People's Republic of Teesside

The Fire at Home - the IRA war on Teesside 1921

2012-01-19T01:08:00.000-08:00

By David Walsh

The purpose of this piece is to bring out from what the socialist historian Edward Thompson called 'the condescension of history', a small - but politically significant - set of events around Teesside and the wider North East, and which related to one of the biggest domestic issue of the 1920's - the Irish war of independence.

I was first alerted to this hitherto forgotten element of our common working class history by the Dongate website - a local site managed by Patrick Brennan of County Durham and which concentrates on the history and culture of his home town of Jarrow . His essay concentrates as is natural on aspects of the IRA activities in that area of the region, but also mentioned that a similar campaign was waged elsewhere in the North East - and in particular on Teesside. Hence more research and this essay. I need to add that the first three 'background' paragraphs of this essay are taken in large part from Patrick's site as he wrote it both tersely and beautifully. You can access his site on

http://www.donmouth.co.uk/index.html

The material on the setting up of the Irish Self Determination League came from the oldest Irish republican socialist body active in the UK - the Connolly Association. You can read more about their work and their magazine The Irish Democrat on;

http://www.irishdemocrat.co.uk/about/ca-history/

I used the Northern Echo for all reports of the IRA Teesside campaign of 1921. A full copy of all editions of the Echo are available for further study at Darlington Central Library.

Finally, any more information from readers to supplement this essay would be welcome. Please contact me on

walshda@hotmail.co.uk

The General Election of December 1918 - the so called 'Khaki Election - was the first to be held in England after the Great War. In Ireland, then still part of the United Kingdom, it was also the first to be held after the abortive Rising of Easter 1916. The outcome in the two countries could hardly have been more different. Although local working class communities like Teesside were still traumatised by a war which had left hardly any families untouched by death or injury, the electorate in England responded to calls for patriotism, and voted in, in an echo of today's dreary world, a coalition of reactionary Liberals and Conservatives.

It would take a world-wide depression, another World War, and 27 more years before voters in England finally came to realise that the "Great and Good" who ruled them were neither great, nor good.

But in Ireland, there was an altogether different political climate. Here, Rulers and Ruled were separated not only by class, but also by religion, culture and in some parts of the nation, language. The execution by army firing squads of many of the leaders of 1916 - including the socialist trade union leader, James Connolly - and the attempt to introduce conscription towards the end of the War, had radicalised the population, and led to a massive growth in support for Sinn Féin, the main nationalist party. Sinn Féin won 73 of the seats contested, and in accordance with their republican manifesto Sinn Féin MPs refused to take their seats in the Commons, and established instead a new assembly, Dáil Eireann, which met for the first time on 21st January 1919 at Dublin's Mansion House.

The only item of business on that first day was the adoption of a Declaration of Independence. Thus the War of Independence begun.

The British Government would not concede full independence and a republic; Sinn Féin would settle for nothing less. Attacks continued and intensified, and towards the end of 1919 we saw the raising of a volunteer force in England to serve in Ireland. The first units of this force, officially the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force, landed at Dublin in March 1920, and were quickly christened the "Black and Tans", on account of the strange mixture of uniforms that were worn owing to a shortage of regular police uniforms. These men, and the parallel Auxiliary Divisions were specifically recruited from ex-officers with good war records, and it acquired a fearsome reputation as a fighting force. It was too, politically committed and was probably the nearest that Great Britain had to the proto-Nazi German 'Freikorps'.

The struggle was vicious and bloody. The IRA operated a hit and run guerilla campaign, with attacks upon individuals and small groups of police and Black and Tans, and the murder of "informers". In urban areas, raids upon economic targets such as banks provided much needed funds. In the rural hinterland there were attacks on the occupying army, large houses and mansions belonging to local landlords, magistrates and the former ruling Anglo Irish 'ascendancy'.

In response, the Black and Tans, hit back in the only manner then known for dealing with guerilla activities - intelligence-based arrests backed up by general reprisals against the civilian population. Most reprisals were of an unofficial nature, and involved gangs of drunken and out of control Tans or Auxiliaries going on orgies of looting and arson.

What were the Irish in Britain to do? The Dáil, as any normal government, had appointed ministers plenipotentiary to various countries. Where, as in Britain, these were not acknowledged, a spokesman for the Irish government was appointed.

The Dáil had appointed as its spokesman in London Art O'Brien, the president of the Sinn Féin Council of Great Britain during 1916-1923. Official Dáil papers showed that Art O'Brien, who as represented of a democratically elected government, made no attempt to hide his role, was under constant harassment from the Metropolitan Police and its Special Branch. Raids on his offices were frequent, office managers were arrested and in two cases they were deported back to Dublin to be dealt with by the 'Castle' authorities.

Soon after the establishment of the Dáil, however, O'Brien realised that there was a need for an Irish movement in Britain which would not be linked to any one political party, would encompass the spectrum of politics on the basis of the recognition of the Irish government and the need to support it in the War of Independence that was now inflicted on it by London's policy.

Thus was born the Irish Self Determination League (ISDL). This was to be a body working exclusively in England, Wales and Scotland and which was formed to support for the Irish state and its government. Its membership would be confined to those of Irish birth or descent resident in Britain.

Branches were soon operating and in the North East Tyneside, County Durham and Teesside, all areas with large Irish populations were soon affiliated in a single branch. The key organising area seemed to be Jarrow, but activities were region-wide. Patrick Brennan showed that the first show of strength was on the 8th August 1920 when a demonstration and gala, presided over by Councillor Terry O'Connor of Jarrow, was held in Durham City. It was reported that thousands of members from 25 ISDL branches throughout Northumberland and Durham marched from the Market Square to Wharton Park, led by the Hebburn Brass Band, where they were addressed by two members of Dáil Eireann - Sean Hayes and S. Mahoney, and Sean Milroy, Director of Organisation for the Irish Republic, as well as local speakers.

The ISDL had both a public face - which concentrated on raising support for the Irish Independence movement - but also a hidden face as a recruiting agency for the Irish Volunteers and the IRA, an activity which led to many Irishmen from this region returning to Ireland to join the armed struggle (amongst them, the later Labour Councillor for Eston, Jimmy Finnigan). But by 1921, it also had another covert facet - and this was to bring the struggle to the mainland.

The task was to recruit volunteers among local Irish sympathisers and organise them into IRA mainland companies. Most recruits were skilled/semi-skilled or professional men. Many had also served in the armed forces in France.

By the end of November six companies had been established across the North East, Jarrow (A Company) which with 90 men, was the largest , Hebburn (B Company), Newcastle (C Company), Wallsend (D Company), Bedlington (E Company), and Consett (F Company), with a total strength of around 160 men. Recruitment continued, and a further four companies were set up during the first quarter of 1921, in Stockton, Chester-le-Street, Thornley and Sunderland. This brought the total strength to around 480 men. If the alphabetical order followed in sequence, Stockton (which also covered Middlesbrough and Eston, as we will later see in term of activity) would have been G Company.

The second task was the procurement of arms and other war materials (explosives / inflammable liquids) was also high on the list of priorities. Guns were mostly obtained from foreign sailors, or stolen from Drill Halls. We must also remember that there was also a vast amount of scrap war material left across the country from the previous 4 years of total war - so logistics would not be a great problem. Explosives too would be readily available given their widespread use in mining areas like Durham, East Cleveland and Eston.

The first day of action for Teesside was on Saturday the 26th March 1921 and on that night the first of many farm fires were reported by the regional press. For the purpose of this article, I use the Northern Echo (then, as now, a paper of record). On the following Monday, the Echo reported in a lead story simultaneous hayrick and farm building firings across the North East - stretching from Jarrow, Wallsend and Consett down to Stockton, Middlesbrough and Eston.

The first Teesside report was at 8.00 pm on that Saturday when the police and fire service were told of a large fire at Billingham, with ricks and store buildings at a farm owned by a Mr Emmott on a site adjacent to the new Nitrate plant. When the fire brigade arrived, they found no water, and the fires were left to burn themselves out. Soon after another report was received which spoke of another large fire on a farm belonging to a Mr Bell and which was sited at the rear of the Durham Road cemetery. Again, by the time the brigade arrived, the fire had burnt itself out. It was reported by the Echo that the value of the property torched was £150 at Billingham and £180 at Newham. In both cases the ricks and buildings had been set alight by petrol bombs, with the evidence found on both sites.

Later that night the Middlesbrough fire brigade and police were alerted to burning buildings and hay ricks at Newport Lane, Acklam where a Dutch Barn belonging to a John Smith and Sons was completely burnt out. This fire continued throughout the weekend and was only finally damped down on the Sunday. The alarm bells rang yet another time that night when the authorities were told of fires on farms in South Bank and Normanby. At Lowfields Farm, near what is now the Trunk Road, property owned by one of the long established farming families of the area, the Wilkinson's was totally destroyed. Speaking to an Echo reporter, Mr Len Wilkinson later reported 'seeing two men running from the scene towards the main Normanby Road.' Fire engines from the overworked Middlesbrough and Thornaby brigades attended as did a local fire engine from South Bank. At first it was thought the entire farm would be consumed by the flames and farm workers were evacuated from their cottages for safety. However, the brigade held the line, although not until property 'worth hundreds of pounds' was destroyed.

The local brigades must have thought that this might have been the end of an exhausting night, but then followed two more reports. The first was of 'severe fires' at farm buildings lying within the boundaries of the Eston Mines owned by Bolckow Vaughan & Co. The Eston Brigade was ordered to attend, as a simultaneus call had come through to the Middlesbrough Brigade HQ of another fire at Mill Hill Farm, Linthorpe, owned by Messrs W Dale & Sons. Again, as at Acklam, a Dutch Barn was the target. There, valuable threshing machines were destroyed. Both the Eston and Linthorpe fires were extingushed, but the financial loss was seen as considerable. The final fire was a small one reported in the early hours of Sunday at a farm in the Grove Hill area of Middlesbrough, but which was extinguished before the birgade were able to reach it.

It had to be said that such a widespread set of action must have indicated a sizeable number of people being involved and of good pre planning. Despite police inquiries in the Irish districts of Teesside, no arrest were made - a contrast to Tyneside, where five men were later arrested and charged.

The next big attack occurred some weeks later on Saturday the 21st May. The activity that night was aimed this time, not at farms but industrial premises and water works.

The Echo and the other regional papers made this their major splash story on the Monday, with the Newcastle Chronicle reporting that 'much incediary activity occurred on both Tyneside and Teesside and much damage done'. The Echo led with a three decker banner headline 'Fire Gangs raid North East coast..... Widespread incendiary havoc, expolsives used..... attacks on farms, railway stations, factores, gas and water mains."

The main brunt of the activity was on Tyneside and North East and North West Durham, but on Teesside two significant attacks were on Stockton factories and the Long Newton waterworks. "The Stockton outrages" the Echo said, "began with fires at farms at Saltholme, Port Clarence and Portrack" occurrances which were to be eclipsed by later attacks at around 10.00 p.m. on a large sawmill belongng to Foster, Brotherton and Co at Bowesfield Lane, where a fire which completely destroyed the mill spread to a neighbouring engineering factory owned by Harkers Engineering.

The Echo reported that it was an absolutely clear moonlight night, and the 'seething mass of flames' visible across the whole district was somewhat oddly described as a 'magnificant spectacle'. The Fire Brigade tried to tackle the flames whilst the police were kept busy trying to disperse the crowd of spectators who had gathered around the area to see the night's activities. The Echo said "fully 30,000 people watched the fire till well after midnight, many of these clustered along the nearby North East Railway coal stands". Indeed when the roof of the sawmill finally collapsed in just after midnight there was panic in the crowd and the paper reported that two people, stated as a Mr Arthur Fields of Bowesfield and a Mrs Sarah O'Hara of Portrack were severely injured and taken to a local hospital.

The extent of the blaze was such that the nearby Boathouse Lane tram and bus depot and an associated power house belonging to Stockton Corporation were seen as being 'at severe risk' and, roused by the Tramways superintendent, a Mr A Forster, local drivers were roused from their beds to evacuate the vheicles, with the result that in the words of the Echo " a continuous line of trams and motor buses stretched from the main Bowesfield Road to outside Thornaby Town Hall".

The blaze was not fully extinguished until later in the weekend, with the almost total damage to Brotherton's sawmills and boathouses estimated at £30,000 and at Harkers, estimated at £5,000.

This should have been enough for the night for the authorities, but it was not to be. Whilst these fires were being tackled, a large distinct explosion at 10.40 p.m. was heard 'for miles around' - from Darlington to Stockton - and a subsequent call from a landowner, Mr Stanley Appleby of Elton Hall, to local police and the notification to the fire brigade of an abrupt drop in water pressure throughout the area from Water Board officials, it was clear the explosion was probably linked to Long Newton waterworks, reservoir and the nearby pumping station.

The first witness statement (as the plant was unmanned at night) came from a local man, called by the Echo 'Morris' who was camping in the vicnity of the reservoir. Hearing the explosion from close quarters, he jumped on his pushbike to see what was up. In the words of the Echo, 'at the junction of the Coatham Stob Lane Ends between Elton and Long Newton he was pitched off his bike when he ran into a heavy piece of metal which also damaged his front wheel and frame. On further investigation he found that a large water main which ran alongside the road had been blown up and water at the rate of many tons a minute were flowing into the fields."

The explosion was at a pipe junction and it was said that 'many pieces of metal were thrown a considerable distance'. The water board later confirmed this leakage, and the fact that nearby becks, flowing into the main Coatham Beck, some two miles away 'were in flood'.

These events parallelled other attacks throughout the North East with bombs damaging gas pipelines, hualage depots, a cinema, shipyards and plant at the Consett Streel Works where a railway engine on the internal rail network was fired up and left as a runaway projectile crashing into machinery and plant.

It was clear that these were IRA attacks and on Tyneside a number of arrests and charges were made. A Wallsend boatyard attack led to the arrest of two volunteers - James Conroy, a schoolteacher from Dee Street in Jarrow, and John McAlinden of Wallsend. Both men were found to be armed. Conroy received a sentence of 7 years, and McAlinden 5 years, but they did not serve their full sentences, and were released early in February 1922.

At Stockton, despite initial reports of two arrests of 'men believed to be Irish' no subsequent report of any court hearings appear, and I can only speculate that after fruitless questioning these men were released. Descriptions were taken of men seen to be in the vicinity of the Sawmills were given to police, but again these appeared to have led to a dead end, with the local Irish Community, which must have been by that time under constant surveillance, protecting their own.

There were further mysterious fire attacks on Teesside in the following week, again the next Saturday night, including one large fire at Middlesbrough Council's Tramways and Bus Depot on Linthorpe Road near to Linthorpe Village. There, the building was gutted as drums of petrol and benzole caught light and several new buses, the pride of the Council fleet, were lost. Other fires occurred at timber yards on Cargo Fleet Road and Horsfield Street, with the latter gutted with the loss of a pony who was burnt to death. The final fire, later that night, was a return to rick burning with a severe arson attack at Scott's Farm, Grangetown, where five ricks, estimated to have been worth some £200 were completely lost. All these attacks bore the mark of IRA activity, although no conclusive proof of this was ever finally established.

So ended the military campaign on Teesside, the North East and across the British mainland. On 9th July 1921 a truce was agreed between the British Government and the IRA. An t-Oglach, the official organ of the IRA, carried details of the truce terms in its issue of July 16th. This included an order by Richard Mulcahy, Chief of Staff, to cease military operations, but to continue planning further operations in the event that the Truce might break down.

