The C.W.S.G. is a group of individuals from across the community which includes local residents, trade unionists and supporters of a range of parties across the left. Together we stand in solidarity with workers who are fighting to save their jobs and our communities.
We are angry that it is ordinary workers who are being made to pay for an economic crisis created by a system which puts profit and greed above human need and rational economic planning. Bankers and bosses continue to pay themselves obscene salaries and bonuses – but why should we pay for their crisis? If the government can bail out the banks, why can’t it help the workers?
Managers and officials claim that there is no demand for steel, but what they really mean is that steel is no longer profitable for them. The government should stimulate demand – there is a huge social need for steel, which is vital for building the affordable homes, sustainable transport and efficient machinery which the UK constantly needs.
We believe that recent struggles by workers at the Lindsey Oil Refinery, occupations at Visteon and strikes at Linamar in Swansea have shown that workers and communities can organise from the grassroots up – and win!
As supporters of Teesside’s steel industry, which has a long and proud history, we therefore vow to support the workers in whatever industrial action they consider appropriate to secure a future for their jobs and our communities: walk-outs, occupations or otherwise. We also call for the following:
>>> No redundancies – share out the work with no reduction in pay
>>> Open the books – for full transparency
>>> Corus to be nationalised under democratic workers’ control
>>> Sack the bank bosses – for a single, publicly-owned, democratically controlled banking system
>>>For a sustainable economy with socially useful jobs and decent homes for all
From today's Evening Gazette (pictures also from the Gazette):
HUNDREDS of workers staged a mass protest at Wilton International in support of sacked Lindsey Oil Refinery workers today. Up to 1,000 men gathered at all five entrances to the massive Wilton site, stopping long lines of motorists who were driving to work.
Around 1,000 construction workers on the Ensus bioethanol plant were joined by workers from Teesside Power Station, as police officers and a helicopter looked on. It’s believed staff at Heerema in Hartlepool may also be involved in a walk out in support of workers at Lindsey.
The entire Ensus construction site took wildcat strike action on Friday, joining hundreds more workers around the country, after 650 workers were sacked last week at the Lindsey plant. Some motorists travelling to work at Wilton turned back in support of the protest, to loud cheers from the crowd. One worker, who did not want to be named, said there was no dispute with Ensus, or site construction firm Simon Carves. “This is about a much bigger issue, not just about Lindsey Oil. It’s a national show of solidarity. You have to go with your principles. The Government and some employers continue to undermine the national agreement, reduce our wages and take away our terms and conditions. This will continue till we get some resolution at Lindsey."
A sacked Lindsey Oil Refinery worker, from Middlesbrough, was at the Wilton protest. He said: “I don’t have a job. I’m sacked. I’m having to move out of my house because I’m broke. The support has been brilliant, we’re over the moon with it. Everyone is worried about a day’s wage but there are bigger repercussions here. These lads could get transferred to another job and it could happen to them.”
At the main gate to the site, there were around 200 protestors gathered when the Gazette arrived. Another protester said: “A lot of people feel very passionately about this. We want to work, but we are caught between a rock and a hard place. If it happened to me, I would want everyone else to support me.” One man from Berwick Hills, a union member for 20 years who works as a scaffolder, said: “The police have been a bit heavy-handed with us but it’s a peaceful demonstration. Feelings are running high but we are ok and we are disciplined. We are exercising our right. They have been shoving us and have called in reinforcements and the police helicopter was overhead. I have got three lads to support and I have been out since Friday. If it’s not resolved by Thursday it’s going to be official. I hope for the grace of God it does get sorted out because no one wants to do this.”
The protest at the main gate ended at around 8.35am. At the West Gate entrance, meanwhile, one protester said: “Police have been ok here. They have been excellent on this gate so far." Another said: “We are just supporting the lads. We are asking for support from anyone who comes in.” A Cleveland Police spokesperson said: “The main function of the police this morning was to facilitate the peaceful protest.”
All protesters from all gates came together for a mass meeting at 9am. Ensus CEO Alwyn Hughes said: “We are hugely frustrated and concerned for the welfare of the business. It’s putting us under massive pressure.” A worker from Heerema said some staff had walked out this morning: “We are all outraged and frustrated over this.”
Simon Carves, the firm in charge of construction on the Ensus bioethanol plant, said it had nothing further to add to its comments, published in yesterday’s Gazette, which was: “The rumours about termination of contracts are not true. We are working with unions and site workers to get the situation resolved.”
Forty-eight days have passed since the suppression and arrest of workers gathering on International Labour Day - May Day. During this time our country has witnessed important events and we are seeing widespread and amazing changes created by the social movement.
During their televised debates the presidential candidates repeatedly accused each other of violating citizens’ rights, embezzlement, theft, mismanagement and incompetence. But none of them had any objection to the laws that have allowed the disastrous events affecting the majority of the population. None of them had any objection to legislation that takes away a worker’s right to strike, sets his wages at a quarter of the government’s poverty line, takes away the workers’ right to set up their own organisations, allows mass lay-offs and forces workers to sign blank one-month temporary contracts.
