Though Cowards Flinch

There’s a lot of interest at the moment in the anti-poll tax campaigns of the late 1980s and very early 1990s. This has been reflected in various articles in Socialism Today and other publications. Yesterday, the local Socialist Students group held a meeting at which one of the organisers of the Kent anti-poll tax union came to speak about his experiences.

He brought with him some fantastic resources; a book of minutes from the Kent APTU and a collection of pamphlets produced by the group, and newspaper cuttings from the time. Of particular relevance to Canterbury students was a letter he sent from prison, having been jailed for non-payment, to the student newspaper as it existed back then.

Several things stood out to me, through his narrative and through the resources. The first was the sheer weight of opposition to Thatcher and the poll tax. Kent at the time still preserved some heavy industry and in areas like Aylesham, which are unheard from today, 30 out of 43 streets were recorded as sending people to local APTU meetings.

Even in areas considered a little intimidating and no-go by some of the organsiers, in parts of Thanet, a public meeting organised on the off-chance of people showing up was packed out. From Ashford to Ramsgate, Medway to Dover, Kent was represented in force in the anti-poll tax movement; even towns like Deal turned out for protest marches.

If I appear shocked at some of this, I ask the reader’s forbearance. Living in Kent, where Labour strongholds survive only in industrial areas like Medway, South Thanet and Dover, it’s strange to think of the leagues between thronging with angry and embittered workers, prepared to protest, demonstrate and ultimately refusing point-blank to obey the law.

The second thing that stood out was the role of the Labour bureaucracy. At the time, the Labour Party nationally had utterly failed to push for the type of campaign that would have derailed Thatcher’s unjust poll tax, whether her party had occupied six hundred parliamentary seats and Labour none. It was much after Militant had decided to make the centrepiece of Thatcher’s ’87 re-election a target that Labour began to wake up.

Stories from the ground are interesting too. Delegates, chosen by local community meetings under the banner of the anti-poll tax unions, reported to Kent meetings of the country APTU that Labour Party organisers dug their heels in wherever possible, opposing the calling of public meetings, opposing having Labour speakers on the platform and so on.

This was repeated in unions like NALGO, where the Right fought tooth and claw against donating money for leaflets to APTU campaigns, and when that didn’t work, attempted to water down the political content of the material that was published. Yet included amongst the many documents was a NALGO-backed leaflet calling for non-payment.

So much of this seems familiar to our struggles with the union and labour bureaucracy today. The same short-sighted attempt to confine struggle as much as possible to parliament, or at least within the Labour Party, exists today. Neither bureaucracy was overthrown by the poll tax struggle, but at a local level, legions of activists were won over and there are records of majorities in specific streets displaying anti-poll tax signs in their gardens or windows.

This exploded the attempt to confine the struggle to a parliamentary one, and John Major was ultimately forced to admit that the ‘community charge’ was providing too little milk for far too much moo.

Bearing in mind that public service cuts are another attempt to do the same thing – eliminate large chunks of the redistribution of wealth from rich to poor – the anti-poll tax campaign has serious lessons for us today. By patiently agitating and building a campaign, while posing questions of class and solidarity as key to winning the struggle, we can stop the attempt to cut public services. A simple refusal, from millions of voices, will topple the government.

It was significant, therefore, that the meeting went on to resolve that the anti-cuts campaign should continue. No one present believed that the University of Kent’s recent climbdown over the redundancies of eleven staff in Biosciences is an end to the attempt of the university management to inflict the cost of a HEFCE grant cut on to staff and students.

Proposals were also accepted that stalls be organised and staffed on the campus of Canterbury Christ Church University, as they too will likely be facing serious cuts – all the more so since the university is not a dedicated research university but the home of many vocational courses, like a nationally-renowned centre for Initial Teacher Training.

Since it seems that none of the three major parties, including Labour, are prepared to voice on a national level the need to keep public services running, to support benefits especially at a time of mass unemployment and to end and reverse privatisations that are always a prelude to attacks upon workers, we’ll have to do it ourselves.

Hopefully this is just a beginning.

(Advance note: If readers concerned with this situation would check the comments section for some inaccuracies in my article, that I’ve edited, and some potential inaccuracies that I haven’t, I’d be grateful).

A short piece of real-world news. The University and Colleges Union branch at Kent University held an emergency members meeting at 1pm today in Keynes College to discuss the possibility of balloting for strike action.