No further news of IRA or volunteer activity was reported from Teesside although it is known that on Tyneside the procurement of arms for shipment to Ireland continued with local divisional and company records showing that, on the 14th December 1921, a shipment taken to Liverpool by car included 4 Lewis guns with spare magazines and accessories and 2 German machine guns "in very good condition"

The signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 5th December 1921 effectively ended the prospect of a resumption of military operations in Great Britain. In Ireland it split the Republican movement down the middle. Those who opposed it, led by Eamon de Valera, believed that its compromise of accepting Dominion status and partition of the island betrayed the ideal of 1916 - an independent Republic for the whole of Ireland. The pro-Treaty side was led by Michael Collins, the man who had been, more than anyone else, the driving force behind the War on the Irish side. After much acrimonious debate the Treaty was ratified by Dáil Eireann by 7 votes on 7th January 1922 The IRA remained opposed to it however, and an uneasy stand-off continued for some time between the Provisional Government, led by Collins, and IRA commanders, notably Rory O'Connor, who considered the IRA to be the legitimate army of the Irish State - but not a partitioned state. Thus ended the war of independence, but also thus began the the Irish Civil War which lasted until 24th April 1923 when the anti-Treaty forces, known collectively as "Irregulars" were finally defeated and laid down their arms.

On Teesside, the identity of the irregulars will never be known, as unlike on Tyneside, no written records are knwon to remain. One name however could be cited with reasonable confidence. In 1922 the British Government swooped on a large number of Irishmen and women who they suspected of subversive activity, arrested them and deported them to prison in Ireland. On the lists of prisoners held in the Art O'Brian papers held in the National Library of Ireland, and shown as coming from the North East is a Daniel Brennan from Stockton. I can guess that Daniel, if he had wanted to speak could have said much - but true to the discipline of the volunteers, his secrets and those of his colleages, went with him to his grave.

Middlesbrough, November 30th

2011-12-08T14:30:00.000-08:00

Public sector workers in protest on Teesside (Evening Gazette)

All Out on Nov 30th

2011-11-23T05:17:00.000-08:00

March and rally takes place in Middlesbrough at 12.30pm and 1.00pm respectively.

On November 11th, Remember Spain

2011-11-12T08:04:00.000-08:00

By David Walsh

This coming week will see the banners, bands and uniforms at cenotaphs and war memorials up and down the nation. It always seems a pity that one memorial never seems to get much attention at this time. This is the memorial to Teessiders who were prepared to put politics and principles to the supreme test when - between 1936 and 1938 - they left the factory or the office, and the homes and streets of Teesside to fight for right in Spain.

The majority fought under the colours of the British International Brigade, a smaller number enrolling in the ILP battalion or the Irish Connelly Brigade. This small number made up a part of an international force of volunteers who went to help the Spanish people to resist the Facism of Franco and the guns and warplanes of Franco's friends, Hitler and Mussolini.

Earlier articles on this site (see http://republic-of-teesside.blogspot.com/search/label/International%20Brigades) have told this story in greater detail and have given some notes from past IB'ers from this area. The memorial is now the only physical remain of their history. You can find it on the upper corridor of Middlesbrough's Municipal Building, sited between the doors to the Council Chamber and the corridor leading to the Committee Room section.

But whilst most people will be aware of Teesside marching to war in Spain I suspect no-one will be aware that this war, in a very real physical sense in terms of gunfire came almost to Teesside's doorstep, and led to an act of bravery from a Tyneside merchant steamer, its Captain from Blaydon and a crew probably recruited from the four corners of the North East.

I found this from the Hayes Peoples History Website (worth looking at if you are interested in Labour history) and I cite much of what is below from their article and from other odd facts I have gleaned over recent days.

The story centres on a grey North Sea when, at 3:30pm on the 2nd November 1938, a Spanish Republican merchant ship the Cantabria captained by Manuella Ardulles was half way into a voyage between Gravesend, a Thames estuary port and Sunderland, when it was caught in an unprovoked attack by the rebel Spanish fascist gunboat the Nadir in the North Sea, seven miles west of Cromer light vessel, Norfolk.

The bulk of the Spanish Navy had gone over to Franco when he launched his coup d'etat in 1936 and there was a nucleus of warships able to blockade ports still held by the republic and to harass and indeed, sink, shipping bringing food and war materials into these ports. The 'non-intervention pact' agreed to by Britain and France meant that the only source of guns, motor vehicles ammunition and aircraft could only be sourced from a distance - primarily the Soviet Union.

In consequence what Spanish republican shipping there was, was watched closely by the Francoists and their allies abroad. Much of this was co-ordinated by the German intelligence services who both tracked radio traffic and also had agents on the ground in many Western European and US port cities.

The fact that the Cantabria was, after leaving Sunderland, to sail to Leningrad was obviously of interest. Put simply, this ship was not likely to be picking up a cargo of potatoes !

Hence the shadowing of the Cantabria from when it left the Thames estuary and took its northern course for Sunderland.

The shadower, the so called merchant ship 'Nadir', was actually the 1,132 ton auxiliary cruiser of the Francoist Navy, the 'Ciudad de Valencia'. It was armed with a 120 mm main gun, two 105 mm cannons and two heavy duty 37 mm machine gun cannons. The weight of armament it carried could have taken the unarmed Cantabria apart.

It was clear to Captain Ardulles after many hours that this mystery ship was following him very closely and he started to make a zig zag course. The fact that this was exactly replicated led him to draw the obvious conclusion and the old steamer went to full speed to try and make UK territorial waters.

At that point the hidden guns on the Nadir were unveiled and the first shots were aimed at the defenceless Cantabria. The bombardment rattled windows of houses in genteel Cromer and crowds gathered on the cliff tops to witness the shocking events.
Shells and heavy calibre machine gun fire began to rake the Cantabria. Both the bridge and the engine room was hit, and the Cantabria's wireless operator sent out a dramatic SOS saying what was happening and calling for help from other ships.

The Coatguards also raised an alarm and the Royal Navy Auxiliary Cruiser Monkwood was dispatched to investigate the attack upon the Cantabria but as Britain was part of a "non intervention pact" and both ships were still just outside the three mile limit, it did not react in any way to the bombardment despite the fact that the Nadir's shellfire was hitting home and great loss of life was threatened.

Enter on the scene after the wireless alert the SS Pattersonian, a North East Collier registered in Newcastle and owned by Smith, Patterson & Co. Ltd., Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, its Captain from Blaydon, Captain J. Blackmore and his north east crew who - in an act of utter bravery and from decisions taken in seconds - forced the Pattersonian between the attacking gun boat and its shells and the unarmed Republican merchant ship so as to try to rescue the crew from the now plainly sinking boat.

Despite the Cantabria flying white flags, the Nadir continued to bombard the steamer, whilst bravely the Pattersonian moved in even closer to rescue eleven crew members including Captain Ardulles, his wife Trinidad, his two children and members of the crew, despite continued attempts by the Nadir to ram the Pattersonian.

If they had succeeded the loss of life would have been even greater as the Pattersonian was heavily loaded, but at only 315 tons gross weight, very vulnerable.

A further five crew members were rescued by the Cromer lifeboat and the remaining crew by another collier the SS Monkwood, with a total of 45 crew members being rescued.

Tragically one of the Cantabria's crewmen, a Juan Gils was killed by shellfire, whilst the radio operator Eduardo Collade, his wife and two children were captured by the Nadir, their fate still unknown to this day.

After landing, the surviving crew made their way to London by train. At their destination huge cheering crowds gathered to welcome them and show support for the Republican cause, those present including Senior Alvarez Buyllis Spanish Consul General.

Today this attack by Franco's rebel forces would be labelled a War crime, in 1938 the Conservative National Government was still pursuing a policy of appeasing fascist governments and attempted to play down the incident. Despite the fact that shots were fired in anger only miles from the East Coast, and that North East seamen were physically shelled and attacked by a Francoist warship, only a short exchange was made in Parliament, when, in reply to a question from a Scots Labour MP, Robert Gibson, the duty minister R A (Rab) Butler could only say that, as no UK lives had been lost, the issue was irrelevant.

(see http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/nov/23/spanish-ship-attack-north-sea) One Tory MP, a Lieutenant Colonel Heneage, broke into the exchange to observe that 'the socialists seem to want to go to war with everyone now'. 10 Months later we were at war, and it was the victory of Francoism, both in Spain and in the cold waters of the North Sea that paved the way.

City of London Corporation: "the home of the devilry of modern finance"

2011-11-02T08:01:00.000-07:00

An excellent essay by Nicholas Shaxson published in New Statesman earlier this year:

The tax haven in the heart of Britain
Nicholas Shaxson, 24 February 2011

There is an institution with a murky history and remarkable powers that acts like a political and financial island within our island nation state. Welcome to the Square Mile and the City of London Corporation.

... The term "tax haven" is a bit of a misnomer, because such places aren't just about tax. What they sell is escape: from the laws, rules and taxes of jurisdictions elsewhere, usually with secrecy as their prime offering. The notion of elsewhere (hence the term "offshore") is central. The Cayman Islands' tax and secrecy laws are not designed for the benefit of the 50,000-odd Caymanians, but help wealthy people and corporations, mostly in the US and Europe, get around the rules of their own democratic societies. The outcome is one set of rules for a rich elite and another for the rest of us.

The City's "elsewhere" status in Britain stems from a simple formula: over centuries, sovereigns and governments have sought City loans, and in exchange the City has extracted privileges and freedoms from rules and laws to which the rest of Britain must submit. The City does have a noble tradition of standing up for citizens' freedoms against despotic sovereigns, but this has morphed into freedom for money.

... The City Corporation is different from any other local authority. Here, hi-tech global finance melds into ancient rites and customs that underline its separateness and power with mystifying pomp. Among the City's 108 livery companies, or trade associations, you will find the WorshipfulCompanies of Loriners (concerned with stirrups and other harnesses for horses) and Fletchers (arrow-makers) as well as the Worshipful Company of Tax Advisers, among whose four prime aims is "to support the Lord Mayor and the City of London Corporation", and the Worshipful Company of International Bankers, whose heraldic "supporters" are the griffins, guardians of treasure.

The Battle of Stockton: some links of interest.

2011-10-26T12:16:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, David Walsh wrote a very well received post on ‘the Battle of Stockton’, which can be found here. It was also published in the Northern Echo. An article by Chris Lloyd on the same subject was also published, and can be accessed here.

Walshy and Chris then appeared on Radio 4’s making history programme, which can be found here.

Note: The Making History programme from 18th October 2011.

Harder, faster, deeper: Britain will be Great again

2011-10-17T10:49:00.000-07:00

As has been widely suspected, it turns out that some people on the Tory right get sexual thrills from inflicting misery on the rest of the population, as the Young Britons' Foundation has admitted in a particularly cringe worthy poster:

"You can see the English psyche collapsing under the weight of the illicit pleasures it has been enjoying -- the permissiveness, the consumption, the goodies. It's all false -- tinsel and froth ... And now we have got to advance in a different way. Mrs. Thatcher speaks to this 'new course'. She speaks to something else, deep in the English psyche: its masochism. The need which the English seem to have to be ticked off by Nanny and sent to bed without pudding. The calculus by which every good summer has to be paid for by twenty bad winters. The Dunkirk Spirit -- the worse off we are, the better we behave. She didn't promise us the giveaway society. She said, iron times; back to the wall; stiff upper lip; get moving; get to work; dig in. Stick by the old, tried verities, the wisdom of 'Old England'. The family has kept society together; live by it. Send the women back to the hearth. Get the men out on to the Northwest Frontier. Hard times - followed, much later, by a return to the Good Old Days. She asked you for a long leash - not one, but two and three terms. By the end, she said, I will be able to redefine the nation in such a way that you will all, once again, for the first time, since the Empire started to go down the tube, feel what it is like to be part of Great Britain Unlimited. You will be able, once again, to send our boys 'over there', to fly the flag, to welcome back the fleet. Britain will be Great again." - Stuart Hall

Globalised Tomb Robbing - the story of the S.S. Gairsoppa

2011-10-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

By David Walsh.

This is a copy of a piece published in the Northern Echo on the 1st October.
It was subbed somewhat, but here is the full version, in which I divulge some long last family shame.....................

I'm normally an easy going kind of fellow, or so I like to think. But just now and again I read of something that leads me into a paroxysm of anger. And when I heard of the projected stripping of a cargo of silver from a British merchant ship torpedoed in the last war, that anger rose to boiling point.

Why ? Actually from a very tenuous link. I want to speak of my late Uncle Albert, a fellow who made fleeting visits to our house when I was a schoolboy. Now Albert (he always insisted on his full first name, hating the use of Bert) was a man, who, in later adult life, I would have done my best to avoid.

For starters he seemed to be a bit of a chancer, or to frank, a waster. He was obviously the black sheep of the family on my mothers side. But as well as being a black sheep, he was also a black shirt, signing up to Sir Oswald Mosley's pre war fascist movement. This wasn't out of any love of their ideology - merely that their London HQ barracks provided free bed and breakfast for him when he was kicked out of the house.

He quietly dropped this part of his life when the prospect of war loomed, and thinking that he was in danger of the call up (and thus losing what to him was central to his life - his 'beer and bint' as he put it) he signed up for the merchant navy.

Big mistake. In the army, he might well have ended up in a cosy number somewhere, as many did. Instead he joined a profession which was at war from day one, as a sitting target for Hitler's U-Boats. For many crewmen their voyages were one way trips, with death coming through drowning, being scalded by superheated steam, burning alive in oil covered water, or, worst of all, slowly sinking into black oblivion while hanging on to wreckage or a half submerged lifeboat.

The dangers were immense. The rewards negligible. Indeed, the moment a torpedo burst through the hull of a ship, the unfortunate crew were struck off the shipowners pay book. It was those stories that Uncle Albert told me that stuck in my mind, and in a way, helped to absolve his many shortcomings.

So when I heard that Odyssey Marine, a U.S. based salvage and diving company were planning to strip the S.S Gairsoppa to recover a load of precious silver ingots, my blood began to boil. This, to me, is simple and pure grave robbing. The Gairsoppa, a humble tramp steamer originally built on the Tyne, went to the bottom of the Atlantic on a dark, wintry night in 1941. Only one man survived from a crew of 40.

Odyssey put a nauseous PR crafted spin on their activities. One of their managers was quoted in the Echo as saying 'by finding this shipwreck, and telling the story of its loss, we pay tribute to the brave merchant sailors who lost their lives'.

To this I can only reply with a four letter word - Tosh. (I would have wanted to use another four letter word, but it would not have been allowed by the editor).

The stark, simple truth is that there is cash here - big cash. The cargo of silver in the guts of this ship is worth £132 million if sold off on today's overheated metal markets.

If Odyssey are so concerned about homage to our dead merchantmen, then why are they not diving on to a ship that was carrying tins of corned beef ?

The answer is a short one. Greed.

You would have thought that someone in our government would have exhibited some moral qualms. After all, war wrecks are the property of the government. But not a bit of it. The Echo quoted a Transport Department suit as saying 'whilst we do not comment on the specifics of commercial arrangements, Odyssey were awarded the contract as it offered the best rate of return to HMG.'

So there we have it. The state has been often accused of selling the family silver for short term gain. But this takes us to a new grisly high - forcibly breaking into the coffins of brave men who died an appalling death. The fact that this, in the dry language of a Whitehall bureaucrat, is seen as a 'commercial transaction' is a measure of how eroded and how devalued the moral compass of our state has become.

I hope that when Odyssey's power shears and windy drills start to slice through those steel plates originally riveted in place by the men at Palmers Yard in Jarrow, the ghosts of all those men like my Uncle Albert rise up as one to haunt the imaginations and dreams of these millionaire desecraters when they think they are safely asleep in their Tampa penthouses.

"It's survival of the fittest and sometimes it's not pretty."

2011-10-07T08:55:00.000-07:00

We let it slip, Bank governor Mervyn King tells unions

"Before the crisis, steady growth with low inflation and high employment was in our grasp. We let it slip - we, that is, in the financial sector and as policy-makers - not your members, nor the many businesses and organisations around the country which employ them. And although the causes of the crisis may have been rooted in the financial sector, the consequences are affecting everyone, and will continue to do so for years to come."

Hedge Fund trader: 'Capitalism is survival of the fittest, and sometimes it's not pretty'

"People seem to say, everything is the bankers' fault, or everything is the computers' fault. They tend to point to the crashes as evidence of this. I disagree with both. I think crashes are simply part of the system. That's why you always hear 'the worst crash since'. Crashes are an intrinsic part of the system, they clear out deadwood. You can't have capitalism without crashes. It's survival of the fittest and sometimes it's not pretty.