The presidential candidates failed to take up issues regarding freedom of speech, the right to choose one’s dress and hundreds of other inhuman laws that today govern our society. When they raised any issue it was in a superficial way - every one of them attempted to clear himself and accuse the others, as if his opponent had been more culpable than himself. In all those debates, clearly and in confronting each other, the candidates themselves proved that they accept all the current laws and conditions and that their only quarrel is over who should preside over them.
Therefore, we workers, under the present conditions, when social protests have taken mass form and a huge movement has come onto the scene to achieve its demands, see it as our right to put forward the demands of our fellow workers and to raise our banner. These demands are as follows:
-- An immediate increase in the minimum wage to over 1 million tomans (£900) a month.
-- An end to temporary contracts and for new work agreements.
-- The disbanding of the Labour House and the Islamic Labour Councils as government organisations in the factories and workshops, and the setting up of shoras [councils] and other workers’ organisations independent from the government.
-- The immediate payment of workers’ unpaid wages without any exception.
-- An end to the laying-off of workers and payment of adequate benefit to all unemployed workers.
-- The immediate release of all political prisoners, including the workers arrested on May Day, Jafar Azimzadeh, Gholamreza Khani, Said Yuzi, Said Rostami, Mehdi Farahi-Shandiz, Kaveh Mozafari, Mansour Osanloo and Ebrahim Madadi; and an end to the surveillance and harassment of workers and labour leaders.
-- The right to strike, protest, assemble and the freedom of speech and the press are the workers’ absolute right.
-- An end to sexual discrimination, child labour and the sacking of foreign workers.
Workers! Today we have a duty to intervene, to pose our demands independently and, by relying on our own united strength, together with other sections of society, to work towards achieving our human rights.
As we all know, the results in the Euro elections last week were pretty disastrous. The strength of the right (including the fascist right) seems to have finally jolted the Left into trying to get its act together: the Socialist Workers Party has called for an open discussion on left unity across groups (a positive development in itself), whilst Workers Liberty have welcomed this and called for a reconstituted Socialist Alliance to challenge the BNP with a socialist programme -- the only type of programme which can really undercut the BNP's appeal to thousands of workers. The CPGB and Workers Power have also responded to the SWP's call.
Here on Teesside there is a meeting this Tuesday (16th May), 7pm, at the Cleveland Trade Unionists Centre (119-121 Marton Road, Middlesbrough TS1 2DU), not far from Cineworld, entitled Where Left For The Next?. It's a meeting to discuss left unity and has been called by a local member of the SWP. It would be useful to get as many interested parties there as possible, regardless of their feelings towards any of the established organisations of the left.
The Teesside Solidarity Network has achieved something in its short life which has been rarely achieved anywhere else in the UK in recent years: a space where people of different groups or none can meet to discuss issues and plan actions in a vaguely united, coherent way. It would be nice to build on that now that others are looking to follow that lead.
It is not parochialism to look with great sentimentality to the history of the Teesside steel industry; it is a real and leading argument for the replacement of the present economic system for one based instead upon common sense.
Steel production on Teesside dates back to the 16th Century when the Rievaux Valley monks started extracting iron from the Eston hills, but the real boom came in the 1850s when Henry Bolckow and John Vaughn started an iron foundry and rolling mill on Vulcan Street. Pig-iron production rose ten times between 1851 and 1856. The steel provided the foundation for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which in turn aided the transport of coal. At its peak the Teesside steel industry saw more than 100 blast furnaces along the banks of the river, and employed 40,000 people. Steel produced in the region also saw the emergence of some of the finest bridge builders ever, such as the workers at Dorman Long, responsible not only for the Tyne Bridge, the Transporter Bridge and the Tees Newport Bridge, by themselves an amazing feat, but one of the genuine landmarks of the world in the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
In other words, steel is Teesside. Without it the area wouldn’t exist, and if it perishes the area will join it. Stuart Maconie realised this in his brilliant Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North:
“Some people think it’s rather tragic that the town has become so proud of the [Transporter] bridge, even adopting it as its civic symbol. Not me. The North should be as proud of its civil engineering as the south is of its thatched cottages or almshouses. It’s what we do, and we do it rather well. If you visit Sydney and look up at its magnificent Sydney Harbour Bridge you will see the words ‘Made In Middlesbrough’ stamped on the side. The Transporter Bridge itself was listed as a Grade II listed building in 1985. That man Pevsner said that it was, ‘in its daring and finesse, a thrill to see from anywhere’.”
More specifically, Ken Clarke did it. He was the Minister for Industry responsible for privatisation of the British Steel Corporation in 1988. He made a statement setting out the plans in the House of Commons of December 3rd 1987, which began with an announcement that profits of the British Steel Corporation had risen from £178m in 1986/7, to £190m for half of 1987/8. Then came the rub:
“The Government's consistent aim has been to achieve a strong competitive British steel industry capable of performing well against international competition. This is in the best interests of the work force of British steel, of all its customers and in particular of steel users in the rest of British industry. The British Steel Corporation has already achieved a quite remarkable recovery and is now one of the most successful steel makers in Western Europe.
