posts on the decision by the Fire Brigade Union to hold a strike on bonfire night.

The first one was so “controversial” in fact, that a second one was necessary in order to level with dissenters.

The problem with the first one – as Green tried to counter in his second – was that it dealt with abuse of power, while apparently only implying this could apply to the bonfire night strike. As Kate, commenting on the second article, pointed out “This article still doesn’t *quite* tell us what David Allen Green’s opinion is of the dispute in question. The implication of the first piece was squarely condemnatory of the FBU”.

It appears like Green has covered his back merely by asking whether this could be an abuse of power, but has qualified no concrete answer. However, given his dissatisfaction at the charge of commenters saying the FBUs action did not constitute an abuse, it is close to obvious which side he is on – that is, of course, until the next post.

For me, the first post pontificated on power that would otherwise be absent if striking was not an option. By that I mean the power to subvert the abuse of power levelled by management. Indeed striking is historically the only power – per se – workers have to bargain their bosses with; so if this strike is an abuse of power, this would render the fire brigade powerless – exactly how management would prefer it.

But I think Green would accept this too; striking is a demonstration of power, the abuse is the day on which the strike is taking place.

Green received this answer when contacting the FBU:

A range of dates have been chosen – not just Bonfire Night. We do not have the luxury of time. The clock is ticking on our members’ contracts. Firefighters in London will be sacked from 26 November. We are fighting to defend our jobs and our service, and we have just four weeks to succeed.

Immediately the argument is not that striking is an abuse of power, but that the day is a bad idea.

Green is right to be slightly confused about the FBUs agreement in South Yorkshire of 11/13 (11-hour day shifts; 13 hour night shifts) but opposition to the same in London. But the point is no longer on par with calling the strike action an abuse.

Indeed the second article – far more detailed, and better sourced than the first – is really a step away from the contention that the strike action is abuse. It even concludes with this admission: “it is rather hard to see which side is abusing their power more.”

I am a fan of Green’s work in general, but such ambiguity is symptomatic both of a fence-sitting liberal and someone keen not to make too explicit an assertion – neither of which I’m accusing Green of being, simply implying as much.

Interestingly, Iain Dale – hardly a paid up member of the awkward squad – on speaking to some striking firemen yesterday, noted that “they were all on strike because of the Section 188 notice letters rather than the proposed change in shift patterns”.

With regards to Green’s conversation with the FBU, what we must ask is that the FBUs position be concrete – is the dispute based upon the shift pattern changes and Section 188 in equal measure? And why is 11/13 appropriate for South Yorkshire and not London? But on Section 188 – this is an abuse of power that needs challenging in the only effective way workers can.

I’m no fence-sitter; which side is absuing their power more? The management side.

"You want me to what now?"

All through this year and last year, as strike after strike was brought down by employers’ opportunistic legal attacks – on any grounds they could possibly muster, whether those grounds had any material effect on the situation or not – I said that laws governing strike ballots were draconian and poorly constructed, failing to fulfil their stated aim of protecting the democratic rights of workers in trades unions.

Employers’ group, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, have underlined my point with a recent demand that the government tighten laws on strike ballots, and consider banning strikes altogether and introduce compulsory arbitration in “key” industries. There’s no pretence that tightening laws will respect the democratic rights of workers now, it’s simply naked aggression towards anyone who disagrees with the cuts and will act to stop them.

Naturally the CBI, the Confederation of British Industry, is not far behind. In a document with a title that would make Orwell worry, they’ve announced that the government should impose a 40% quorum for strike action on the balloted workforce. Making Britain the Place to Work also, ironically, proposes to shorten the statutory consultation period for firms making more than 100 people redundant from 90 days to 30 days.

Here, of course, there is the usual pretence at defending the interests of ordinary people – as John Cridland, CBI Deputy Director-General stated when launching the document, “Strikes cause misery. They prevent ordinary people going about their daily lives, whether it’s getting to work or getting the kids to school.” To which the obvious answer should be, guess what? Mass unemployment and encroachment into the terms and conditions of a workforce cause misery too.

The CBI document contains a lot of other worrying ideas as well. A key one is the attack on TUPE – the transfer of undertaking (protection of employment) regulations, which essentially protect workers’ terms and conditions if a company is transfered from one owner to another. The CBI want any new owner to be able to ‘harmonise’ a newly acquired business with a previous one, paying workers the same; i.e. less.