"Accidents happen, that's how the principle of survival of the fittest operates. In Fukushima we'll find out what caused it and learn from it ... We all know that California will be totally destroyed at some point by a huge earthquake. This is going to happen. Surely it's madness to live there – so why do people still do it? It's because until the earthquake happens, life is extremely nice over there. The benefits outweigh the cost, even if ultimately the cost will be their own lives."

Savage cuts to decimate communities in Middlesbrough

2011-10-06T05:25:00.000-07:00

The proposed cuts will quite clearly be devastating. From today's Evening Gazette.

The cuts being proposed in Middlesbrough include:

Environment

1. Cease current funding for Shopmobility service, to save £40,000.
2. To cease all current subsidised bus services, to save £60,000.
3. Reduce the number of Street Wardens by 16 posts, to save £450,000.
4. Introduce a £20 charge for Residents’ Parking Permits, to generate income of £100,000.
5. Increase allotment charges to £60 per annum for full sized plot and remove concessions, to generate income of £20,000.
6. Introduce a £10 charge for all “junk jobs” to generate income of £150,000.
7. Reduce the Environmental Education Service by up to three posts to save £50,000.
8. Cut budgets for streetscene, countryside management, street lighting and highways, which will result in up to 21 front-line posts being lost and around 10% reduction in standards, to save £525,000.
9. Close the Council depots at Lloyd Street and Prissick and the land sites be offered for sale.
10. All service units from Lloyd Street, Prissick and Stewart Park be relocated to Cargo Fleet Lane depot to save £150,000.

Regeneration

11. Cut the library service Book Fund, to save £50,000.
12. Close the mobile library service, to save £50,000.
13. Reduce library management by 1.5 posts, to save £36,000.
14. Reduce the council’s contribution to Tees Valley Unlimited, to save £59,000.
15. Reduce the council’s contribution to the Stockton / Middlesbrough Initiative, to save £38,000.
16. Withdraw from the Tees Archaeology Service, to save £23,000.
17. Reduction in staffing in mima and museums to the equivalent of one FTE, to save £25,000.
18. Reduce Council Officer support to Community Councils, to save £20,000.
19. Reduce Community Council Annual Grant allocation to £500 per community council, to save £60,000.
20. Reduce financial support to public events, to save £15,000.
21. The removal of the Big Screen after the completion of the Olympic Games to save £15,000.
22. The reduction of one post in Culture and Events Section and savings through a new box office system, to save £20,000.
23. Reduction of one post in the Town Centre Management team plus associated marketing costs to save £45,000.

Social Care

24. Reduction of three posts in the Community Inclusion service, to save £100,000.
25. Obtain increased income and contributions from Health, in providing residential support to people at risk leaving hospital, to generate income of £200,000.
26. To secure a price freeze on residential and non-residential service care contracts, which have a current value of £25m. It will save £1.1m.
27. Introduction of an Information Technology system that automates administrative processes. This will result in the loss of eight to 10 posts, to save £100,000.
28. Close the Dial a Ride service, which will result in the loss of around four drivers’ posts and a saving of £250,000.
29. Introduce contributions for the supply of “everyday” equipment such as special cutlery sets to people suffering from disability, to save£50,000.
30. Reduce personal care package costs on the basis of need, to save £200,000.

The Partnership

31. Reduce service provision across all services provided by Mouchel, to save £399,000. This will include efficiency savings from technology and from the corporate review of administration.
32. Termination of external lease of Rede House and relocation of staff, which to save £282,000.

Strategic Resources

33. Merge the Financial Planning and Procurement teams, to save £159,000.
34. Merge ex-Mouchel and council accountancy staff, to save £190,000.
35. Reduction in at least two Asset Management posts within the TAD and Enterprise Centres, to save £37,000.
36. Reduction of one post within the caretaking section, to save £13,000.
37. Reduction of one post due to the merger of CFL Asset Management and Corporate Asset Management, to save £16,000.
38. External audit fees to be reduced, to save £20,000.
39. Reduction in the Audit Plan specifications, to save £25,000.
40. Reduce the frequency of cleaning of all Council buildings and therefore reduce the number of posts by 15 FTE, to save £250,000.
41. Reduce the costs of maintaining all council buildings with regard to the following areas and result in a saving of £363,000:

Repairs and maintenance

Ensuring buildings are more energy efficient
Improving the procurement of building services

Children Families and Learning

42. Close Lanehead Outdoor Education Centre to save £87,000.
43. Reduce the support services funded by the council to schools (e.g. behaviour, language, attendance and careers support), to save £150,000.
44. Reduce the cost of Special Educational Needs by providing better support to children and young people at an early stage. This will result in the reduction of six posts and a saving of £500,000.
45. Reduce the costs of long term placements by using part of Gleneagles as a provider of long term residential care, which will result in a saving of £350,000.
46. Joint council working in the training and recruitment of foster carers and redeucing costs in the use of social work agencies to save £150,000.
47. Price freeze and contract savings from renewal of residential care contracts to save £90,000.

Legal and Democratic Services

48. Reduction in the working hours of the Members Office Manager and other non-staffing savings, to save£50,000.

Chief Executive and Assistant Chief Executive Department

49. Reduce the numbers of staff by up to about six posts to save between £70,000 and £110,000.
50. Reduce ICT costs and corporate training and remove long service awards and Middlesbrough News/Middlesbrough Matters. This will result in a saving of £78,000.

Senior Management

51. Reduce further the number of senior managers and support by approximately 30 across the Council, to save £1,525,000.

Community Buildings and Services

52. Close Grove Hill Youth & Community Centre.
53. Close Beechwood Youth & Community Centre.
54. Close Kader Youth & Community Centre.
55. Close North Ormesby Youth & Community Centre.
56. Close Thorntree Youth Centre.
57. Close Newport Neighbourhood Centre.
58. End the council lease for Park End Community Centre.
59. Close Brambles Farm Community Centre.
60. Close Grove Hill Library.
61. Close Easterside Library.
62. Close Marton Library.
63. Close Thorntree Library.
64. Close Coulby Newham Children’s Centre, which is based at Rosewood, St Augustines and The Avenue Primary Schools.
65. Close Acklam Children’s Centre, which is based at Green Lane and Newham Bridge Primary Schools.
66. Close Breckon Hill Children’s Centre.
67. Close Brookfield / Kader Children’s Centre, which is based at Acklam Whin and Kader Primary Schools.
68. Close Children’s Centre venue at Archibald Primary School.
69. Close Children’s Centre venue at Newport Primary School.
70. Close Children’s Centre venue at Thorntree Primary School.
71. Close Children’s Centre venue at Brambles Farm Primary School.
72. Close Mill Hill Recreation Pavilion.
73. Close Thorntree Park Pavilion.
74. Close Middlesbrough Deaf Centre.
75. Withdrawal of subsidy from Langdon Square Community Centre.
76. Close the Southlands and Pallister Park Centres and relocate their indoor leisure provision to the Neptune Centre. The existing outdoor sports facilities will continue to be available for public use. (Joe Waltons brand will be retained at the Neptune Centre). The council will work with those businesses currently based at the Southlands Centre in identifying alternative premises.
77. Close Clairville Stadium and sell the site.
78. Close Tennis World and offer the sites for sale. Receipts from the sale of it and Clairville Stadium site will be used for the development of a Sports Village, which could be located on the Prissick site.

Closure of the community buildings and services will save £1.5m.

And this is just the beginning: £3m in savings still have to be found to meet next year’s spending limits and cuts of £12.3m and £11.7m in the two years after. Welcome to Tory Britain.

Workers strike at Lucite International

2011-10-04T06:01:00.000-07:00

Attendees at the March for the Alternative rally in Manchester on Sunday may remember Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey telling the assembled thousands that "civil disobedience is the oldest form of democracy". Well, there's been an unofficial walk out at Lucite International (manufacturer of acrylic-based products) up here on Teesside in the last few days, involving so-called “unlawful secondary picketing” after workers struck in solidarity with 14 colleagues who were laid off after asking for their pay to be made equal with the rest of the workforce -- and it looks as if Unite have not only refused to back the action, but have condemned it. According to today's Evening Gazette: The Gazette has seen a copy of a letter from Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, to members stating the union will give no support to the unofficial action. 'If you fail to work normally you will be taking part in unofficial action,' he warns. The Gazette explains the background to the dispute:

Crowds of around 100 people have been reported at the company’s entrance in recent days in an action which has delayed planned maintenance work. The protest comes after 14 scaffolders and labourers were escorted from the chemical company’s site - triggering a disagreement which saw other workers join the dispute.

A source at Hertel, which employs the workers at the Lucite site, said the “unofficial strike action” had been going on for several days and involved the “unlawful secondary picketing” of the premises. He claimed many of the demonstrators had no direct connection with the work in question, adding the firm had written to its employees to “counter false allegations that the dispute is in any way linked to pay or that the men were forcibly removed from the site.”

The source said Hertel had ended a temporary scaffolding contract last week due to a reduction in the planned scope of scaffolding work required at the Cassel Works site. The decision meant that around 14 scaffolders out of a total of workforce of around 160 contractors employed by the company were given a week’s pay in lieu of notice. The company says that is in line with the agreed terms of the temporary contracts.

But the workers claim their action comes after they were laid off following a pay review request. Advanced scaffolder Tony Seaman last night told the Gazette he had taken a letter of grievance to management last Wednesday. He said workers were asking for Hertel to set up a meeting with union officials regarding payments for a planned shutdown. The 41-year-old, of Ormesby, claimed workers got £10.46 a hour and wanted £14. They say that is in accordance with NAECI (blue book) rates, but Hertel has said Lucite is not part of that agreement. “We believe they don’t want to pay the correct rate for the shutdown and for the new build which is going on,” Mr Seaman added. “I can’t describe how we feel.”

One comment on the Gazette website by a former Hertel worker provides some context:

Being ex hertel, they have been paying under the odds for years, paying pink book and maintainance terms on blue book sites this was going on in the 90s when i was there. The workers are only asking what they are entitled to and are codemmed as troublemakers and will no doubt be black listed by the firm. The bigger picture is that they want to drive down costs and destroy trades so they can employ anyone they want for monkey nuts,withuut these guys making a stand it will spread to other firms and be the end of trades as we know it. They tried it with dilultey laggers in late eighties/early nineties nearly destroyed the trade singlhandedly and ended many mens lively hood without the stand made by others this would have come to pass. They did the same empolying foriegn labour on Wilton for far less money and without the requred skill to match the proper time served tradesmen. Good luck lads and keep making a stand.

And a worker from Lucite International comments:

just like to clarify a few things,yes we knew what the starting pay was but assumed it would go up during the shutdown,why should we work alongside other trades who are on £14 a hour while we get £10? with the bonus that goes to £12.50 not £15 which was quoted by someone on here,it's not being greedy,we don't want anymore money than the next man,just the same,we're tradesmen and want the blue book rate on a shutdown,same as what the other trades on teesside get! NOT MORE,THE SAME!

It's times like these

2011-09-27T07:25:00.001-07:00

A few years ago, in the middle of the epic European adventure which took Boro to Eindhoven, the Times newspaper suggested that the transformation of Middlesbrough Football Club from minnows to contenders was a classic case of “reinvention through sport”. The football side, it observed, had become the area’s ambassador, to be worn as a badge of pride by the people of a town with little else to celebrate. In this, it drew a comparison with Liverpool in the 1980s: “The area may have been downtrodden by economics, but the people never were, for two reasons – The Beatles and the best football team in the world.” Southgate, Viduka, Downing and co. were now performing a similar role for Teesside, the paper argued. Through their heroic exploits, the Infant Hercules would rise again.

What a maudlin bag of sh**e, eh? Well, not entirely. After all, if ever a football club embodied the spirit of the times, it was Middlesbrough Football Club. When the town took a battering at the hands of the Thatcher governments in the 1980s, its football club faced an existential crisis of spectacular proportions, one from which it almost never recovered. In the long economic boom of the mid-to-late 90s, when jobs, money and Euro 96 brought with them a mood of national buoyancy, Gibson made sure Boro were in on the act as well, and a decade of prosperity ensued. Yet when that credit-fuelled bubble burst and the economy nose-divided again in 2008, so did the fortunes of MFC. For me, 2008-10 will always be remembered as a dark era of relegation, job losses and the dread of forthcoming austerity. The intervening period has been like a long, bleak winter of discontent. In the wider world, that winter looks set to last a good while longer.

Thank god, then, that football can sometimes make us forget how bad everything is in the outside world. At least for 90 minutes on a Saturday afternoon, if the Boro play well, all else is temporarily forgotten. For a long time we were simply awful, which made everything else seem even worse – but then suddenly the clouds opened and there emerged the saintly figure of Tony Mowbray, accompanied by two angels blowing trumpets. When was the last time it felt this good to be a Boro fan? (It can’t last...) Mowbray has moulded a team which is young, hungry and exciting to watch. They play for each other, the manager and the fans. Even when we stumble (which we inevitably will), we should still cherish the times we’re living in – Mogga’s classical, purist football philosophy, his status as local hero and local legend. These are great times.

One question remains, though. We’ve got Tony Mowbray, but who are our Beatles? Well, Middlesbrough is no Liverpool, or Manchester or Edinburgh or Newcastle, for that matter. But it does punch well above its weight. If you want an example of how culturally vibrant Teesside can be, even in these dark days of economic recession, you could do a lot worse than check out local gig promoters The Kids Are Solid Gold, who routinely bring world class music to venues such as the Westgarth Social Club, the Georgian Theatre and Newcastle’s Cluny. It’s a magical feeling to watch Mowbray’s Boro stroke the ball around at leisure in another attacking display, before popping along to a packed Westgarth with other music fans (of all ages) to watch a band who’ve travelled all the way from New York, Tennessee or Los Angeles to little Middlesbrough (or vice-versa for the Friday gigs). We might not have the Fab Four, but we’ve still got a world of enjoyment on our doorstep. Enjoy yourself.

The above piece originally appeared in football fanzine Fly Me To The Moon.

A Social-Democratic look at a troubled world - Then and Now

2011-09-16T09:09:00.001-07:00

By David Walsh

Let us look at a troubled world

It seems that international capitalism was on the verge of meltdown.
The collapse of the banking system in recent months sent shock waves through Europe, bringing governments to their knees and thousands out onto the streets of London, Paris and Berlin and Athens.

In the United States, an increasingly careworn president and his congressional critics fought a bitter battle over government spending and tax rises.

And in Britain, with the Labour government broken by the economic crisis, a Conservative-dominated coalition with the Liberals imposed the deepest spending cuts in a generation, slashing benefits in an attempt to restore confidence in the nation’s finances.

With the banks refusing to lend, and millions of people thrown out of work, capitalism itself seemed utterly discredited.

In other countries, many may be tuning to far Right solutions.
And, in Britain, a generation of intellectuals perhaps turned their backs on capitalism and social democracy, placing their faith instead in a form of a far more utopian socialist idealism.

But enough, for the moment, of 1931

For decades afterwards this 80 year old extraordinary historical moment — when capitalism itself appeared to have failed — was forgotten, and looked like the stuff of ancient history.
But in the summer of 2011, with the eurozone in chaos, the British economy stagnant and the U.S. crippled by debt, with social mobility at a standstill and millions of ordinary families squeezed until they can barely breathe, it feels disturbingly familiar.

In the past two months alone, whilst all eyes were on Libya and the riots, stock markets have been in free-fall across the capitalist world.

Take Europe alone.
Greece is now a basket case, and its default is a matter of when, not if.
And with investors manifestly losing confidence in Spain and Italy, two of Europe’s biggest economies, a second devastating world recession cannot be ruled out.
Although the share-price plunge does not yet come close to the infamous Wall Street Crash of 1929, the market mayhem is a chilling reminder of the sheer fragility of the capitalist system.
If the worst happens, if Spain and Italy go down and the euro crumbles, then the world economy really will be in trouble.

The weakness of the US economy will then go under the spotlight again - and potentially with more devastating results.