I believe that early privatisation and full commercial freedom will enable the company and its work force to be best placed to go on to further achievements and to secure a firmly based competitive industry with a long-term future.”
He was immediately challenged along the obvious line of attack from Bryan Gould, Labour MP for Dagenham:
“On a day when the British Steel Corporation and its work force deserve genuine congratulation, has the Minister not rewarded them instead with a statement which quite unnecessarily places their future in jeopardy? Does he not recognise that British Steel's success has been achieved under public ownership? Indeed, it is much more successful than privately owned manufacturing industry. Is it not the case that the success could not have been achieved without essential investment funded by the public purse and without debts being written off at the public expense? Is this to be yet another example of the taxpayer making the investment, but being denied the return; another case of the taxpayer picking up the bill but the City picking up the profit?”
This led Clarke to assert confidently:
“British Steel is now in such a strong position vis-a-vis its European competitors that it is excellently placed to take advantage of that steady return to free-market conditions. That is another reason for privatising as soon as possible. In the state in which we shall be returning it to the market it will be a dangerous and powerful competitor to the other Europeans.”
There then came a succession of weasel questions from backbench Tories, including Teesside MPs Richard Holt and Tim Devlin, supporting strongly the proposed privatisation. Devlin, MP for Stockton South, even went so far as to say to Clarke:
“When my right hon. and learned Friend visited Teesside during the summer, did he notice the energetic and competitive spirit that is permeating the work force? Did he not see that not only have we a successful plant on Teesside, which is the largest blast furnace in Europe, but that many of my constituents are eager to compete with international producers, and are sending steel as far as San Francisco and Hong Kong? They look forward to doing that in the private market in the future.”
What lunacy this would prove to be in the future. It was left to future Blairite Mo Mowlam alone from the region’s MPs to point out the lunacy of it in the present:
“May I help the Minister and the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) with their mathematics? We have lost 45,000 jobs on Teesside since the Government came to office. That figure does not relate only to the steelworks but to the chemical plants and docks. We know what bad news is about, but Labour Members do not celebrate it — we have experienced it. The hon. Members for Stockton South, (Mr. Devlin) and for Langbaurgh said that the right hon. and learned Gentleman came to the steelworks, which he did, and I am sure that he talked to the work force. However, I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman listened to the work force...”
Still Clarke nonchalantly pressed on, goading those meddling Socialists in the Labour Party of the bright future that lay ahead for Cleveland, with British Steel freed from the constraints of Whitehall and allowed to realise its full potential in the greener grass of the free market:
“The figures vary, but the Commission and its experts say that, and there will undoubtedly be closures in other western European countries. We have got our steel corporation into a much better state than other European countries' industries and we can now look to the future optimistically, with the worst of the change behind us.”
Of course, it does not take a historian to know what happened to this ‘successful nationalised industry’. The 1980s and ‘90s saw a significant decline in UK steelmaking, even to the poignant moment in 1995 when the Riverside Stadium was built on the banks of the Tees using German Steel. In 1999 British Steel merged with Dutch company Hoogovens to form Corus. They were prepared, however, to sacrifice the Teesside plant in order to save the aluminium arm of the company in Holland. It was only saved by the creation of a new company, Teesside Cast Products, which had the responsibility to find its own buyers.
In 2007 Corus was bought by Indian company Tata, the steel industry having flourished from a surge in demand for steel. A consortium of four companies entered into a contract, guaranteeing the purchase of steel until 2015. Last week the appeared to renege on this, leaving Tata, and its £480m debts, in deep trouble. Teesside steel could no longer compete on price with cheaper, Asian steel.
The response of the New Labour Government, as can be adduced from the sentiments of Lord Mandelson and Gordon Brown, is to try and enforce the contract. Brown spoke of the ‘significant damages’ that will be sought. This would certainly be the way forward in the immediate term, but it doesn’t take account of the underlying reason for the industry’s difficulties: market forces, and a competitive economic system driven by profit and not need. It was the policy of the Labour Party to nationalise steel in 1967, and it was Labour Party policy to oppose its privatisation in the 1980s. Is that no longer the case, and if not, why not?
Even if the contract can be enforced, it will only stem the tide for at best a couple of years. The workers at the Redcar plant will still be working to pay off the debts of Tata, and in an industry that has no future so long as we are bound by the free market economy. This will mean one of two things: complete future collapse, or a future Government bail-out. The latter particularly sticking in the craw, as that would mean the workers subsiding the profits appropriated from their labour in the first place, and propping up the system that has led them to the brink of redundancy. Whenever one hears of Government bail-outs, one should remember the Great Oration in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists:
“The hundreds of thousands of pounds that are yearly wasted in well meant but useless charity [for which can be substituted ‘State philanthropy’] accomplish no lasting good, because while charity soothes the symptoms it ignores the disease, which is – the PRIVATE OWNERSHIP of the means of producing the necessities of life, and the restriction of production, by a few selfish individuals for their own profit. And for that disease there is no other remedy than... the PUBLIC OWNERSHIP and cultivation of the land, the PUBLIC OWNERSHIP of the mines, railways, canals, ships, factories and all other means of production, and the establishment of an Industrial Civil Service – a National Army of Industry – for the purposes of producing the necessities, comforts, and refinements of life in that abundance which has been made possible by science and machinery – for the use and benefit of the whole of the people.”