Contained in the document is also a demand for the American system of workforce voting for union recognition instead of the Central Arbitration Committee having the power to simply grant workplace recognition to a union, if that union has gained over 50% of the members of the workplace. This takes place in the context of businesses which simply refuse to negotiate with unions, even when their whole shop is unionised, provoking strikes simply to get recognition – which is not in the interest of workers, who lose pay.

Ballots introduce a plethora of questions. Would it only be held once? Could it be forced any time employers were having difficulty negotiating with a particular union? Would there be a particular threshold to trigger union recognition? In the US, these laws are used to stymie union recognition – even to the point of employers creating and promoting their own unions for workers to join, just to screw with the recognition of other unions.

The CBI document states:

“People at work should always be empowered to decide for themselves if they want to be represented by a union or take the opportunity to use other routes to communicate with their employer. The law should be amended so ballots should always be held to enable employees to demonstrate whether or not they support recognition of a trade union to speak on their behalf.”

People at work are always empowered to decide for themselves if they want to be represented by a union; they can join one or not. The problem here is not with the accurate representation of workers, it’s with the voluntary nature of union recognition. And I don’t see the CBI bemoaning the failure of businesses to accept the decision of their workers to be represented by unions.

This leads me to suspect that the CBI have other motives than empowering workers.

With the (half-) victory of a Conservative government, it would be surprising if employers’ groups weren’t gearing up to attack unions and further impose regulations on the one area of employment law where regulations seem tolerable to bosses; that area where the worker gets to give force to his opinion. We need to be aware that a victory in this field will make life all the harder later on, when unions are finally forced into action against the cuts.

We should also recognise that these are only opening salvoes from bosses’ organisations. As with Thatcher’s government, once they know they can get away with this, they will try and take away much more.

Staff on strike at HMP Elmley

In 2008, following Gordon Brown’s announcement of severe inroads into the public sector workforce, and the services which people depend on, the TUC meeting in Brighton declared that there would be co-ordinated action to stop the cuts. Two years later, this demand is again on the lips of members – and again little is likely to be done.

Unions likely to be involved in strike action aren’t looking for pay-rises, they’re looking to defend the services they operate against pay cuts. In services like prisons, where a Damoclean sword hangs above Senior Officers and where recruitment has been frozen, the attitude of the government to spending puts lives at risk.

It also puts crime rates at risk; as Brian Caton, one of the leaders of the Prison Officers’ Association, has said, crowded and understaffed prisons mean retreats from the good practice outlined by previous reviews – such as at the enquiry following the death of Zahid Mubarek in custody. The worry on the ground is that somewhere in Whitehall there is a figure of increased deaths in custody which government officials are prepared to accept.

This is reflected in the official response to Sunday’s death of a prisoner following assault in his cell. The government have simply dismissed objections from staff on the ground that their workload is increasing, as it will, to encompass good practice, while staffing and support levels are decreasing.

There could not be a starker example that politicians, isolated in their Westminster haven, could not care less about the effects of these cuts on people. Whether it’s less housing for the estimated five million people (Local Gov’t Association figure) on council waiting lists or the people whose benefits are in the firing line, the Con-Lib government is prepared to put the pain of economic recovery on them, whilst Cameron preens about ‘fair’ cuts and future jobs.

And does nothing at all about the 7.8% of working age people currently unemployed. Well, actually that’s not true. He and his government are prepared to label them all workshy – thus Chris Grayling,

“What concerns me in today’s figures is that while there are more jobs in the economy there is too little evidence of them being taken up by the five million people who were stranded on out-of-work benefits under the previous Government.”

So, naturally, workers are looking to their unions and to the TUC to solve problems. Is the TUC going to ride into the rescue with co-ordination of strike action? Not likely. Determined action has been put off until next Spring. The most we’ll see this year are demonstrations in Brussels, at the Tory conference and some assorted lobbying and activist activities.

Unite, the single biggest union in the country, has at least made a head-bob towards preparing a determined campaign by calling together groups of activists for each area. This is a forward step, though the attitude to union organisers is often that they are jobsworths who take bungs from management, and of union NECs that they couldn’t find their bumhole with both hands and a flashlight.

That can only be addressed through an earnest engagement and responsive attitude that is often lacking from union proceedings, naming none in particular.

The TUC and the various unions will have to shoulder the responsibility for opposing these cuts; the alternative is another decade of Cameron, as a demoralised working class is a recipe for Conservative election victories.