What a contrast to twenty years ago - 1991
Then, the capitalist West was congratulating itself on victory in the Cold War. The Berlin Wall had come down, the Soviet Empire had broken up, and American intellectuals were even proclaiming the ‘end of history’.

Marxism was dead, we were told, and capitalism triumphant, or so they said. Having lifted millions in the West out of poverty, having showered them with goods and opportunities, the free-market system could do no wrong.
Today, the picture is very different. For although large parts of the Left has still to come to full terms from the fall of the Soviet Union, capitalism has rarely seemed in a more desperate condition.

And with bankers still pocketing gigantic bonuses and Europe swept by a wave of austerity, even the Right are beginning to wonder whether the system is intolerably loaded in favour of rich metropolitan elites.
Only last month, for example, the Tory MP Douglas Carswell suggested that ‘the free market all too often turns out not to be a free market at all, but a corporatist racket for the few’.

Modern Conservatives, he said, should be ‘as suspicious of Big Business and Corporatism as we have been of Big Government’.
On the surface, this may sound odd coming from a Tory. Yet when you dig a little deeper, it is not hard to see why so many people like him have lost faith in the free market.
The entire premise of the capitalist system, after all, is that in a free market, hard work will produce its own reward. For capitalists, the important thing is equality of opportunity. If you put in the effort, then you can be whatever you want to be, regardless of your background.
That what was Margaret Thatcher, and before her, Ted Heath and Harold Macmillan, in different ways perhaps, believed.

But, by 1997, what an outcome we saw, and what a negation of the hopes of Margaret Thatcher and her kind.
It shows that you do not have to be a card-carrying Labour Party member to see why millions of people — not just in Britain but across the world — feel completely cheated.
Booms and busts are inherent in capitalism. It is inherently unstable. It can even destroy its own base if needs be.
Marx saw it as a revolutionary system, and contrasted to what had gone before.
Hunter gatherer societies and later societies based on slavery had lasted for many hundreds of thousands of years.
The first structured states - Rome and Greece - were around for a thousand years and then evolved into more modern but feudal states that had also endured for almost two millennia.

Capitalism then burst on the scene in the mid 1700's and within 60 years or so, had turned the world upside down.

Turned upside down too, were human relations.
Fixed sets of relations based on rank or land holding were shattered and shattered utterly.
In their place was a new meritocracy based on technical knowledge and learning.
And that meritocracy too, fused with mercantile interest in turn to both allow capitalism to develop and expand across the world, a growth also facilitated by the state's adoption of the capitalist mode of production.
A state / capital partnership came into being, firstly to the rest of Europe, then the Americas and finally, via the process of imperialism, to the rest of the globe.

It bought fabulous wealth to a few, but misery and degradation for many millions. And despite the 20th century taming of raw capitalism by, largely social democratic states or by state intervention as practised by Roosevelt's New Deal programmes and proto-Keynesian economics in the US, that inherent unfairness remains.

When most of us contemplate the results of the bankers’ greed, for example, talk of ‘fair incentives and rewards’ seems a sick joke.
In every corner of the US and Europe now, ordinary families, through absolutely no fault of their own, are paying an intolerable price for the outrageous avarice of the financial elite.
Recent figures for the UK show that City bonuses came to a staggering £14 billion last year, with one executive, Barclays boss Bob Diamond, pocketing an incredible £6.5 million — and that’s on top of his £8 million-plus annual pay package.
Yet at the same time, banks are refusing to lend to ordinary families and small businesses.

Indeed, in August the banks actually took in as deposits £3 billion more than they lent, which goes a long way to explaining why growth is virtually non-existent.

‘No wonder economic growth is barely visible to the naked eye,’ remarked the Coalition’s former Treasury spokesman, Lord Oakeshott, ‘when the banks keep sucking billions out of the economy.’
These are, incidentally, the same banks, such as RBS and HBOS, that British taxpayers had to save from the consequences of their own reckless gluttony - a behaviour trait well documented by Alistair Darling in his new book..
Three years ago, the Government spent £500 billion to bail out the collapsing banking system. And now, while the bankers toast themselves with vintage champagne or good single malts (no Cameron's Strongarm for them, despite its newly apposite name)), the rest of us are picking up the bills.
But the bankers’ greed is only one symptom of a wider malaise. The stark truth is that millions of ordinary families feel the system gives them no chance of success.

The facts are simply unanswerable. A child born in 1971 has less chance of moving up the social ladder than one born in 1951.
On top of that, the gap between rich and poor has grown steadily since the 1970s - and we have to remember, indeed never forget, that much of this had, by definition, come about during the 13-year New Labour regime.
Half a century ago, during the Fifties and Sixties, increased educational opportunity, burgeoning job opportunities in manufacturing and the death of deference in both daily life and popular culture meant that working-class children and young adults (like me - an 11 plus failure which I had worked hard to achieve) simply felt a more democratic (and wealthier) future was both obviously pre-destined and inevitable.

And in their different ways, state-school educated Labour prime ministers such as Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan and many of their ministers who came from the shop floor, train shed or the pit gave the impression that anybody could make it, regardless of their background.
Actually, in the Labour tradition, this was not all that new.

Even in 1931, during the last great crisis of capitalism I spoke of, Britain was run by a prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who was the illegitimate son of a Scottish labourer and a poor housemaid, and who grew up in abject poverty like his mentor, Kier Hardie.

At a time when it would have been easy to imagine that power belonged exclusively to the rich, MacDonald was a shining example of social mobility.
True, unlike Hardie who seemed incorruptible, MacDonald sucked up the rich in a way even more embarrassing to what we may have seen from more recent party leaders. His dalliances with Lady Londonderry, the wife of a coalowner and a notorious right wing Tory would have scandalised the nation - if it had ever been revealed. Times never change, it seems.

Can we possibly look at our leaders and draw the same conclusion today ?
From Cameron, Clegg and Osborne — respectively the son of a millionaire stockbroker, a banker and the heir to a baronetcy — to Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, one the son of a North London intellectual, the other the privately educated son of a professor, British politics does seem to have become the plaything of a tiny self-regarding elite, totally out of touch with ordinary families.
The old joke about the inevitable descent from the leafy heights of North London on to any unlucky working class labour constituency who have an MP standing down is a standing joke - but it is more a tragedy than a joke.

Looking at our political class, you begin to suspect that modern capitalism is loaded in favour of those who already enjoy wealth and power.
And that it has become a closed system, impossible to penetrate unless you are incredibly lucky.

Other facts tell a similar story.
As the Tory minister David Willetts showed in a provocative book last year, 'The Pinch' Britain’s youngsters are being cut adrift.
Thanks partly to ferocious competition from overseas manufacturers, and the squeeze that this puts on UK firms, workers in their 20s today earn far less than their parents did at the same age.
And with house prices having soared and banks refusing to lend, they find it impossible to get onto the property ladder. As a result, the old Conservative dream of a ‘property-owning democracy’ is increasingly reserved for the silver-haired who managed to do well out of the past property boom, or for those lucky enough to be able to inherit estate from their parents.
Most social observers argue that home-ownership is one of the keys to a stable, prosperous, hard-working society — yet since 1997, home ownership among people in their 20s has steadily fallen.
Of course there was a time when education offered a leg-up: but those days are becoming a fading memory. Thanks to the abolition of the EMA and the cash squeeze on our unis, the chances of scaling the educational ladder from a comprehensive to high table is now simply unattainable to all but the privileged few
In a country that claims to value competition, it is nothing less than a disgrace that just four expensive private schools — Eton, Westminster, St Paul’s, St Paul’s Girls — send as many students to Oxford and Cambridge as 2,000 state schools put together.
Meanwhile, the Government’s education reforms mean that working-class children face the prospect of paying back £9,000 a year in tuition fees if they choose to go to university.
And this, despite the squeals from University bosses, this comes at a time when fat-cat vice chancellors, already rewarded with grace-and-favour residences and boundless expense accounts, are being paid an average of more than £220,000 each.
We have been here before.

Next time he is on holiday in Tuscany — something well beyond most British families — perhaps David Cameron should spend an afternoon with his great Tory predecessor Benjamin Disraeli’s book, Sybil.
In this work, first published in 1845, the greatest Tory statesman of the Victorian era warned in the words he put into the mouth of the books hero, that Britain had become

‘two nations … who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws: I speak of the rich and the poor’.

Disraeli was, of course, no socialist. But as an outsider himself, born into a Jewish family, he recognised that capitalism could only take root in ordinary people’s hearts and minds if it gave them a stake of their own.
But left to its own devices, it won't.
At bottom, capitalism depends on constant change, and what us called 'creative destruction'.

Mergers and acquisitions, mega takeovers, and the steady growth of corporations spanning the globe, mean that things like long familiar branded products have an even shorter shelf life - and a shorter and more insecure working life for the workers in these companies.

As Marx foresaw, it's not just brands that are constantly changing. Companies and industries are created and destroyed in an incessant stream of innovation, while human relationships are dissolved and reinvented in novel forms.
With constant change, the accumulation of wealth and innovation becoming the norm, and with no moral imperative to look after the weak, capitalism merely degenerates into cronyism and self-interest.
At its best, the free market can be a tremendous liberating force. During the Fifties and Sixties, it gave millions of people opportunities their parents could barely have imagined: happy childhoods, good schools, well-paid jobs and contented retirements.
But, as Marx said, this cannot be a normal state of affairs. Creative destruction and the underlying cycle of long wave boom and bust is in the DNA and bloodstream of capitalism.

In Marx's word 'everything that is solid melts into air'
That is what happened in 1871, and then 1931.
Eighty years on, capitalism has once again lost its way. With millions betrayed by their under-performing schools, locked out of the job market, forgotten by the banks and abandoned by their politicians, Britain is in danger of becoming two nations again.
So, Marx is back in fashion.
In this cycle of creative destruction, ladders of mobility have been kicked away, and even formerly middle class people find themselves facing penury, with eroded pensions, eroded savings, indebted children and no prospect of things getting better for the foreseeable future.

Again, Marx saw this.
When he argued that capitalism would plunge the middle classes into something like the precarious existence of the hard-pressed workers of his time, Marx anticipated a change in the way we live that we're only now struggling to cope with.
It seems that 160 years on from the publication of the Communist Manifesto, we are back in the world that Marx and Engels lived in.
But we have to remember that in that slim book, its authors wrote a hymn of praise to the wonders of the technical innovation that propelled capitalism. They sang of the new abundance that could be gained from the factory system, and the scientific advance of the age.

But it was the human price paid for this that they condemned, and their solution was a simple one of seeing the newly created working classes taking control of the state, and through this, taking over these new forces of production and re-modelling them in the interests of the many and not the few.
In that sense, Marx's statist socialism is not all that different from what we are here for in today's Labour Party.

Now, Labour, despite the pleading of some on the left, is not going to abolish capitalism.
It's tempting for us to join in the rejoicing of seeing a whole social and economic system in crisis. I do it all the time. We all do.
But as social democrats - and it is time we reclaim that name from the Ownenite and Toy Jenkins fan club usurpers - we must remember the sobering fact that any new Labour government will be taking power in a capitalist nation and having to make the changes needed to see that capitalism can deliver for the masses as well as the millionaires.
We must be, therefore, arguing for a reform of a capitalist state that goes beyond anything ever attempted before - and given the severity of the crisis we are living through, this is something that is cutting with the grain of informed public opinion, I believe.
Modern capitalism is not beyond redemption. But it badly needs imposed reform to insert a moral dimension, something missing amid the scramble to protect the privileges of a narrow metropolitan elite.
It is time that our politicians cracked down on non-domiciled billionaires, and time they made sure the rich elite paid their fair share of our national tax bill.
If Ed Balls really wants to rekindle the British people’s faith in our economic system, then he should go further. He should be drawing up legislation which could mean the next Labour government forcing the banks to lend more money to individuals and small businesses, and in this way, getting our economy moving again.
Labour should restore a culture of investment in excellence for our state schools, giving working-class children a genuine sense that they can climb the ladder. And we should make it a priority to encourage real jobs in real businesses, reinvigorating a manufacturing sector that has been abandoned for far too long.
We should not shirk from seeing if the utilities that are a key to good quality of life for all if us, and which power the productive economy - water, gas, electricity - can be bought back into public control.

The stakes could not be higher. Unless capitalism is reformed in this fashion, then an entire generation will conclude that it is no more than a fig leaf for the super-rich.
That would be a tragedy. For despite all capitalism’s weakness and evils — despite the flaws, inequalities and hypocrisies that are an inevitable part of any human endeavour — it remains the system that the world lives within.
Other systems have been tried, and they have collapsed in bloodstained ruins.
Only the pure concept of capitalism — the free exchange of goods, skills, services and ideas — has so far proved itself capable of survival and of offering a quality of life that most would aspire to.
As we said, that is not what it is offering at the moment - either for us here in a mature capitalist state, or more brutally, for those living and labouring in the slums of the emerging world, or in the vast electronic goods sweatshops of Guangdong province, the mines of Brazil, the shipyards and car plants of South Korea and Jarkata.
So the crusade to reform capitalism cannot be successful if it is to be only tried in one country.
That has huge implications for us as Labour Party members.
We have again to stress that we are internationalists.
And that in our own part of the world, we are Europeans, living in and building, the EU as an instrument for social democracy with our sister parties in Western and Eastern Europe.

That is something that I, as a guy who as a confirmed European in the 1970's and 80's when it was simply unfashionable in Labour circles, still adhere to.

And we have to go further.

By, in turn, fighting to see that the EU has a global reach - beginning with the acceptance of Turkey as the first Islamic nation to join the EU.
Only policies of this scale can succeed in the face of this crisis

For if they fail, then the results could be too dreadful to contemplate.
A popular phrase of the 1960's was 'Socialism or Barbarism'.

The socialists of the 1950's and 60's could, in many cases, remember how the crisis of 1931 paved a road that ended outside the gates of Treblinka and Buchenwald.
That potential danger is still there

We have, as democratic socialists, a duty to see this does not take root afresh.

2011-09-01T04:52:00.000-07:00

Geoff Waterfield, the man who led the campaign to bring steel-making back to Teesside, tragically died in the early hours of yesterday morning, aged just 43, leaving partner Sheryl and 11-year-old son Wills.

"When I see a blast furnace, I see a thing of beauty . . . I see something that has given thousands and thousands of people a way of life, a good, honest wage, the ability to pay their mortgages, go on holidays and bring up their families. That to me is fabulous, that is a beautiful thing. When you come to Middlesbrough and see that skyline ... That blast furnace is the heart of Teesside. As long as it pumps, there is life in Teesside."
Geoff Waterfield

It took a riot to change this? – revisited. Planning for people - not profit.

2011-08-24T07:49:00.000-07:00

By DAVID WALSH

A hell of a lot of harrumphing and acres of printed sermonising followed the recent riots. Most concentrated on criminality - and criminality was there aplenty, for sure.

We may not - I don't - shed buckets of tears for JD Sports, PC World or Vodaphone as corporate, wealthy entities - but we should shed tears at the spectacle of elderly working class shopkeepers who saw their hairdressers or local newsagents torched for no gain by those who who merely wanted spectacle.

So on to the seemingly arcane question about what may link the Government's Planning Bill to the recent riots?

As someone involved over the years in the seemingly boring and mundane processes of local authority planning (as both a Planning Committee Chair and then a Council leader), let me venture some thoughts that the two are more tightly interlinked that most people think.

Planning, whether from the perspective of developers or from the perspective of local authority planning officers and politicians, is at heart, a process of determining the built form of a town, a village or an estate. It is seen by the elites as a mediative process, viewing it as a way of resolving contradicting views on the built environment and therefore, in theory, utterly apolitical or, indeed, unpolitical.

But of course it is nothing but political - and highly political too. This is apparent to all but the politically blind. Development can be, and usually at heart is, for the pursuit of simple profit from land, aggrandisement or for the corporate satisfaction of the need on the part of the wealthy for the goods and services they covet and can afford.
The new planning bill, by explicitly arguing for an automatic presumption for 'development' and 'growth', now underwrites this ideology by giving it the full force of law.