Many thanks to new PRT writer Joe for the posts below on legal reform and Ellen Wilkinson, hopefully the first of many.
2009 has been a relatively eventful year for the left on Teesside. We had possibly the biggest demonstration in the area's history in January with the peace march and rally through central Middlesbrough during Israel's attacks on Gaza. The environmental struggles have continued (see Pancrack.tv for more details), including an impressive demonstration outside the Local Action on Climate Change Conference in Middlesbrough last month. There have been fairly well-attended meetings of Teesside Against the War and the North East Shop Stewards Network (part of the National Shop Stewards Network). There have been meetings organised by the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party on the economic crisis and socialism. There have been 'Oxjam' gigs for charity (courtesy of rising stars The Chapman Family) and a series of '4 People Not Profit' gigs and nights for the benefit of Campaign Against The Arms Trade and Water Aid. There has also been spontaneous industrial action (albeit at times accompanied by exclusionary, nationalist slogans).
This weekend hundreds of construction workers gathered in Middlesbrough for a rally (organised by Unite and the GMB) against job cuts, against the exploitation of foreign labourers and against the divisive hate espoused locally by the BNP. The fascists came third in a council by-election in Dormanstown this week, with 16% of the vote, but their campaign was hindered by the presence of a large anti-fascist contingent (reaching a high-point of about 30) which leafletted the estate tirelessly in the weeks leading up to the election, a contingent which itself included people from the local Labour Party. Labour got beat, and there won't be many tears shed over that.
It's in this context that the Teesside Solidarity Network was launched back in February. The first and second monthly meetings pulled in just under 20 people, attracted presumably by the blurb featured in the TSN's promotional memo: "With the recent war in Gaza, the economic crisis across the globe, and attacks on abortion rights, asylum seekers and civil liberties, many activists are looking for new ideas about how to confront injustice and oppression. We are a group of activists inspired by workers' and women's solidarity movements and are a from a variety of different traditions -- but what we are all concerned with is thinking about which way forward for the left and for working class and feminist politics. This is the first of a new series of meetings where we can get together and talk openly and critically about politics with each other and revitalize the threads of radical history and politics that have been part of Teesside's hidden history."
The February meeting began with a lead-off on the dynamism of "Third Wave" Feminism (typified by such things as Ladyfest and Manifesta), followed by a discussion about the wildcat strikes at Wilton. The second meeting saw the screening of Tina Gharavi's short documentary The King of South Shields, which tells of Mohammed Ali's memorable visit to South Shields (Tyneside) in 1977, and was followed by a discussion about Islam, socialism and Palestine. The third meeting, which took place last Wednesday, saw a slightly poorer turnout and a less focussed discussion, with no real topic set beforehand, nor any publicity to promote it. Nevertheless, a fairly productive debate ensued, more about the culture of the network and its meetings than anything else, and was followed by a get-together afterwards.
Already, it seems, the network has been denounced in some quarters for being "sectarian" or a "talking shop." To a certain extent cynicism is understandable, but the overriding feeling for me is that there are elements among the left which see any critical discussion, debate or exchange of views between people of different organisations (or none) as a "sectarian distraction". That isn't particularly healthy and is probably a sad reflection of the authoritarian cliqueyness that affects vast swathes of the left in the UK generally. On the other hand, there are those who like to do nothing but endlessly talk and argue and fall out, so the criticism levelled at TSN that it's a mere "talking shop" is quite understandable in that respect. But surely the point is that there has to be a balance and an interplay between theory, debate and action -- genuinely open and critical discussion should go hand-in-hand with getting out there and getting involved practically -- and they should feed off each other, not cancel each other out.
There was broad agreement on Wednesday that TSN meetings should continue rather than be discontinued, and that they should serve a double purpose: to promote debate and discussion of various topics with a certain amount of local appeal and/or popular interest (including the screening of short films and the appearance of guest speakers); and to provide a space where activists or loosely interested individuals can literally "network", i.e. discuss and update each other on campaigns that are happening in the area.
The need for TSN to be as democratic and inclusive as possible was also emphasised. It's helpful that no group is dominant -- the largest party-aligned "group" of individuals we've had at the meetings so far have been Workers Liberty with three or four members or supporters -- and there is a decent mixture of people from a range of groups or tendancies (AWL, Socialist Party, CPGB, SWP), the majority being independents (including myself). There has been some nostalgia for the days of the Socialist Alliance, which was seen to be fairly vibrant on Teesside between before it folded in the mid-2000s.
The topics for discussion at future TSN meetings are decided at the end of each meeting by the group (except the first two, which for practical reasons were chosen by the conveners in the hope of pulling in decent crowds). Following suggestions, in future meetings we hope to discuss (with guest speakers): John Charlton's work on the history of slavery in the north east; the timely work of Robert Tressell, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists; the Longridge Wood and Coatham Common protests on Teesside; and maybe even the social history of football fans and Middlesbrough Football Club. There's a TSN Facebook group for anyone that way inclined; Facebook (as opposed to a mailing list, which has proved slightly more difficult to co-ordinate) probably provides the best and most user-friendly platform for reports, discussions and suggestions between the meetings, so make sure to check it out if you can.