This comes amidst news that twelve staff at the University Bio-Sciences department face compulsory redundancy, officially on grounds of competence. This is in a department of no more than two dozen and will gut immediate provision for the discipline.

Naturally UCU rejects the allegations of incompetence and several members present at the meeting offered similar examples from other departments where performance management reviews were given preposterously low gradings. One staff member pointed out that he had published fifty papers in the last ten academic years and brought in £1 million investment, but was given 0% at a research review.

The anger in the voices of staff sitting in the common room, awaiting the meeting, was clearly evident.

Apart from UCU staff there were many sympathizers present, including a faculty rep post-grad from Bio Sciences, who backed the UCU, several sabbatical officers and two SWP members. Kent Socialist Party members who are university staff also attended.

Outside Keynes College, UKC students and activists of the Socialist Students held a stall and petition against cuts in higher education, and in support of the UCU, raising the possibility of joint action between the students and staff if the compulsory redundancies are pressed ahead with.

A ballot will be held on whether or not to strike unless the redundancy process is suspended immediately, and a deputation proceeded from the meeting to see university authorities. Feeling in the room was clearly that a “Yes” vote would be the result; proposal to ballot was moved unanimously and no one spoke against the motion.

Sussex University recently faced a 29-hour student occupation in support of UCU’s efforts to resist cuts. The campaign there is on-going, but the statement released reminds us that these cuts are a result of the continued attempt to turn universities into a profitable business and that both top-up fees and cuts in university budgets are ways of lumbering the cost of education on to workers, whilst others reap the benefits.

UCU are likely to propose a series of one or two-day rolling strikes, so the time to organize for coinciding occupations is now, and students have everything to play for – their future included.

Having been told that the Socialist Students group at the local university is going to be building for the anti-war demonstration on October 24th, presumably with street stalls and leafleting, my main response was, “Why?” I have been a proud and loyal “stopper” since before the war broke out, but aren’t our energies better devoted to other things now?

The purpose of the anti-war movement, as I always saw it, was three fold. First, to prevent the war. Failing that, to maintain pressure on the government to make the wars as short as possible by bringing the troops home. Third (and centrally to this argument) the point was to create a nexus that would gather both the regular political activists and the irregular activists, those ‘normal people’ outraged by the war.

I think that, with certain qualifications, the Stop the War Coalition has failed on point number three. The main qualification is that engagement with the public has not ceased; petitions are still steadily signed on Stop the War stalls around the country – and in towns with major barracks such as Canterbury, that’s important. The SWP here do a solid job in that regard.

Notwithstanding this engagement, however, the socialist Left only has a limited number of activists with a limited amount of time and resources. I think these can be better directed towards union work and building to fight cuts to Council jobs and services. Moreover, I think that the forum for debate created by such a campaign would be infinitely more productive than anti-war work at this point.

As has been detailed on this blog over the course of several articles, the ways in which Councils are intending to cut jobs and services are manifold. Tory Councils particularly seem to be gearing up, possibly anticipating primary legislation to help them (when the Tories win the General Election) – which Paul has speculated on at length. Labour is thinking in the same vein – and cuts to education will be felt in local services too.

It can be argued that these issues are not of immediate relevance to students, but I think this is too narrow an approach. Students regularly campaign on free education, campaign for the protection of university staff and services. The SP-led Socialist Students organisation is also involved with the Youth Fight for Jobs campaign. These campaigns are at their best when they have the active support of other workers.

The position of these workers, in terms of organisation, political consciousness and ability to render aid to other workers, is directly affected by such cuts, and this impacts the position of students – which is one reason why so many students at SOAS went all-out to save staff in danger of deportation after dirty tricks by management.

So perhaps it is time for a little less concentration on Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela, Sri Lanka (etc – QUB/UU Socialist Society site gives an additional flavour) and a little more concentration on building the links (and, as an object lesson in socialist theory, updating the organisational concepts of?) solidarity necessary to sustain the campaigns about things which do have direct relevance to students. Which might, additionally, have the effect of changing the rather turgid and sterile character of SU politics.

There is no point in having a bastion of radicalism amongst students if those students remain isolated, and are not used to direct unionisation and the extension of working class organisation. For groups like Socialist Students, which often gets off the ground in towns without branches of the Socialist Party amongst local workers, this is doubly important. Isolated, students will be defeated every time.