In a polarised society such as ours today, one where patterns of inequality, now the norm, are as wide as they have ever been since the 1930's, the development industry is simply the instrument for the creation and re-cycling of wealth for the already wealthy.

Over recent years the process of 'urban renewal' has led, seemingly inexorably, to the gentrification of major parts of our former manufacturing cities, luxury apartment blocks, loft conversions in old factories, the throwing up of new 'gated' communities to keep the poor and the criminal from the door and the erection of new shopping complexes catering for the consumption needs of the wealthy and for the rising new middle class.

These gleaming developments, either tasteful rendering of old apartment blocks or old school or mills and factories, or new gleaming glass, anodised steel and titanium dream palaces, are not projects that are moulded for, or intended to meet, the needs of the poor and dispossessed.

Their place is either in poor city centre sub-standard housing, literally a stones throw from the new opulence, or in our own version of the French banlieue on the peripheral estates.

These communities - like Hemlington or Hardwick, Thorntree or Thornaby New Town - were thrown up in the 1960's as seemingly desirable new housing for local families from the street terraces, but, starved of any real investment or TLC as they have been since Mrs Thatcher's time, they have become mere parking lots for families and individuals increasingly excluded from most of civil society and especially from the jobs market.

They are everywhere - from Birmingham's Chelmlsey Wood to London's Thamesmead and from Glasgow's Drumchapel to Edinburgh's Wester Hailes.

But these communities did not - at least by and large - feature in the rioting. Why?

To answer that we need to look at those places that did riot. The cities and communities that erupted on Monday 8th August are those where the rich live cheek by jowl next to the poor: £1,000,000 Georgian terraces next to estates with some of the deepest poverty in the EU. They are towns and estates where shopping parades made up of 99p stores are just a short bus ride from retail parks and glittering and guarded shopping malls selling clothes, jewellery and household electronics that are denied by price, availability and cachet from the poor estates.

In short wealth and poverty are like oil and water. They can never and will never mix, however close they may be on the surface of a river.

The urban design writer and socialist critic, Owen Hatherley, put it brilliantly in a recent essay.
"Look at the looted, torched places, look at what they all have in common. Look at Bristol, a port where you could walk for miles and wonder where its working class had disappeared to, which seems to have been given over completely to post-hippy tourism, 'subversive' graffiti, students and shopping.

Look at Croydon, where you can walk along the spotless main street of the central privately owned, privately patrolled Business Improvement District and then suddenly find yourself in the rotting mess around West Croydon station.

Look at Manchester's city centre, the most complete regeneration showpiece, practically walled-off from those who exist outside the ring-road.

Look at Salford, where Urban Splash sells terraces gutted and cleared of their working class population, to Media City employees with the slogan 'own your own Coronation Street home'.

Look at Nottingham, where private student accommodation looming over council estates features a giant advert promising 'a plasma screen TV in every room'.

Look at Brixton, where Zaha Hadid's hedge-funded Academy has a disciplinary regime harsher than some prisons, and aims to create little entrepreneurs, or little future CEOs out of the presently lamentably unaspirational estate-dwellers.

Look at Birmingham's new Bull Ring, yards away from the scar of no-man's land separating it from the dilapidated estates and empty light-industrial units of Digbeth and Deritend.

This is our urban Britain, and though the cuts have made it worse, the damage was done long before."

The rioting is not a the revolt of a new, politicised, post working class, looking to new ways to their salvation and self-awareness. It is no more or less that a new 'politics of despair'.
As I said in my opening paragraph, there is nothing to be happy about in the plight of working class people losing their homes or occupations from the actions of other working lass people and it would be infantile to cheer on rioters against corner shopkeepers trying to defend their already small livelihoods; but equally so to pretend that this had nothing to do with the press caricatures of the young and poor, of the nightmares of editors and overpaid commentators of the 'feral underclass' and hooded hoodlums, or nothing to do with our brutally unequal society where the poor are steadily becoming poorer and where the unhealthy die younger, or nothing to do with our failed and pathetic trickle-down attempts at amelioration is to simply deny reality.
It is time then for the labour movement to recognise that the urban environment we live in is not one that is 'neutral', and that the actions of developers, big retailers and land owners are the actions of people wishing to both maximise their wealth and to protect that wealth from any attempts by others to use the planning system to - in any way - redistribute that wealth or power.

People on the Left may still feel a sense of achievement about some of the changes that have taken place in British society since the 1960s, and which past Labour Governments and past Labour Town Halls bought about, but we also need to be asking some very fundamental questions about how our urban development policies are structured and - above all - to see that future urban policies are ones based on the real needs and aspirations of working class communities and are devised, structured and built, not by the professional elites of the planning and architectural world, but rather on the consent of the people who, at the end of the day, have to be the inhabitants of that new urban world.

They deserve better and they should have better.

100 Years On - A History of Revolt

2011-07-18T03:41:00.000-07:00

By DAVID WALSH

1911 has many odd parallels with 2011. It was a year when industrial discontent made the headlines - as it has now. It was a year of revolution and war in North Africa - as now. Indeed the first example of air bombardment (by the new Italian Force) was visited on the inhabitants of Tripoli in 1911. Possible changes to the make up of the House of Lords was being resisted - as now.

And even Mount Etna erupted in both years.

Earlier this year and last year we saw widespread university and college students protest on the streets of the UK, and with many of these involving school students as well.

This too, was a direct echo of a century before.

On 5 September 1911, a group of thirty or so boys marched out of Bigyn council school in Llanelli in West Wales to protest over the caning of one of their peers. Within days, pupils in more than sixty towns throughout Britain had taken to the streets to express their grievances. And many of these protests and walk-outs also happened here in the North East

What accounted for their actions? Are the recent pupil protests against the axing of the Education Maintenance Allowance and against Tuition Fees a similar manifestation of discontent among pupils, fed up with the authorities not listening to their concerns?

The school strikes of 1911 took place during a time of widespread industrial unrest. Llanelli itself had witnessed a traumatic strike of local railwaymen, with 600 soldiers sent into the town to keep the peace, but which only led to rioting and several fatalities.

The same in the North East. Early in that year there had been a stoppage by dock workers which shut the ports of Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Sunderland. This was then followed by a North East seamen's strike and climaxed with the region's railwaymen walking out as one - an action which led to troops being deployed in Darlington and East Cleveland and to railway services coming to a total standstill.

Children were not immune from all of this - many parents were directly involved as employees within these industries. They were also aware of the emerging adult labour movement - as one boy told a Daily Mirror reporter, 'our fathers strike - why shouldn't we?' But should the strikes of 1911 be seen merely as copy-cat protests?
The particular incident which triggered the first strike in 1911 was the hitting of a child by an assistant teacher in the absence of the Headmaster, who was away from school on sick leave. By the end of the week the strike had spread to schools in the big cities of Liverpool, Sheffield, Birmingham, London, Glasgow and other cities. The remarkable speed in which the strikes developed was often blamed by local councillors on the newspapers. While some of the protests were violent - for instance, boys in the East End of London were armed with sticks, iron bars and belts - the vast majority were peaceful affairs.

The Northern Echo covered the issue thoroughly, although initially with a degree of levity. The first reports on the 11th September covered schoolboy strikes in South and East London, Grimsby, Colchester and even Dublin, observing that the central demands were for the abolition of the birch and the cane, then still in wide use, and for payment for homework - a penny a day was suggested.
Clearly this publicity did not go unnoticed by local schoolchildren, and by the 14th, the first school strikes in the region - at Stockton - were reported, with a description of boys from Oxbridge Lane School walking out to hold an impromptu march through the town, parading with posters calling for a reduction in school hours, the abolition of the cane and payment of a penny a day for monitors. The Echo reported that the authorities, in the shape of Attendance Officers, the dreaded 'school board men', called on the parents of the absent pupils to ensure no repeat took place. Whether this had any real impact is hard to gauge - certainly by the same evening, the Echo was reporting that the very same boys were back, this time marching through Stockton High Street.

By the following day, the strike fever reached Newcastle, where senior pupils at the Sandyford Road Council School struck demanding the abolition of home work. In the report it was said that "the head masters stance, refusing to consider the application, led to the boys holding meetings outside the school and on the town moor."

Similar events occurred at Middlesbrough and York, where the demand was for 'less work and less stick'.

Things in the Hartlepools took a more serious turn, with the London Times reporting that 100 boys at the Galleys Hill council school 'came out' and 'that a storage room at the back of an hotel was looted and some bottles of stout and whisky and boxes of cigars were removed by the "strikers" some of whom were arrested and will be charged this morning…The boys are also stated to have thrown stones at the windows of houses occupied by the teachers."

The same paper also reported that "at Middlesbrough a procession of young "strikers" was dispersed by the police, who seized the placards they were carrying. Over 100 boys marched from school to school trying to bring others out and stones were thrown into one of the playgrounds where lads were drilling."

This was borne out by reports in the then Middlesbrough Daily Gazette which identified the schools at the heart of the trouble as being "in the Newport District" and also observing that slogans were being chalked on school walls, and that, wonder of wonders, "they were both neat and correctly spelt".
By the 18th the contagion had spread to Darlington and South West Durham. The Echo reported that "A number of the older boys at Harrowgate Hill School walked out of classes after the first lesson', then, with what the paper said was a 'meagre number' leaving the school at midday to march to Rise Carr School where they linked up with a similar group who had also struck class, to hold a public meeting at a nearby street corner".

This meeting must have been witnessed by an Echo reporter, as the account stated that the demands put forward there were for 'a penny a week for all children and a four day school week'. The Echo observed that they 'may have to wait a long time for this' and acidly observed that 'in the meantime it was voted as good fun to hold their meetings and defy teachers from the safe side of the school wall.'

The following week saw Echo reports of similar actions in South Shields where the majority of schools in the town were out, and where the police, robustly, corralled students back to class, and at Shildon, where schools in the town were picketed by pupils from the outlying Black Boy and Eldon schools, action which resulted in a 'small number of students at the Shildon Council School joining in a march through Shildon under the slogan of 'strike, strike and strike a blow for freedom.'

But by the following week, the strikes, save for a small reported flare up at Crook were over, with pupils back at the chalk face, and their demands unmet.

The 1911 school strikes shouldn't be overplayed. Numerically, while thousands were involved nationally they represented less than one per cent of the total school-age population. Their significance doesn't relate to numbers - but the fact that many young people felt that they had to speak out on the issues that concerned them - and this, almost everywhere, centring around the practice of corporal punishment - the strap, the cane and even the birch.

It was also noticeable that all the stoppages in the North East related to what were called 'council schools' - that is, schools set up by the local authority, and given increased power through the earlier 1902 Education Act. The strikes did not seem to affect either the more middle class and exclusive church schools or local Grammar Schools, and the protests seemed to be occur entirely in working class areas of the region.

There can be no doubt that these were genuine grievances. In following years some school authorities recognised the serious nature of the strikes and looked for ways to improve home-school relationships, against others who called for a firmer hand. In wider society, reforms to improve welfare provisions for children were well under way but corporal punishment remained the mainstay of controlling pupils for many teachers until as late as the 1970's and the 1980s.

While schools today are required under the National Curriculum to provide opportunities for pupils to discuss a range of social issues, for instance in citizenship lessons, or through the setting up of School Councils, it is clear that, evidenced by school student protests over the future College Fees they will face, this is seen by many pupils as a mere token provision.

As in the earlier part of this year and a century before, the decision to walk out of class and march through the streets remains the most dramatic form of pupil protest.

And the schoolboy strikers at Oxbridge Lane, Newport, Harrowgate Hill, Galleys Hill and Eldon - as well as all the other schools cited ? Tragically the class of 1911 was also the conscript class of 1916 who were then to face, not the cane, but the machine guns and the barbed wire at the Battle of the Somme.

June 30th 2011

2011-07-07T05:48:00.000-07:00

Oppose the racist EDL in Middlesbrough

2011-06-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

David Walsh reviews 'Restless Revolutionaries: A History of Britain's Fight for a Republic' by Clive Bloom

2011-06-08T07:20:00.000-07:00

David Walsh reviews 'Restless Revolutionaries: A History of Britain's Fight for a Republic' by Clive Bloom

This is an odd, enigmatic and rather interesting book which can be easily ordered from your library, bookshop or Amazon. Bloom, a writer of whom I have never come across before, uses the book to explore the history of republicanism and radicalism in Britain from an interesting and unusual perspective.

For us here in the North East he unearths a fascinating fact that I, and I suspect many others, were not fully or properly aware of before; that the French revolutionist, Claude Marat, learnt his radicalism, a radicalism which came to the fore when the Bastille was stormed, here in the region, at Newcastle.

It was fascinating to read that Marat had served his political apprenticeship in that city, and in the atmosphere of the radical clubs and currents of that Northumbrian City. From Gallowgate to the guillotine, perhaps ?

Marat's first overtly political work Chains of Slavery published in Newcastle in 1774, was probably written there. By his own highly-coloured account, Marat had lived on black coffee and slept only two hours a night before completing the 65 chapters in three months - and had then slept for 13 days. The book is in English, which Marat knew well, though it relies heavily on earlier works. It purports to be: 'A work in which the clandestine and villainous attempts of Princes to ruin Liberty are pointed out, and the dreadful scenes of Despotism disclosed.' It earned him honorary membership of the patriotic societies of Berwick, Carlisle and Newcastle.

The Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society Library possesses a copy, and Tyne and Wear Archives Service holds three presented to various of the Newcastle guilds.

An essay on gleets (gonorrhea) probably helped him to secure an honorary medical degree from St. Andrews University in 1775 and this, plus work on animal disease, which was of great benefit to small farmers in nearby Durham and Northumberland, helped his standing in Tyneside society.

Newcastle was no backwater hicksville. Both wealthy and free standing, it was a hot bed of political and radical currents amongst both the local middle class and local artisans, boatmen and miners. It was a city with a bookish tradition. There was, at the time Marat was living in the city, five or six independent booksellers and publishers in what is today's Bigg Market, outlets open often 16 or more hours a day and acting as discussion centres and as the 'message boards' for the radicals of those days. So widespread was this culture that it was estimated in this time that Newcastle was the largest centre of book publishing in the English speaking world with the exception only of London itself.

Debating clubs and societies flourished in this atmosphere, and some, such as the Constitutional Club and the Independence Club, took a radical and indeed, republican stance. It was in this atmosphere where Marat flourished and met local radicals and proto-socialists like Thomas Spence, the man who above all could be seen to be the prime intellectual influence on early 19th century British Socialism and Chartism, and the engraver and artist, Thomas Bewick.

Spence was certainly a formative influence. Marat and Spence can hardly not have met, and met and debated often in such tight and security concious circles. Their future careers afterwards diverged, but both held true to their central tenets; Marat as a radical Parisian newspaper publisher in the years of the revolution, and then, from there, as a full member of the revolutionary National Convention, where he played the key role in in fighting and politically overthrowing the Girondans, the group most opposed to the extension of power to the masses.

Spence, a man who held from the first that 'private property is no one man's privilege' went on from his 'radical schoolroom' off the Quayside to move to London where he was one of the founders and stalwarts of the London Corresponding Society, a body that can be seen as the first openly socialist group or party in the UK.

I can recommend a fuller study of both Spence and Marat. Their influence and thinking is still central to any understanding of the historical roots of French and British socialism.

But to return to Bloom's work. Central to the book is his view that the concept of `republicanism' - the explicit disavowal of the monarchic state - is not one that is sited within the sole domain of the `left' of UK politics (although the left is by far the largest component). He includes other currants - Scots and Welsh republicanism, millennialism, religious dissent and also home grown fascism as all fitting into this cachet.

He also makes the point that Britain was also very much the global fountainhead of republicanism in the wider world. After all, the beheading of Charles the First, the Cromwellian Commonwealth and 1688 were, up the day the Bastille was stormed, the only real example of `how it could be done'.

Bloom then leads us down the more well-trodden paths of Northern dissent, Chartism and the later republicanism associated with people like Harney, Morris, Marx and Engels. Here we are on territory already well explored by both Edward and Dorothy Thompson and, more latterly, by David Howell and Tristram Hunt.