Whether a viable future exists for the idea of a Teesside Solidarity Network remains to be seen, but it's had a reasonably successful start. It certainly needs to be more inclusive in terms of its demographic (for example, it has so far been overwhelmingly male in composition) but then again that's probably true of most of the left. Hopefully these things can be addressed with a more concerted push as we go along. In the midst of a global recession which could yet have even more devastating consequences for working class people across Teesside, the north east, the country and the world, it's important that we work together to build and maintain local networks of resistance which can ultimately feed into a much larger struggle.
In the week in which Sir Stuart Bell MP briefly came out of political hibernation in defence of closed governance and the rights of Members of Parliament not to have their expense sheets open to public scrutiny, it is probable that many on Teesside questioned (not for the first time) their representation. The modern concept of a 'safe seat', although the term was used from long before, probably first came into consciousness in the 1950s- the height of the so-called 'post-war consensus'. It was during which a balance was struck allowing Trades Union leaders access and power in decision-making, and Civil Service control over industry. It was also probably the time that career Labour politicians signed up in signifiant numbers, seeing the party as being now a useful vehicle to get into high office. Sure there had always been right-wing Labour leaders - MacDonald, Bevin, Dalton- but it was during the post-war period that career politicans of the Tory and Liberal mould descended into the people's party.
It is this tradition that Bell represents in a later generation, although not elected until 1983 (of all years). Not always was it the case, however, that the North-East was regarded as a rotten borough by the Labour Party. Of course, there are legitimate reasons for why people on Teesside vote Labour, not Tory. For one, the Tories are at best untrustworthy, more likely downright hated; a sentiment still firmly in place from the Thatcher years when she a) destroyed the steel and other industries that Teesside was depedent on, b) lied about the motives, and c) lied about the great modern economy of the future of which the region would allegedly play a part.
For another, the people of Middlesbrough are by nature very shrewd and realise acutely that for all of New Labour's faults, the Tory public spending assaults will have a devastating effect on the area.
The failing of the Labour Party is a failure of its right-wing. The wing of the party that cares only about winning elections (and therefore becoming a more attractive prospect for careerists, wealthy donors seeking to back the 'right horse', and membership fees) has been happy to sit on its safe-seats in the north of England, Scotland and Wales without any attempt at building up a popular movement capable of challenging the political status-quo, and it is precisely this that will be the cause of its upcoming landslide defeat. Had they used their base of support to launch such a movement, they would not have been resting on such fragile foundations, and the lot of the working-class would be better placed than it is at the moment.
The proof of this is in history. This post is dedicated to Ellen Wilkinson, who was elected as Labour MP for Middlesbrough in 1929. She served in Ramsay Macdonald's second Labour Government, despite the opposition from the left to it's formation when the party could only form a minority and was thus unable to carry out it's proper agenda, dooming it to failure. Nevertheless, this is testament to Wilkinson's technocratic attitute - if reforms could be made to improve the lives of the working people, even if only a small amount, they are worth doing. She opposed Macdonald's deal with the Tories and the subsequent National Government and lost her seat in 1931.
She remained active in politics in the mid-1930s, writing her novel The Division Bell Mystery and aligning herself strongly with the emerging Bevanite/Tribunite group, writing articles for the magazine and also contributing to the Left Book Club.
In 1935, she was re-elected to Parliament, this time as the Member for Jarrow. She clearly took a deep personal and emotional interest in the cause of the unemployed in her constituency, as demonstrated in her book about the Jarrow March, which naturally she organised, The Town That Was Murdered. One moving excerpt describes how she lead a platoon of marchers to demand a meeting with Prime Minister Macdonald, who they had discovered whilst on their journey was visiting his Seaham constituency:
"Some of the marchers were real 'mothers in Israel', those indominatable middle-aged women who are the backbone of all the local Labour Parties. For me there was the anxiety... would it be in vain? Would the door be shut in our faces? There were enough police and detectives to have kept us in check if we had been bandits... but all was orderly and the police were helpful.
A mile down the road, William Barkley of the Express and Ernest Hunter of the Herald came to greet us. 'We hear he is going to see you', they said. At the house of Dr. Grant, where the Premier was staying, eight of the leaders and myself were invited in. Tea was offered, but we felt that we could not accept that until the tired men and women outside could be fed.
Mr Macdonald came into the room... the first time we had met since the election. It was always difficult to resist Macdonald when he himself had determined to be charming. Our backbones were like ramrods when he entered, but soon he had us sitting in chairs round the fire, listening to us attentively as we told the pathetic tale of the woes of Jarrow. Two of the women in particular were most moving as they told him of the difficulties of trying to bring up a family on the dole.