(Update: really helpful reply from Vice-President of the NUJ below)

I applied to become a member of the National Union Journalists (NUJ) a couple of weeks ago, as I’m quite getting into the idea of battering out my thoughts on political economy for a living.  I’m also applying for a journalistic job, though I think it’s a long shot.

Today I got a letter from the NUJ:

Thank you for your application to join the NUJ.  Unfortunately, you do not meet the main criteria as you are not earning from the work you do in the field of journalism.

Now, I’ll admit that this isn’t a totally unexpected reply.  I had a hunch I might get turned down when I put a zero in the ‘How much do you earn?’ bit of the application form.

I am disappointed though, and I wonder what readers and fellow bloggers think.

I do understand that a union needs to have criteria for membership based around what the union does and the interests it represents, but shouldn’t there be a bit more flexibility in a work area where self-employment is significant, and where one of the challenges is to ensure that new journalists do get paid for their stuff rather than have to give it away free for ages before they get ‘a name’ and can start to charge?

Isn’t turning down the applications of me and others like me somewhat self-defeating in this respect, quite aside from not being a very good idea financially?  I was after all offering to give them money every month. Isn’t there a whole area of union recruitment out there in the blogosphere, ready for the NUJ to tap, and which will strengthen the union overall?

I don’t know what the answers are. I’m just asking.

In the meantime, can someone give me some paid journalistic work, so I can join the NUJ.  I’ll pay you back, honest.

A comment on Duncan’s piece on goings-on in the BNP got me thinking. It’s all very well, ran this comment, people gearing up to protest the latest march of the EDL or the BNP, but what about actually getting something done? This is much less ‘sexy’ (so runs a certain strand of opinion) and therefore attracts less attention than marching all over the place.

Such opinions are regularly levied at various lefties occupying students union councils up and down the country. They’re too concerned with Palestine, say the centrists and right-wingers, and not concerned enough with what’s going on in our own university, with our own students etc. The truth is a little different, I think. This comes out when lefties propose solidarity demonstrations with unionised university staff, and even the ‘soft’ Left tend to shy away.

Yet the situation is a little more muddled than a hard left/everyone else are cowards dichotomy. It’s true, being out marching against the BNP and the EDL is unlikely to lead to new council housing and services of itself (which, most of the left now agrees – a little belatedly, are what we need). On the other hand, it can lead to networked community groups powerfully in tune with local opinion and able to stand up and fight for the needs of their area.

National and international issues are somewhat different to the able local campaigns that have grown up around fighting the BNP and the EDL, evidence for which comes from several of the last major engagements.

While the Stop the War movement developed strong local contingents, these seemed to fade out when it became apparent that marching wasn’t really doing much and that there wasn’t a plan B.

The movement against the war in Lebanon didn’t develop such roots, nor have more nationally orientated campaigns such as Youth Fight for Jobs.

It is this last, which is backed by several of the more militant unions, that really got me thinking about whether or when we can draw distinctions between ‘campaigning’ and ‘getting something done’. My new union is likely to be PCS, which is a strong supporter of YFJ (as am I, for the record) and which carried the following statement on its website:

“[YFJ] was unanimously backed by PCS delegates at this year’s Annual Conference. Activists from our Young Members Network have already played a significant role in the campaign by marching through London at the time of the G20 Conference, having motions passed at the YFFJ launch meeting and being elected to the steering committee.”

The claim to a significant role in the campaign amounts to being part of a march, passing motions at YFJ conference (though I didn’t attend, let it be said that the majority of things which tend to go through are worthy-can’t-we-all-yawn-and-let-it-pass-without-speaking type motions) and getting a few people elected to the steering committee.

Which is great. Marches are confidence-building, awareness raising endeavours, if costly. Representative institutions are great. Yet…if I’m honest, I suspect that the sort of people who get elected to steering committees here have a bunch of other committees and national committees and executive committees to their name. The same faces, different venues.

On the ground, in PCS, despite the representative institutions of the union acknowledging YFJ and perhaps – perhaps! – a few people in different locations being interested in it, the vast majority of union members don’t know it exists. It hasn’t contributed anything to them, nor (though a laudable goal) to the young unemployed. From the point of view of the union, YFJ hasn’t done much to be proud of.

Which is sad, but not unexpected nor necessarily bad socialist strategy. It’s sad because it’s hard to stress enough to young people the supreme importance of seizing control of unions immediately and making them relevant by using them as forums through which to change the nature of their working environment.