He also picks up strongly on the Irish situation, the 1798 rising and the constant low level insurgency that followed for the rest of the century.

For Irish republicanism, the fight for a free Ireland would be waged wherever Irishmen and women were, and this meant Fenian insurrection on a global scale, involving a farcical attempt to invade Canada from upstate New York, with the aim of planting a new free Ireland on Canadian soil, the setting up of Irish based Trade Unions in the coalfields of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, collaboration with the French to mount Irish invasions and leading a gold miners revolt in New South Wales.

English radicals, Bloom shows, were supportive of the Fenians. Even Engels, he alleges, went well beyond his normal territory of business, writing and radical journalism by physically assisting a group of Fenians to escape police capture following an armed shoot out in Manchester.

Most English Radicals too, accepted the freedom and autonomy of Scotland - and as a bit of afterthought - Wales too.

Bloom tells us that throughout this period, what can only be called a federalist republican tricolour was often seen on marches and rallies. It was rather like an inverted Italian national flag with three equal, horizontal, bands of Red, White and Green. Indeed, he says that its last attested appearance was as a spoiler at the coronation of the late King George the Sixth, hung out from the window of a London tenement housing a family with, no doubt, a pretty long memory. Come the next coronation, one hopes this flag will be reinstated to its rightful place in the iconography of street dissent.

In passing he also gives an unanswered and tantalising history of the 'other emblem'- the Red Flag - accepted throughout as the socialist standard by the late Victorian period. Its first appearance, he says, was at the masthead of those ships of the line captured by their crews at the mutinies of the Nore and Spithead in 1798. But what was its significance there ? No-one seems to know.

From the turn of the century, the book takes on a more ragged appearance and seems to show that the writer was becoming conscious of a fast approaching deadline.

The great upheavals of 1911 are covered but briefly, if at all. Dublin in 1916 gets but a couple of pages, and the temper of 1919 - the one year when some form of revolutionary uprising could have really been on the cards is also glossed over, although Bloom does give us some of the fears and forebodings of Lloyd George and King George the Fifth.

The book then hurtles into a rapid schematic of the rise of present day Scots and Welsh nationalism, a short chapter on what a Fascist UK may have been like, had some of Mosley's political soldiers been given their heads, a mention of Tom Wintringham, the man who saw himself, via the founding of the WW2 Home Guard, as a reincarnation of a new New Model Army leader, and putters out in a discussion on what were probably beer or chemical fuelled fantasies of some youths on the Isle of Man who had plans in the 1980's to create a Soviet in the land of hoteliers, offshore tax evaders, hedge fund merchants and Jeremy Clarkson's family.

Missing is any final chapter, where all these webs needed to be pulled together, but that aside, it was a book that kept me engrossed on my commutes in the minutiae of dissent for two whole days and which I recommend as a rattling good yarn across half a millennia.

Abraham Lincoln and the British Working Class

2011-05-21T07:03:00.000-07:00

By Joe Culley

Domestic politics in 1850s Britain was tense and violent. Thug force on the part of the ruling class had been ever more commonly practiced in order to check the escalating quantity of civil unrest on the part of the restive population, but more and more the energy of the working class was manifesting itself in the form of relentless organisation amongst itself. Working class organisations soon found themselves occupied in events not only of domestic, but global, consequence.

The international impact of the British working class was enhanced by emigration, particularly to independent America. In the period between 1845 and 1860, nearly 2 ½ million British subjects had moved to the United States. Most of that number was either from the industrial working class of the mainland or agricultural peasants from oppressed Ireland. It is easy to see the appeal of mid-19th Century America through British workers’ eyes.

‘They,’ J.R. Pole tells us in his book ‘‘Abraham Lincoln and the Working Classes of Britain’ (1952), ‘much more than their employers and social superiors, were ready to accept the American view of America. Unenfranchised in their own country, they knew that their American counterparts – sometimes their American kin – exercised the suffrage franchise under the protection of the ballot. No single factor could draw more sharply, to their eyes, the distinction between the two nations: the American was indeed a citizen, but the great bulk of the British people were ruled by politicians over whom they exercised no constitutional control. Thus the British constitution perpetuated the distinction between the “two nations” within Britain, between the few rich and the many poor, the few privileged and the many who were denied the power of personal representation; and the inferior “nation” needed little encouragement to identify its interests with those of the English-speaking Republic in which political equality was a matter of both fact and law.’

Of course, as history dictates, this was not a truthful depiction of the wild, uncultivated land across the Atlantic. America’s most infamous feature was as the land of slavery. In another example of class perception and class interest, however, British workers soon associated themselves, at least in principle with the abolitionist camp. Though it is accurate that much industry was reliant on the slave trade, above all the Lancashire textile mills, workers had a strong self-interest in not having to compete with slave labour. For those who had made the emigration, they were keen to avoid the stigma of integrating themselves into a society that emraced the practice.

In 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, who had beaten Abraham Lincoln to the Senate seat in Illinois, brought forward a Congressional Bill to grant popular sovereignty to the territory of Nebraska (not yet the modern States of Nebraska and Kansas). In Pole’s analysis, ‘... although slavery was not expected by Douglas or his supporters to spread into the North-West, the actual Congressional restraint on such a development had been withdrawn; and the danger seemed to grow worse when in 1857 the Supreme Court declared that Congress had no power, under the constitution, to exclude slavery from any territory of the United States. The thought that slavery, instead of dying gradually in the confines of its existing limbs, might actually spread with the growth of the Union, and come eventually to dominate instead of decline, though too terrible to contemplate, was not too terrible to be believed. The governing principle that brought the Republican Party into being and brought Lincoln into its fold was determination to prevent any further expansion of slavery.’

Following Lincoln’s election as President, and beyond the commence of the American Civil War, empathy with the North was slow in coming from the British working class. They had been acutely dissatisfied by Lincoln’s avowal that the war was being fought principally over the prolongation of the Union. To add further to the consternation, the President had countermanded an unwarranted emancipation proclamation by General Fremont. Fremont proposed to emancipate all slaves belonging to disloyal slave owners in the area under his own command. The Working Man, a fragment of the workers’ press, editorialised that as it was now clear ‘that the Northerners are not fighting for the emancipation of the slaves, we are relieved from any moral consideration in their favour; and as the Southerners are not worse than they, why should we not get cotton?’ The paper further described the slaves as ‘our African co-workers’. For Pole, ‘the absence of racial feeling, of any conception of colour as a factor dividing worker from worker or man from man, was distinctive throughout the whole period.’

Yet hostile further were the attitudes of many older trade union leaders. ‘The foundations of these views lay’ in Pole’s view, ‘partly in the history of British labour over the previous thirty years. Some of these men were old Chartists; they had not come to terms with industrial capitalism or forgiven the manufacturing middle class for enlisting the support of workers to gain its own ends in the Reform agitation of 1832. In the United States they saw only a repetition of the same system, competitive, cruel and intensely self-interested.’

The early years of the Civil War, however, did coincide in Britain with the rise of a new generation of union leaders, particularly from among London-based craftsmen. It was in July 1860 that the London Trades Council held its inaugural meeting. Very soon it represented one of the most significant trade union institutions in Britain, increasing its membership and becoming involved in policy-making for industrial disputes.

Together with their sister groupings, such as the Glasgow Trades Council, the ‘new’ style trade unionists had been demonstrating their renewed interest and drive in Parliamentary and political reform. They had been agitating against the Master and Servants Acts, which gave employers massive advantages over their employees in legal actions such as for breach of contract. As a consequence of a conference in Glasgow on 20 April 1964, called to discuss the legislation, a memorandum was published to express the view of the workers that these Acts were unjust and inequitable. Following this, a second conference was held in London, attended by all the most significant figures, where it was agreed to seek an audience with relevant Government ministers.

By April 1864 they had already promoted a number of large public demonstrations against black slavery. More significantly, this agitation was linked with explicit support for the North in the American Civil War. The London Council took the lead in organising a ‘workers’ welcome’ to Garibaldi when he arrived in the country that month.

The London Trades Council had been forged, initially, in the aftermath of a builders’ strike in 1859, but control of the group passed increasingly to a small group of remarkable men, ‘whose likeness of mind and variety of trades’ Pole considers, ‘gave exceptional power to the central direction of the trade union movement.’ These men were known as the ‘Junta’. If the analogy is apt, their generals included George Odger, a shoemaker, William Allan, an engineer, Robert Applegarth, a carpenter, Edwin Coulson, a bricklayer, and Daniel Guile, an ironfounder.

Their politics were much more rigorously on the side of the American North, but it proved difficult in the early years of the War to rally the organised part of their class around outright support for that cause. Lincoln appeared to be vacillating over the issue of slavery, repeatedly going as far as to dismiss the question of emancipation completely, through his insistence that preservation of the Union was the only matter being contested. Much of the Tory press in Britain, highlighting victories for the Confederacy, was gleefully predicting a Southern triumph and, probably more important for their readerships, the collapse of the United States altogether. They were assisted by the political strain on the working class, owing to the fact that, as claimed by The Times in 1861, one fifth of the entire population of England was dependent upon the prosperity of the cotton industry, 80% of the raw material coming from the Southern American plantations. The South believed that the mere threat to remove supplies would swing Britain to intervene directly in her own interests on their side.

The blockade was not successful, despite the huge suffering it caused British workers, chiefly in Lancashire. By March 1862 some 113,000 people in the textile districts had claimed poor relief. By December this number had risen to 284,000. Parliamentarians who sided with the South had hoped to win the support of the working class, but the reason for the failure of the blockade was the stoic refusal on their part to support slavery.

What neither the British anti-American propagandists nor even the ‘Junta’ of Lincolnite trade unionists could have been aware of, was that the President’s apparent obduracy and hesitation had a strong element of his own tactical genius. Lincoln realised that the cause of the Union could be better promoted at home and internationally by aligning itself with emancipation. He had taken the advice, however, of his Secretary of State, Seward, that a declaration would be regarded as an act of despair in the light of the dwindling military finances of the North.

The victory at Antietam on September 17, 1862 changed the situation. Careful to wear his ‘Commander-in-Chief’ hat rather than his Chief Magistrates’ hat, he put out the proclamation, which threatened that after January 1, 1863, the military would be used to free slaves in any rebel state. It was on that date, Pole recalls, ‘Lincoln duly promulgated the Emancipation Proclamation. Critics on both sides pointed out, with incredulity or derision as suited their temper, that it could not free a single slave, since it applied only to territories still outside the control of the Federal government; and, of course, that it made no move to free the slaves within that control.’

In Britain, however, the proclamation was used by the Northern sympathisers to open the floodgates and let in support. The day before it had been made (December 31, 1862) mass meetings took place at both London and Manchester, at which the mention of both emancipation and Lincoln were met with rousing cheers. ‘... where Lincoln,’ in Pole’s account, ‘had moved first to save the Union, and had said that he would, if necessary, have achieved this end without freeing a single slave, the British enthusiasts ignored the refinements which seemed to belong to the strategy rather than to the meaning of the war. To them the war was not really comprehensible unless the abolition of slavery were envisaged as its principle object. By the inorexable course of events, to which Lincoln bowed, and which he had foreseen, the strategy of the war was brought into collaboration with the principles of the abolitionists. Neither in America nor in Britain could this collaboration be long resisted.’

The London working men’s meeting that evening approved a motion to send an address to Lincoln, declaring that ‘as Englishmen and workers’ they prized ‘free labour on free soil’. The address strongly approved of the principle of emancipation and included a prayer ‘to strengthen the President’s hand and confirm his noble purpose’. The following day, the date of the proclamation, a meeting in Manchester approved a similar address condemning slavery and expressing support to the President.

In Lincoln’s reply, he wrote:
“I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the working men at Manchester, and in all Europe, are called to endure in this crisis. It has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow this government, which was built on the foundation of human rights, and to substitute for it one which would rest exclusively on the basis of human slavery, was likely to obtain the favour of Europe. Through the action of our disloyal citizens, the working men of Europe have been subjected to severe trials, for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under the circumstances, I cannot but regard your decisive utterances upon the question as an example of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country... whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exist between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual.”

With the Emancipation Proclamation every victory for the Northern armies could be regarded as an advance for abolition, tying political support to their cause. Perhaps more importantly, it set the wheels towards total abolition in motion. The President having signed that document, only his complete defeat in the Civil War could have reversed the trend.

Abraham Lincoln is arguably the most famous President of the United States of all time. He is celebrated, rightly, with coins, statues and memorials. What is less celebrated and less remembered is the bravery and suffering endured by workers in Britain in solidarity with the anti-slavery cause, without which the South may have gained a powerful ally. The political significance of this should not be understated. Liberal Parliamentarians such as Cobden and Bright looked to this conduct as meriting economic reform, and William Gladstone, in his famous 1864 speech declaring that everyone not morally incapacitated ought to come within the pale of the constitution, noted the actions of the workers as making them worthy of consideration towards this end.

Perhaps more interesting was the relationship struck between Lincoln and the working men’s organisations: institutions without which workers would not have been able to act in solidarity with anything at all, particularly such a principled, enlightened position as opposition to slavery. Not yet entitled to vote, many regarded the American President as more of their representative than the Tories and Liberals sitting in the British Parliament.

Lincoln himself viewed them as demonstrating perfectly the workings of his own republican philosophies, emphasising the importance of free institutions and social solidarity. The fact that his philosophical views were sympathetic with the working class was yet more apparent from his famous observations that ‘Labour is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labour, and could never have existed if labour had not first existed,’ and, ‘Inasmuch as most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened, in all ages of the world, that some have laboured and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong and should not continue. To secure to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government.’

Corporate greed bringing workers health problems [GUEST POST by Eric Stevenson]

2011-05-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

The perils of employment have always been sometimes murky. Many companies look to put their own benefits and wants light years ahead of their own employee’s security and welfare. While common effects of this mindset are usually low pay or no job security, some companies have overflowed in benefits and revenue, while some of their workers feel the perils of increased health problems that are work-related.

Certainly corporate greed and the hierarchy of employment have been present since big business started. Now, some of this corporate greed can be traced to thousands of cases of work related health problems. One major problem that has coincided with corporate greed is the use of asbestos as a building material.

Asbestos was widely used as one of the most common materials throughout the 20^th century. Common in shipyards, factories, and military bases, asbestos was regarded for its versatility in use, as well as its low cost.

Somewhere around the late 70’s and early 80’s, workplaces that were high in asbestos use began to see a correlation in cases of health problems such as mesothelioma and asbestosis. While many large companies and governments began to stop use of this material, it continued to be used in some places. Even today, some developing countries like India and other southern Asia nations still use asbestos as common building materials, even with the fiber being banned in numerous areas all over the planet.

The greed of many companies in these developing nations is causing numerous health risks in areas that are not prepared with the medical resources to handle health problems like the ones that are correlated with asbestos exposure. Even worse, some countries like Canada, manage to export these materials out of their own nation and into some of these poor countries. These business owners, who in all likelihood would not use asbestos for their own buildings, allow it to be shipped out to developing countries knowing full well the dangers that it presents. The risk of these asbestos diseases is nothing new, as it was exposed to numerous workers throughout the 20^th century. The problem with the disease is that it has an abnormally long latency period between exposure and diagnosis, allowing for a large growth in cases recently. This type of hypocrisy and greed continues to lead to health risks, and in some cases life threatening situation, seeing as mesothelioma life expectancy is only a year on average, following diagnosis.

Awareness and knowledge of these types of corporate actions should continue to be spread throughout the world, as well as employees. For this example, there are nearly 100,000 people diagnosed with mesothelioma ever year and cases are expected to grow with the disease’s long latency period. This is just one example of the many ways that the corporate world has put their own benefits and fortunes way above their workers, effecting health, pay, and security. It’s important to be aware of some of the ways companies are taking advantage of workers, as being more aware will allow for more preparation in the case something like this happens.