I tried to be hard, unimpressed... to remember what this man had done to the movement that alone could help these men and women. But the whole atmosphere under J.R.M's skilful handling became like one of those 'socialist firesides' which had formed the perorations of his best speeches in times past. He aksed us for a special written report, promised special consideration. Jarrow would be kept in his mind, he said, and the memory of this talk round the fireside on the hill.
We stood to take our leave. Mr. Macdonald put his hand on my shoulder. 'Ellen, why don't you go out and preach socialism, which is the only remedy for all this?' Which priceless remark from the Premier of a predominately Conservative Government jerked me back to reality... the sham, by the soft firelight, of that warm but oh so easy sympathy...
Yet I am sure that at that moment Macdonald was as sincere as he had ever been. The tragedy was that he knew the real cure for the evils of which we told him... but had run away at the moment of the trial that he had himself forecast so accurately years before."
Her technocratic attitude was demonstrated again when, as a member of Churchill's war government, she was responsible for the Morrison shelters.
Of course, after the second world war, in 1945, a left-wing Labour government elected for the first (and arguably only) time, she become only the second woman to be appointed to the cabinet, as Minister for Education. In 1946 she passed the School Milk Act guaranteeing free school milk to all schoolchildren, which lasted until 'Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher' took it away in the 1970s. But even having fought so hard to build the popular movement behind the election of that government, she still had to fight (ultimately unsuccesfully) to get through the reforms she wished. In particular, the long-standing aim of the left to raise the school-leaving age to 18, which was only announced as Government policy in July 2007, and will probably once again bite the dust with the election of a Tory government next year.
Utterly dejected by the reactionary and cynical forces that surrounded her whole life, and by the failure, despite having a clear mandate to do so, to succeed in her reforms, she committed suicide in 1947. This shows clearer than anything else her utter, and pure, devotion to the movement and to the class she was elected to represent. Her loss was a tragic one for the labour movement - she was only 55, and could have ended up leading the Labour Party if she'd set her mind to it. Her insight was as sharp and profound as anybody else on the left, as was her ability to articulate it. She concludes The Town That Was Murdered with a passage that could have been written today: "This island is too small, its economic life too precariously balanced, its geographical situation too vulerable, for its fate to be left to the casual workings of chance, or the insatiable unheeding drive of the profit-makers. Jarrow is an object lesson of what happens then. The profiteers, having ravaged a town or a country, can take themselves and their gains elsewhere. The workers have the main stake in their homeland, for in it they must remain. They have built it, and worked in it, fought for it. On their skill and their toil has been built England's industrial reputation. they were crowded into hovels, their children starved and died, and on their sacrifice great capital has been accumulated. It is time now that the workers took control of this country of ours. It is time they planned it, organized it, and developed it so that all might enjoy the wealth which we can produce. In the interests of this land we love that is the next job which must be done."
One wonders when we will see the first 'Sir Stuart Bell Comprehensive School'.
Traditionally in the UK, a key feature of the common law protection of civil liberties was the absence of a right to privacy. Indeed even today such writers as Noam Chomsky regard the comparative weakness of liable laws in the USA as an example of domestic freedoms and protection of democracy.
However, the right to respect for private and family life has been a part of the European Convention of Fundamental Freedoms and Human Rights since the 1950s, and since the passing of the Human Rights Act 1998 in this country incorporating it has become enshrined in our law.
What should be immediately striking to any layperson who reads Article 8, where that right is contained, is that it is subject to a long list of qualifications and restrictions. Interferences with the exercise of the right by a public authority are permitted under Article 8(2) provided they are in accordance with law and necessary in a democratic society in the interests of ‘national security’, ‘public safety’ or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of ‘disorder’ or crime, for the protection of ‘health or morals’, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
The first four of these justifications are obviously going to ring alarm bells when viewed through a pair of left-wing spectacles. In 1978 the European Court of Human rights held that the mere existence of legislation in Germany allowing telephone tapping by state authorities involved ‘a menace of surveillance that strikes at freedom of communication’ and therefore constituted an interference with the right to privacy contained in Article 8, however as it contained safeguards they held that it was both lawful and proportionate.
In Malone v UK in 1984, the Court held that as UK domestic law on telephone tapping was obscure and open to differing interpretations it did not satisfy Article 8(2). In sharp response to this the Thatcher Government passed the Interception of Communications Act 1985 in order to place the practice on a statutory footing.
Article 8 is therefore toothless in terms of protecting, for example, trade unionists, anti-war or other demonstrators, and anyone else MI5 might consider undesirable from being spied upon by the state. It was appalling, though not remotely surprising, when earlier this month it was revealed that major construction companies had paid for information on their employees as part of a rampant blacklisting culture.
What, however, of the justification on the grounds of ‘protecting public morals’? This appears to serve two functions:
Firstly, the requirement of capitalism to control workers by dividing them along social grounds. This has always been done on many grounds, notably nationality, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation and even minor drug users have been painted as ‘the undeserving poor’. This is essential to create cheaper pools of labour, and to ‘play-off’ one set of workers against another in order to drive down wages and conditions. It is important, therefore, that not only employers are able to discriminate within the law, but also that other Establishment players such as the media should be free to push such agendas.