It’s not unexpected because the last period has seen key upheavals across universities in the UK. Labour’s cuts were beginning to take effect over the last year, leading to movement by UCU against the plans laid out for workers. Con-Lib cuts are likely to bite harder, and with nuclei of students and staff willing to resist to the utmost – including occupation – it’s no surprise that an organisation based more on students than young workers will turn in that direction.

It’s not bad strategy because pulling people together in campaigns such as this fosters the engaged attitude on which solidly unionised workplaces rest, and it’s a lesson that the people involved will carry with them.

A jaundiced view of left politics might suggest that interest in the issue of top-up fees and the like is really sustained by the desire of so many campus Lenins to occupy their university and rise to fame, or by the ease with which national demonstrations can be swapped for actually finding a tactic that will stop the introduction of higher top-up fees. It’s one of the ‘sexy’ issues allowing for maximum posing and minimal cerebral engagement.

I disagree. Quite the opposite; a renewed focus on top-up fees springs from the development (in coordination with and by various socialist groups including Socialist Students / YFJ) of a new layer of socialists who have been on the front lines of cuts and pickets, and who see ever more urgently the need to oppose this government in the arena that they have experience building up campaigns and support.

This is an important prelude to getting anything done. If we don’t pursue tactics that can reach people at their current level of political awareness and engage it in battles relevant to them, we’ll never get them to take on the additional fights we think will help. So a lot of people dislike the BNP intensely, based on the political consciousness they do have – but they don’t see how they can fight the root causes of fascist sympathising – so we take the one and build it into the other by succeeding at the campaigns we do fight.

If we can’t do this, then we’ll end up no better than the professional politicos in London, building their email campaigns on well-meaning supporters but ultimately speaking into a vacuum where real mass action is concerned.

That’s why I’m happy to be part of a Left that can appeal to the local – residents against the BNP – and the internationals – young people concerned at global injustices – and which has the wherewithal to bind them together.

I’m not a Labour Party member, and I’m unlikely to rejoin the Labour Party, even secretly, just to vote for Diane Abbott. Yet I suspect there are few socialists who would not appreciate the re-politicisation of the Labour Party membership.

I have only my own experience and that of others of like-mind to support this contention, but the lack of debate over issues (beyond property development, traffic lights and similar things) at branch and constituency Labour Parties is key to the continuing inability of the Labour Left to engage decisively within its class or within the Party.

Why is there no initiative to change that? I know of several people who sought the position of Political Education Officer within their CLP because they felt they could bring some debate to their CLP. Perhaps it’s time to support them.

A central body like the Labour Representation Committee, backed by the research groups of various unions, the TUC and even (gasp!) Compass, could issue one resolution every week, for debate at branches, to be voted on by the end of the meeting. Information in support of the resolution could be issued much in the way that New Labour issued their talking points bulletins to the PLP (except our version would be intellectually more engaged and honest).

Such debates, in the lead up to Labour’s conference, would provide the opportunity to orient new or depoliticised members to key issues facing the Party and the working class. This will be vital in distinguishing between candidates for conference delegate. But these debates will only happen if groups like the LRC press Party members to regard the proposal of resolutions and the toeing of a socialist line as their duty at CLP and branch meetings.

It might also lead to a wider activism; it doesn’t take an intellectual giant to draw a link between a resolution supporting a national strike (of which there are liable to be a few, and this is just an example in one area) and the potential for actually doing something to support the strike at a local level. If one or two members for each geographically tight region (done by county perhaps) was willing to oversee this development, support to picket lines or protests against job cuts etc would be easier to bring out.

When people see this happening, they’ll be more likely to join, and those who join as a result will be more likely to take an activist role and stance.

Additionally, it might provide a way to establish contacts in those branches which don’t necessarily have a strong Left contingent. One member would be enough to start the debate. Even if that member didn’t feel especially confident running a section of the LRC, passing back contact details to the LRC officers would help in fleshing out that organisation.

From the point of view of a member of the Socialist Party, it may seem unimportant to strengthen Labour’s grassroots. But the reality is that a Labour Party that moves Left will form one arm of a broad coalition of the working class – wherever they stand politically – to fight the Conservative-Liberal government and their cuts.

In fact, there’s an argument to be made that an LRC, forced to the Left by a greater connection to its class, and staffed by committed community and trades union activists – particularly of the younger generation – will feel a pull towards mobilising for mass disaffiliation of CLPs from Labour, if an alternative political organisation can successfully upset the Con-Lib agenda.

Just a thought.