The Battle of Stockton [GUEST POST by David Walsh]

2011-04-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

These days, Sunday afternoons in Stockton are relatively quiet. In the High Street few shops are open, and with the loss of the Cinema, the only signs of life are to be found in those pubs that are still open.

But this was not the case some 58 years ago when Stockton, for a few hours, suddenly found itself playing its own bit part in the titanic political upheavals that characterised the 'hungry thirties'. At the time it was called the 'Battle of Stockton' but today it is totally forgotten

Sunday September 10th 1933 started as yet another quiet weekend day. That day the High Street was, as normal, deathly quiet. The town, along with the rest of the North East, had been hit by the great slump and unemployment that followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The new jobs being created at ICI's Billingham works were effectively cancelled out by the loss of thousands of jobs in the shipyards and marine engineering works that lined both banks of the Tees downriver from the Victoria Bridge. Joblessness stalked the town, and the impact of this was plainly visible in empty streets.

It is probably no exaggeration to say that the unemployed men and women of Stockton were being left to rot. The so-called 'National' Government of the day - a coalition of Tories, Liberals and a handful of former Labour MP's who had followed Ramsay McDonald when he split from official Labour - took the attitude that they were unable to alter market forces, and that only time and faint hopes for improved trade could alter for the better the circumstances of those millions of Britons on the stones - which echoes what we hear today, some 78 years on.
The writer, J B Priestley, visited Stockton very close to this period when he was researching his classic travelogue of the depression days - the book "English Journey" He was horrified by what he saw in Stockton, a town that he described as being "finished. It is like a theatre kept open merely for the sale of drinks in the bars and chocolates in the corridors"

It was that town that on that day provided the stage for one of the first British outings for a new and menacing political force - Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists - the 'Blackshirts'. Mosley was a decidedly odd character. A Public Schoolboy, his career was one moulded, in his eyes at least, by the concept of 'action'. Like his political friend, Hermann Goering, he had been a world war one air ace, but unlike Goering, he found a political home, for a short time, on the Left as a Labour MP.

However his messianic tendencies and his sense of being marked out for a mission soon led him on a journey to the far right and the formation of a British Fascist Party in his own image.

Believing that liberal democracy was finished and that the west was headed for destruction, his party, he decreed, was not be overly exercised with the mundane work of organisation, canvassing and electioneering that marked out more conventional, democratic, parties. Not for them the slow, patient job of trying to elect councillors or MP's. The job of the BUF, said Mosley, was to seize power - and, like their counterparts in Italy and Germany, to seize that power from the streets.

On that Sunday, less than a year after the BUF was formed, that objective was not then apparent to many. But what happened that day in Stockton arguably served as the first big wake up call for British democracy.

By early 1933 the BUF had established a small nucleus of an organisation on Teesside, centred on Stockton. This followed a seemingly set pattern. Small towns and semi-rural areas hit hard by unemployment were seen as prime areas for recruitment for Mosley's fascism. Minus the strong opposing political culture of the big industrial cities which partnered a local well-organised trade union and labour movement, they were seen as easy pickings for the BUF's populism. A similar approach was seen elsewhere in England, where areas like the East Lancashire cotton spinning towns, the Northampton shoe-making villages and East Anglian farming communities, all areas hit by things like the decline of textiles or an agricultural slump and hikes in farm rates and tithes, became key targets for Blackshirted activism.

In Stockton, the first attempts by the local BUF Branch to begin organised street propaganda and open air soapbox meetings had hit determined opposition from local leftwingers. The footsoldiers of this opposition was supplied by members of the local Branch of the National Unemployed Workers Movement, with the active support of both local supporters and members of the Labour Party and the relatively small Teesside Communist Party.

It appears from the published recollections of one Blackshirt activist, the Manchester based Edmund Warburton, that this opposition had provoked the BUF across the North of England to take opposing action against the organised Teesside left, and 'hush hush' plans to parade in strength were drawn up under the guidance of a BUF 'national propaganda officer', a Captain Vincent Collier.

'Hush hush' these plans may have supposed to be, but news of the march somehow got out, quickly coming to the notice of the BUF's Teesside opponents. Crucially, however, this intelligence did not seem to reach the ears of the local police, something that played a key factor in what was to follow.

On the morning of that day, fully loaded motor coaches carrying, according to Warburton, over 100 BUF members from Tyneside and the Manchester area, set off for Teesside, and in mid-afternoon, their coaches met up at Victoria Bridge, allowing the disembarked black shirted and jack-booted phalanx of Mosley's army to begin their march along Stockton High Street

They were not alone however. An opposing crowd, according to contemporary press accounts some 2,000 strong, was ready and waiting in ambush.

The BUF managed to get as far as the Town Hall building in the middle of the High Street market place but any further progress was halted by the sheer weight of numbers of their opponents.

The BUF then attempted to size control of a section of the market place immediately North of the Town Hall and, finally gaining that piece of ground, started their meeting, with Collier attempting to speak through a loud hailer. The Northern Echo reports that he was barely audible above the shouts and taunts of the BUF's opponents, and an attempt to rush the BUF platform began.

The whole of the High Street then began to resemble nothing more than a medieval battleground. The Northern Echo and other local press reported the use of weapons on both sides. Wooden staves and pickaxe handles were wielded, and stones - and more lethally - potatoes into which razor blades had been studded were thrown into the Blackshirted ranks.

The initial police response was weak. Quite simply they had been caught napping by what was beginning to happen. It was reported that only seven constables were on duty across the whole town centre and the High Street, and they were soon overwhelmed when they tried to separate the opposing forces. In this days before radio links were available to the police, it was a hard job for the bobbies on the spot to both try and control the crowds and summon reinforcements - if there were any reinforcements to hand on a normally quiet Sunday afternoon. Their only option was for the Inspector in charge to order the BUF leaders to halt the attempts to hold their meeting and to quit the town.

Following this, it was reported, the BUF broke ranks and were pursued across the High Street by the opposing crowds nearly, according the Echo, overturning a passing bus in their wake. The BUF then attempted to re-assemble in Silver Street, a narrow lane linking the High Street to what was then Stockton's working quayside.

Press reports say that it was there, when the BUF were effectively - in today's parlance - 'kettled' in Silver Street, that the height of the fighting began and where the first BUF members became casualties. The Echo and other newspapers reported that about 20 casualties were recorded at local and regional hospitals that evening, including Warburton who, hit in the face by a large stone, later lost the sight of one of his eyes.

Despite this tumult, no arrests were made - a clear sign of how the police were, at the outset, utterly outnumbered.

The Stockton police, by then, it seems, at last beginning to be reinforced, ordered the BUF back to their waiting coaches. These were still parked at the Thornaby side of the Victoria Bridge, and this meant that dispersed groups of Blackshirts had to run the gauntlet back down the High Street and the Quayside hotly pursued by their opponents who by now were sensing victory.

The BUF, minus their injured footsoldiers, made it back to their hired charabancs, and, to a chorus of ribald insults, jeering and cheering drove off into the gathering twilight. 'Non Paseran' - they did not pass.

So ended the Battle of Stockton. This was one of the few occasions in the 1930's when it was clear that opponents could claim a clear-cut victory over the Blackshirts. After Stockton, police forces began to recognise the potential for violence that their street activities could spark off, and made sure that they held some kind of line between the opposing forces. Despite this, violence was almost guaranteed at BUF rallies, most notably in their later showpiece indoor rallies, venues like London's Olympia, where hecklers were mercilessly beaten to a pulp by Blackshirt heavies.

Local people were not slow to see the analogies between what had happened on the streets of Stockton and what was occurring in the towns and cities of Germany. The Stockton events after all had occurred a mere eight months after Hitler had seized the German Chancellorship, and at the same time as the trial and execution of the hapless Van Lubbe, the man accused of starting the Reichstag fire, an event which conveniently allowed Hitler to put into law draconian emergency decrees which effectively turned Germany into a armed dictatorship.

The following day saw the holding of a rally organised by the Stockton Labour Party and addressed by leading local Labour Councillors and representatives of local faiths - including Rabbis and teachers from Synagogues in Stockton and Middlesbrough. At that meeting, letters sent to those Synagogues from German jews, undergoing persecution and imprisonment in newly established concentration camps were read out as a warning from those in the heart of the beast of what could befall British society if the forces of darkness led by Mosley were, in some way, allowed to prevail.

It is a sobering thought that, for certain, many of those who had physically opposed the Blackshirts on Stockton High Street were to destined to repeat that battle - but this time, six years later, in battledress and fighting the might of the same Nazi states revered by Mosley - a hard fought fight that, like Stockton, ended in victory for the forces of democracy.

The Politics of Red Ed

2010-09-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

Ed Miliband’s ascendency to the Labour leadership is the product of a carefully cultivated career inside the New Labour machine. The workings of a political project described by Andrew Rawnsley in his book ‘Servants of the People’ as operating a ‘revolutionary cell’ within the Labour Party.

Having seized control in the 1990s, the original ‘New Labour’ coterie of Blair, Brown, Mandelson and Alistair Campbell governed the Party like the court of a medieval King. All decisions as to policy were made from the centre of a spiral, guided by an obsession with opinion polling and appeasement of the right-wing press. Comment to the media even by those who should have had autonomous rights, such as MPs, was rigidly controlled from massive computer databases at the Party’s headquarters. Even slight dissent earnt ridicule as an irrelevant, unhinged dinosaur. Around the first ring of this spiral of power was a team of professional political aides, and this included both Miliband brothers from its earliest origins. The whole process circumvented the Cabinet, the Parliamentary Labour Party, and the Party Conference. Indeed, Conference became half a media circus and half a corporate lobby, with set-piece speeches where the leaders could preach, bully and lecture the fawning faithful.

This is the politics and background of Ed Miliband. It is quite possible that he may well have genuine and politically significant differences with a number of policies adopted by the New Labour Governments. It is quite possible that he may well have a genuine desire to remould his Party a few steps leftwards, perhaps even back towards a traditional social democracy. His instincts, however, honed by an adult life of adherence to New Labour orthodoxies, are to caveat such a move with careful tacks rightwards.

In the mere three days he has been leader, the mass media – that Miliband’s politics requires him to court – have barracked him with a constant stream of venomous attack. He has been dubbed ‘Red Ed’ (meant and received insultingly) for daring to opine that some wages are too low, that some of the wealthy elite behave fecklessly and that trade unions have a right to exist, provided they’re “responsible”. The label is of course ridiculous, as anyone who has paid the slightest attention to his ministerial record will know.

The fear that Ed Miliband has provoked among the right-wing press is in fact a fear of democracy. It is a fear that he may change those economic and political orthodoxies, as that would require the re-building of mass participation politics. If “brother” Ed was serious about re-inventing social democracy he would be seeking to bring people back into his party. Membership of the Labour Party stood at the low level of just under half a million in the mid-1990s – it is now at the pitifully low level of 150,000 or so. It would involve encouraging people not only to join but to engage with trade unions. This is what the establishment fears more than a miniscule shift in a social democratic direction at the top level of the Labour Party, as somebody with Miliband’s politics would not be able to control such a wide movement in the way they would like, and he would soon be dispensed with.

Yet this is precisely not what he intends to do with his newfound position of significance. His New Labour background commands him to plead with the right of his Party, the old management, for a tweaking of the policies. This is why in his set-piece speech of this afternoon, designed for media consumption, he spoke what he called “hard truths”. One such “hard truth” was that “we” “got it wrong” on Iraq.

This is not a “hard truth” at all, for the many, many ex- and present members of the Labour Party, including one of his competitors for the leadership, who physically marched through the centre of London and throughout the country pleading desperately with Tony Blair not to launch the invasion! Neither he, who was not even a lowly backbencher in 2003, nor they, was part of the “we” who got the decision “wrong”, but again, they were not his target audience.

It was his New Labour background that commanded him to make a public condemnation, again for media consumption, of industrial action. We know this was purely propaganda as something anybody who paid any attention to the Trade Union Congress will know is that no strikes have actually been planned. Even a more “militant” union leader like Bob Crow, whom Miliband is also quick to demonise to his mates in the press, argued to the TUC only that there should some kind of national demonstration to voice popular opposition to the Government’s agenda of cuts.

If Mr Miliband is opposed to that agenda too, why on earth should he distance himself from activism that will engage probably more members of the public than there are even members of the Labour Party, and that may help to actually bring down the Tory Government? It is because it would mean sacrificing his right to govern the Labour Party from the centre, guided by the opinion polls and designed to appease the right wing press.

Writing as a member of the Labour Party, and as somebody who would, like most sensible people, considerably prefer an Ed Miliband government to one led by David Cameron, this is a big concern. For every strike that Mr Miliband publicly opposes from the comfort of a TV studio, he alienates a further section of the population stood in the cold fighting for their families. He undermines the efforts of the Labour activists stood alongside them with recruitment forms. For every job loss that he portrays as “necessary” or “sensible”, he further alienates his potential constituents still.

The alternative is to reach out to former members of the Labour Party, to encourage people to join trades unions, and, crucially, when tested, to be their ally and not their opponent. Doubtless it is more likely that the younger Miliband may be inclined towards this than his sibling would have been. David’s defeat is good news for all those opposed to war, torture and privatisation, but the real test of Ed’s leadership will be in the months and years ahead as public opposition to the cuts becomes more vocal and strident. Either Ed makes the Labour Party a major player in that struggle or he follows Neil Kinnock down the dark path of irrelevance.

England Expects... But Can't Deliver

2010-07-01T15:30:00.000-07:00

The Evening Gazette's Anthony Vickers is absolutely spot on regarding the state of English football and the national side's dismal exit from the World Cup last weekend. Incidentally, Vickers is the finest football writer around, for my money. This scathing critique is well worth a read, whether you rooted for England or not.

... England are ranked by FIFA somewhere between eighth and 12th in the world so a place in the last 16 is just meeting expectations. Going any further is relative success. England's tournament default it to stumble through the group stage then go against the first technically competent side they come up against. Sometimes the draw is kind and they get past a Cameroon or a Belgium but then when they meet a Germany, Brazil or Argentina they go out. That is the harsh reality. The idea that England are an international football superpower is a nonsense.

Since grinding out victory on home turf in 1966 (courtesy of a dodgy goal that didn't prompt demands for a FIFA inquiry) England have reached the semi-final ONCE - that last four high-water puts them on a par with giants South Korea, Croatia, Belgium, Sweden, Turkey and Bulgaria. England have even failed to qualify for the finals at all on three occasions. Since 1966 Germany have always gone further than England. They have won two finals and been runners-up three times plus they have won three European Championships and been runners-up in three more. They have the right to expectations. We don't.

Teesside in solidarity with the Gaza flotilla

2010-06-05T07:48:00.000-07:00

About a hundred people attended a rally in Middlesbrough's Centre Square this morning in solidarity with the people of Gaza and with the attempts by activists to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The rally was organised by Teesside Against the War. Stockton North's newly elected MP Alex Cunningham made an impressive maiden public speech in which he called for greater sanctions against Israel if it failed to lift the blockade and called for a 2-state resolution which saw the creation of a viable Palestinian state. A speaker from Teesside's Muslim Discussion Forum said Israel should be ashamed of its actions, to much applause from the crowd. Alan Docherty of the North East Shop Stewards Network called for solidarity between workers and trade unionists in the UK and Palestine and also talked about the majority of decent people in Israel who also wanted a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Israeli socialists and campaigners condemn flotilla killings

2010-05-31T08:21:00.000-07:00

Dave Osler is eloquent in summary of this, yet another tragedy to unfold in Israel-Palestine. The Israeli ruling class, as Dave puts it, "seemingly revels in brutality to a degree without current parallel among democratic nations. Time after time, its actions underline a determination to ignore the standard strictures that constrain states to use only the minimum degree of force rightly or wrongly considered consistent with legitimate national interests." It is deeply, deeply sad.

The Israeli left has responded with anger at to the ongoing brutality of the IDF and the Israeli government towards the Palestinians and its supporters. The Movement for Socialist Struggle reports that demonstrations against the flotilla killings are planned for this evening in Tel-Aviv (in front of the Ministry of Defence), Jerusalem and Haifa. More are expected in the coming days. Among their demands are an end to the siege, dismantle the settlements, overthrow the wall, eliminate the separation, smash racism and end the occupation.