Even in Naomi Campbell’s famously successful action against the Daily Mirror for printing the details and photographs of her attendance at Narcotics Anonymous, it was still nevertheless held that there was a public interest in publishing the fact that she was a drug addict.
Let’s consider for a moment Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre’s incredulous reaction to Max Mosley’s successful lawsuit last year. In a speech to the Society of Editors’ Annual Conference denounced Mr Justice Eady for coming to an ‘arrogant and amoral’ judgment, which ‘inorexablyand insidiously’ imposed a privacy law on British newspapers. Also, Tom Crone, the legal manager of News International, who was of the opinion that ‘these judgments risk outlawing the traditional role of the media in exposing the moral shortcomings of those who wield power’.
Second is control, through out and out blackmail having already defined a framework of morality and having established a so-called public interest as above. This is not simply a fictional conspiracy, even though this is precisely a tactic employed by the protagonists in A Very British Coup. We have seen very real attempts to bring down controversial (i.e. left-wing) politicians through the exposure of their private lives, including notably Tommy Sheridan, George Galloway and John Prescott.
What is also notable about Article 8 is its ambiguity, which in turn leaves it with flexibility. The state, for example, was happy to prosecute a group of consenting homosexual adults in the Brown case for engaging in sado-masochistic acts, and in its eagerness to resist the removal of the DNA records of hundreds and thousands of innocent people from police records, and in the reclassification of cannabis. Within the language of Article 8, it can do so legally. Yet at the same time Article 8 has been invoked to prevent any intrusion into family life to deal with domestic violence and child abuse, with public authorities insistent on an individualistic prognosis.
What this shows is that we should never seek to depend on laws written by and for capitalists. But is that to say there is no value in attempting to reform the law and bringing legal challenges in the courts? Certainly not, and in fact where necessary left groups and unions should devote resources to doing precisely this. We should simply do so having acknowledged that laws can be interpreted in many ways and that the power to do this lies with judges, who are political appointments and thus represent the domestic power base (capital). Rather than legal action we should rely instead on political movements. This has been the historic method of achieving successful reform by the labour movement. As explained in Raymond Challinor’s brilliant biography of W.P. Roberts (the miners’ attorney):
“How was this accomplished? Not on the basis, at least directly, of the strength of the workers’ case. Rather it was on the strength of the workers themselves...”
Victor Serge, Unforgiving Years, New York, New York Review of Books, pp341, 2008 Martyn Hudson
Richard Greeman’s new translation of Serge’s final novel is yet another blow struck against Stalinist despotism and for the recovery of an authentic socialist tradition from the ‘midnight in the century’ of totalitarianism. This project is part of what Vasily Grossman called the ‘radiant dossier’ that would emerge from the debris of NKVD archives that one day would be opened. There are still missing manuscripts by Serge that may still be uncovered - others were undoubtedly destroyed – ironic then that his last novel written in exile in Mexico had to wait till now to be translated into English and significantly also, in Russian. Yet, Serge was in constant exile and his books metaphorically so and it is so fitting that the experience of working class defeat so documented in his novels come to us in this historical moment when the vestiges of Stalinism (or what Serge calls the ‘ruling psychoses’ of dictatorship) and liberatory socialism are still in confrontation on the British left.
Serge’s life reads like a document of the 20th century. Born in 1890, he was imprisoned for his anarchist activities in Belgium, was involved in the abortive Spanish revolution, made his way to Russia and fought for the Bolsheviks, became a Comintern agent in Germany, joined the United and then the Left opposition, was imprisoned and exiled by Stalin and then surviving those experiences finally made it to Mexico after the collapse of France to the Nazi’s and began the final stage of his assessment of totalitarianism. His individualistic and idiosyncratic understanding of socialism aside, he was a hugely important witness to the destruction of the individual conscience by despotism and was one of the first generation, within the Stalinist death camps, to understand that the USSR was a new form of society – a form of bureaucratic collectivism.
The recent work of Suzie Weissman and by the translator of this novel, Richard Greeman have pointed to the unparalleled significance of Serge – not only for where his was situated geographically and historically – at Kronstadt, in the camps, in the frenzy of revolution, with Trotsky and Natalya Sedova in Mexico – but also because his conscience and his spirit were so untainted by despotism and he remained till the end of his life full of hope for the future. As he wrote in his memoirs at the end of his life: 'I have undergone a little over 10 years of various forms of captivity, agitated in seven countries, and written 20 books. I own nothing. On several occasions a press with a vast circulation has hurled filth at me because I spoke the truth. Behind us lies a victorious revolution gone astray, several abortive attempts at revolution, and massacres in so great a number as to inspire a certain dizziness. And to think that is not over yet. Let me be done with this digression; those were the only roads possible for us. I have more confidence in mankind and the future than ever before.’
His novels documented a series of revolutions from Birth of our Power (Spain), to Conquered City (Red Petrograd) but they also developed the idea of the counter-revolution of the soul that he saw developing with the embryonic emergence of stalinism. He was opposed to the formation of the Cheka and to the banning of parties under Bolshevism and significantly not only took part in the suppression of Kronstadt but also argued that it was one of the worst consequences of the revolution and could have been avoided. In this he was taken to task by Trotsky later but it is clear, particularly with the work by Ida Mett and Paul Avrich on Kronstadt, that the uncritical acceptance of the Trotskyist left opposition of the validity of the suppression was a step too far – addressing ‘error through terror’ as Serge would have it.
It was the clearsighted recognition from within the camps of the nature of stalinism (through debates with imprisoned left communists, workers and left oppositionists) that led to many of his disagreements with ortho-Trotskyism after his release but it was also clear, as Natalya Sedova recognised after Trotsky’s death, that Serge was correct in his third camp assessment of the USSR, long before significant events like the invasion of Finland. His two major novels on stalinism – The Case of Comrade Tulayev and Midnight in the Century - are perhaps the two most significant fictional understandings of totalitarianism matched only by the later work of Vasily Grossman himself in Life and Fate and by outside observers such as Orwell, with whom he has many affinities. Only through the resurrection of our massacred dead can we finally overcome the legacies of Stalinism and particularly to overcome the kinds of fatal infections leading to the politics of hatred and terror – ‘The end justifies the means, what a swindle. No end can be achieved by anything but appropriate means. If we trample on the man of today, will we do anything worthwhile for the man of tomorrow? And what will we do to ourselves?’ (p70). And particularly resonant in any understanding of prominent politics in the left today.
There has been some controversy over Serge’s political development and it is why his later novels such as Unforgiving Years are so important to the socialist movement now. What is striking about this recently translated text is its tone of darkness – out of all of his novels, as Greeman writes, it is ‘the most bitter, the most cerebral, and the most poetic’. It is constructed around four sections and each section is based on the experiences of two operatives Daria and D. The first is based around the defection of a lifelong communist to the left oppositionist camp and immediately it becomes clear that this fictional case study has a resonance with the history of both Walter Krivitsky and Ignace Reiss (with whose assassination at the hands of the stalinists Serge himself was outrageously implicated). The second part is based within Leningrad during the advance of the Nazi’s and documents both the siege and the role of ordinary workers in surviving and hoping. The third section is set in Nazi Germany during its experience of annihilation and tells of the experience of a dissident soviet agent uncovering the horror of that victory/defeat for ordinary people. The final section witnesses the escape of the central characters to the ‘new world’ of Mexico where the physical Europe of totalitarianism is left behind in a way that its ideological legacy and heritage is not – importantly Serge notes that ‘it is surely fugitives, rather than conquerors, who led the way to new worlds’ (p92). It was as a fugitive that Serge died in the end as was the fate of his mentor Trotsky and it is as fugitives from Stalinism that Daria and D come to understand the inner workings of authoritarianism. The understanding of the disortions of stalinism and what it does to its operatives is a key to the book – ‘D believed in secrets, ciphers, stratagems, silence, masks, and in playing the game impeccably’ (p9). Until he had to flee as all liberated minds had to in the ‘midnight’.
The novel wavers on the brink of despair but only because paradoxically for a socialist humanists many of its themes work on biological, geological and evolutionary analogies in highly abstract ways – making this a truly great piece of art as well as a political document. But still within the horrors of the Lubyanka there is still hope and an unsullied revolutionary tradition which will survive the slanders and the massacres – ‘Capital of Torture! The microphotography labs, the special training schools, the dungeons of the secret prison vibrating with the subway trains, the cryptography departments, the central Power. The place of execution, a solidly reinforced cellar no doubt, thoroughly hosed down, rationalized, into which so many men have descended, suddenly realizing the annihilation of everything: faith, reason, life’s work, life...the red flags...The red flags, the first raw shoots of socialist humanism that no amount of dust, filth, and blood could besmirch entirely,’ (p18).
For an exile, a political exile and an exile in the realm of ideas and literature, Serge was a constant outsider, but having intervened in so many revolutions he is paradoxically our best internal critic of the kinds of germs which can lead to dictatorship. As an exile and as a critic he never, however, abdicated hope and a commitment to the socialist future, ‘What border’ as he says in this truly great book,’Would not dissolve before the mere presence of a superior humanity.’ And only in that unsullied onslaught against the border of the earth and those divide our consciences against one another can Serge’s legacy be understood.
The P.R.T. is a blog of news and views for the people of Teesside and surrounding area. Covering local, national and international issues, politics, pop culture and local schnews, the P.R.T. blog exists to provide an intelligent, informative and non-sectarian alternative to the dominant mainstream media.
"Those who think history has left us helpless should recall the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labour organizer of 1890, and the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to choose what they did with it." Sam Smith
"We live entangled in webs of endless deceit, often self-deceit, but with a little honest effort it is possible to extricate ourselves from them. If we do, we will see a world that is rather different from the one presented to us by a remarkably effective ideological system, a world that is much uglier, often horrifying. We will also learn that our own actions, or passive acquiescence, contribute quite substantially to misery and oppression, and perhaps eventual global destruction. But there is a brighter side ... We are fortunate, perhaps uniquely so, in the range of opportunities we enjoy for free inquiry and effective action. The significance of these facts can hardly be exaggerated." Noam Chomsky