The Communist Party of Israel has sarcastically congratulated the Israeli government for "the shining victory of their pirate army on the freedom civilian sail." According to their website, a demonstration by the Israeli Coalition against the siege in Gaza will be held this afternoon near the port of Ashdod: "We will be there to express our solidarity with the flotilla. And will call to break the siege and open the gates of Gaza."

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has called on the Israeli government to allow the protests to go ahead and to ensure that protestors are free of intimidation. "ACRI reminds the government at this time that it is their primary responsibility to protect the security of citizens, particularly those who are exercising their basic right to express outrage at today's horrible events relating to the flotilla."

Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, meanwhile, has demanded an immediate, independent and effective investigation into the tragedy.

John McDonnell and the L.R.C.

2010-05-23T08:52:00.001-07:00

The Labour Rep resentation Committee (LRC) is the campaigning organisation of the Labour Party Left. I joined in 2007 having been inspired by John McDonnell’s leadership bid against Gordon Brown. A combination of top-down pressure from the party hierarchy and the promise of favourable patronage to sufficient numbers of MPs ensured he never made the ballot, and that qualifies in my view as a significant turning point in the history of the Labour Party. Had there been a proper debate on the issues in 2007 it would have at the very least forced Brown and his team to define himself politically and avoided what occurred during the three years that followed, during which time even Brown himself would probably admit he struggled to do this. It should never be underestimated how much even a hotly contested and perhaps even a hotly disputed debate can work to energise party activists and trades unionists, establish properly where the party mood lay, and safeguard against general malaise. It would have also prevented the attempted Blairite coups.

Despite not reaching the ballot, what struck me about the 2007 ‘John4Leader’ campaign was how it was driven not by media manipulation, photo opportunities and aggrandising speeches, but via an energetic grassroots organisation. It helped to convince me that the best place to argue for socialist policies remains the Labour Party.

The full list of LRC Trade Union, Labour Party and external affiliates is here. It is distinctly unsurprising (though of course fully welcome) that the LRC has given backing to ‘John4Leader 2010’. Hundreds of party activists (including yours truly – fame at last?) signed a letter to the Guardian calling on the Parliamentary Labour Party to allow McDonnell into the debate. Here is the full text of an LRC flyer produced explaining why it is backing the campaign:

“As Leader, John would head a Labour Party committed to fighting against the cuts and ensuring that our communities don’t pay for the economic mess caused by the banks

“The role of the labour and trade union movement now is to build a broad anti-cuts coalition, to mobilise to protect our community against the coming attack on public services, wages and conditions, pensions and welfare benefits and to create links with the campaigns that are being waged across Europe and elsewhere in the world.”

John McDonnell has been a consistent and diligent campaigner on behalf of trade unions and workers. John was one of the architects of the Trade Union Freedom Bill to repeal the anti-trade union laws, and sponsored it as a Private Members Bill in Parliament. John also moved amendments to the Employment Bill in another attempt to repeal Thatcher’s laws. John said:

“I pay tribute to the many trade unionists who have campaigned on these issues over the years and lobbied Parliaments. They include many rank and file trade unionists, general secretaries and others: we all owe them a debt of gratitude for campaigning for basic trade union rights in this country.”

John has called and voted for the strengthening of rights for agency workers. He has fought in defence of migrant workers – and against “employers using immigration status as a mean of attacking workers fighting for their rights and breaking union organising”.

In the last year he has stood on dozens of picket lines, spoken at trade union meetings, lobbied Ministers on behalf of trade union campaigns, taken up individual victimisation at work cases, and always shown solidarity with our movement.

He also moved amendments to the Equality Bill to give workplace equality reps statutory rights, and campaigned to introduce mandatory pay audits. John was also a leading campaigner in defending the right to abortion up to 24 weeks and campaigned to protect sex workers’ rights. He led the opposition to the Welfare Reform Bill and the introduction of workfare – and fought to improve the appallingly low level of benefits.

John has an impeccable campaigning voting record against privatisation. During the last Parliament John campaigned and voted against privatisation in schools, hospitals, the civil service, prisons and probation, and the Royal Mail – and will campaign against Con-Dem privatisation plans.

John is an anti-war activist. He voted against the Iraq war, spoke in the parliamentary debates and at dozens of Stop the War demos and meetings. John has since voted for an inquiry into the Iraq war, and called for the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.

His record on civil liberties is second to none, campaigning against ID cards, the anti-terror laws, and police violence against anti-war, environmental, anti-capitalist and anti-fascist protesters. John has also spoken out publicly and in court to defend the right to protest in Parliament Square. He has taken part in Climate Camp and led campaigns against airport expansion.

We back John because he is exactly the Leader that Labour needs: dedicated, democratic, and a fighter. He’s a socialist and we’re proud to back him for Leader ... we hope you will too.

We’re on John’s side because he’s on ours”

Red Papers For Teesside

2010-05-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday came more very sad news for Teesside, when prominent local employer Garlands went into administration. The Evening Gazette estimates this will amount to the loss of over 1,000 jobs across Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Sunderland. It follows from the tragedy of the last 12 months or so over the closure of the Teesside Cast Products Corus plant at Redcar. That particular saga resulted in 1,700 jobs losses.

The mothballing of Corus is no doubt the cause of the particular alarm on the part of the local population towards Garlands. To lose this many jobs in such a short space of time will simply be devastating not just to those dependent upon them, but to us all. It has long been a complaint that the deliberate policy of de-industrialisation pursued by the 1980s Conservative government (which ripped the heart out of Teesside) meant the only hope of regional prosperity under capitalism could have come in the service sector – i.e. low paid, low skilled ‘call centre jobs’. Now that –quite literally – the call centre jobs are unsustainable on Teesside, people will correctly express concerns about what the future (if there is one at all) might hold.

Certainly the situation will not be helped by the new Tory/Lib Dem government at Westminster, and that’s putting it lightly. We can expect to see attacks on living standards through:

• a rise in VAT;
• an attack on public sector wages and pensions (public sector jobs amounting to some 66% of local GDP);
• a rise in National Insurance contribution for employees (unlike New Labour plans that it should be paid by employers);
• cuts to tax credits; and
• a threat to low earning home owners with a rise in interest rates.

The North East of England has already been targeted to bear the brunt of public sector savaging.

All of which will cancel out any gimmicky raising of the income tax threshold to... err... just below what your average low-earner takes home. What is more, we certainly won’t see measures that are urgently needed with regards to social housing and the environment. Fully expect inner city riots, the return of gated suburban communities and quite plausibly a well-timed war with Iran to keep unemployment down.

The question the Labour Party will have to ask itself, particularly on Teesside where only one MP from the previous Parliament remains (Stuart Bell for Middlesbrough with a much reduced majority - although this does not take into account the de-selection of Frank Cook nor the tragic early death of Ashok Kumar), is whether it wants to simply defend its own record and court support from North East businesses or whether it could oppose the ‘ConDems’ by leading a grassroots, trade union orientated struggle on a genuinely alternative (preferably socialistic) platform.

The questions for the Teesside Left will be: can there be a united approach, and what do we stand for?

With this in mind perhaps a solution would be to invite contributions towards a new ‘Red Papers for Teesside’, for the purposes of creating a dialogue, a debate, and a common standard around a radical alternative economic and social policy for Teesside.

I have no idea what the readership of this site looks like but please, please do send a contribution to teessideredbook@gmail.com whether you’re a nobody, a lefty economist, a political activist, a trade unionist, a student or a politician.

The Coalition

2010-05-18T05:58:00.000-07:00

Murdoch versus Democracy

2010-05-08T08:01:00.000-07:00

Joyous scenes on Sky News this afternoon, as a live broadcast from outside a Liberal Democrat meeting in London was suddenly interrupted by a Take Back Parliament protest marching past unexpectedly in the background. An extremely irate Kay Burley was clearly rattled and audibly drowned out by the noisy protestors, which included Billy Bragg (see above), chanting "Fair votes now!".

After a hostile, aggressive and wholly unfair interview by Burley with one protestor, in which she asked what "right" had 1000 protestors to exert pressure on democratically elected politicians (!), protestors later chanted "Sack Kay Burley, watch the BBC", "Down with Murdoch's empire" and "Sky is shit", drowning out the tedious drivel being served up by Burley and fellow Sky anchor Adam Boulton.

Teesside - no longer a Labour stronghold

2010-05-07T07:24:00.000-07:00

In astonishing scenes, Vera Baird lost Redcar and Dari Taylor lost Stockton South last night. My outstanding memory of Baird is of watching her being booed and heckled by Corus workers and their supporters at a demonstration last summer when she told them "any solution must be a commercial solution," following calls for Corus to be nationalised. None of Teesside's Labour MPs fought hard enough for Corus -- their hands were tied by their loyalty to the government and its pro-market ethos. Now they've paid the price.

Four new Teesside MPs in night of drama
A MOMENTOUS victory by the Liberal Democrats in Redcar has helped change the political landscape of Teesside. Ian Swales overturned a 12,000 Labour majority to take the Redcar seat from Vera Baird in one of the shock General Election results of the night.

In Stockton South, Labour’s stranglehold on Teesside was further loosened when the Conservatives’ James Wharton won the seat by just 332 votes to oust Labour’s Dari Taylor. The Stockton South result was announced after a recount.

But Labour’s red flag continues to fly over the other four Teesside constituencies. It was the end of Frank Cook’s 27-year reign as MP for Stockton North. Standing as an independent after being de-selected by Labour, he trailed in fifth in the contest won by Labour’s new candidate Alex Cunningham, a leading Stockton councillor. In Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, Tom Blenkinsop held the seat for Labour. It was the seat held since 1997 by Labour’s Ashok Kumar who died in March. Labour’s Stuart Bell in Middlesbrough and Iain Wright in Hartlepool are the only two Teesside MPs from the last Parliament who will be returning to Westminster after this election.

Redcar provided the biggest shock on the night. Ian Swales led the concerted Liberal Democrats campaign to a stunning victory which saw a 21.8% swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats - one of the biggest swings in any constituency across the country. The Liberal Democrats captured the traditional Labour seat with a majority of more than 5,000 votes. It brought to an end Labour’s hold of the Redcar seat.

Mr Swales said the Corus factor was one of the reasons for his success and the party leader Nick Clegg, who visited Redcar during the campaign, had been a vote winner, particularly among young people. “We’ve put in a massive amount of work over the last few years to build our strength here.” His success in the parliamentary constituency has come on the back of three Liberal Democrat gains in Redcar and Cleveland Council by-elections in the past two years.

Redcar was also a target seat for the Liberal Democrats and a massive effort was put into the run-up and to the actual election campaign. Vera Baird, who has been Redcar’s MP since 2001, was Solicitor General in the last Government. She said the mothballing of the Corus plant at Redcar had been a decisive factor in the election. She said being Redcar’s MP had been a job into which she “put heart, body and soul”. She said Labour would be back in Redcar.

Alex Cunningham, a local councillor for 20 years and a former Evening Gazette reporter, said he would now be proud to serve the people of Stockton North as “a highly visible MP”. Frank Cook, who gained just 1,577 votes, said he would now “write a new chapter” in his life.

James Wharton, who at 26 years old will be one of the youngest MPs in the new House of Commons, said that Stockton South had come back home to the Conservatives. “People have sent a message to the Labour Party in the North-east that they need to get their act together.” In 2003 James Wharton became the youngster Conservative association chairman when he took over at the head of the association in Stockton at the age of 19.

Dari Taylor was first elected the MP for Stockton South in 1997. She now plans to work for children’s charity Barnardo’s and she said that governments lose seats and she blamed the televised debates for putting too much focus on the leaders. Ms Taylor said she was now looking forward to her daughter’s wedding in September.

Mr Blenkinsop dedicated his victory in Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland to Dr Kumar and he said it would be a privilege and honour to represent the constituency. Mr Blenkinsop, who worked with Ashok Kumar for a time, won the seat by 1,677 votes from the Conservative candidate Paul Bristow. It was a disappointing result for the Conservatives who had high hopes of taking the seat from Labour. But Mr Bristow said the result showed the Conservatives could win the seat and could be competitive on Teesside.

Sir Stuart Bell in Middlesbrough won his seventh election in a row in Middlesbrough. While his majority was down, he said it could have been lower given the Corus factor, the 13 years of a Labour government and the MPs’ expenses saga. Liberal Democrats again came second in Middlesbrough where their candidate Chris Foote-Wood was fighting his eighth General Election campaign.

Iain Wright in Hartlepool also saw his majority cut but he had a comfortable majority over the Conservative candidate Alan Wright.

Labour Organizations of Iran: Joint Resolution for International Workers’ Day

2010-05-01T04:26:00.000-07:00

May 1st is the day of international solidarity of the working class and a day for laborers to protest global poverty and inequality. On this day millions of workers around the world stop working, to conquer the streets and show their anger and disgust with the announcement of the numerous disasters that capitalism has inflicted on humanity, and scream for liberation from oppression and exploitation.

Resounding protest against the hardship of capitalism and inequality of workers will be heard all around the world on May 1st while prohibition of celebration of this day in Iran is in effect, and many organizing workers of the May 1388/2009 event have been convicted and imprisoned and subjected to heavy sentences. Labor leaders and activists and are languishing in prison for defending their basic human rights.

Imposing such appalling lack of social rights for workers in conditions that in three decades of a capitalist system in Iran after the 1957 (1979) revolution, has reduced the minimum wage to a quarter below the poverty line and lack of timely payment of these wages and the firing of masses of workers, temporary contracts, have imposed hellish conditions on millions of workers families. Today more than ever to ensure the profitability of capital, factories are closed and subsidies cut in determination to cut the last threads of survival for millions of worker families and pour them into the pockets of investors.

But as we workers showed in the 1957 revolution as well as in recent years, we will not tolerate this misery and despite prison and repression will stand ahead with the people against violation of our most basic human rights and will not allow them to ruin our existence more. We are the main producers of all wealth and products in society and are entitled to human life in accordance with the highest standards of human life today.

In this context we also protest against circumstances since last Labor Day, since the masses in Iran have been exposed to suppression of their rights. We make the following demands and with immediate effect:

1 – We are free to organize – independent of the government and employers - to strike, protest, march, assemble and speak freely. This is our right and must be unconditional in recognition of the social rights of workers and the people of Iran.

2 – We see the plan to cut subsidies (by targeted subsidies) and the minimum wage of 303,000 Tomans as a gradual imposition of death of millions of working class families and demand immediate suspension of plans to cut subsidies and increase the minimum wage to one million Tomans.

3 – Workers wages in arrears are to be paid immediately and with no excuses. Non-payment of wages should be prosecuted as a crime and damages caused to the workers must be paid for.

4 – The Dismissal of Workers by any excuse must be stopped and those who are unemployed or have attained the age of employment and are prepared to work must be given suitable unemployment insurance until employed.

5 – We want to eliminate temporary contracts and the signing of blank contracts and demand employment security for all workers and wage recipients in accordance with the highest standards of health and safety. We demands the elimination of all state-created and cntrolled agencies from workplaces.

6 – We demand the eradication of the death penalty and the immediate and unconditional release of Ebrahim Madadi, Mansour Osanloo, Ali Nejati and all labor activists and other social movements and protestors from prison and a stop to the persecution against them.

7 – We condemn any aggression towards workers' and people's protests and view this type of freedom of expression as an irredeemable right of the public.

8 – We want to eradicate all laws that are discriminatory to women and to ensure full equality and the unconditional rights of women and men in all areas of social, economic, political, cultural and family life.

9 – We want all pensioners to enjoy a prosperous life without economic concern and to eliminate any discrimination in the payment of retirement pensions and benefits from their social security and health care.

10 – Child labor must be eradicated and all children must be entitled to educational facilities, health and welfare, independent of gender and race, religion, or social and economic status of their parents.

11 – We hereby announce our support for all emancipatory social movements, and strongly condemn arrest, trial and imprisonment of activists of these movements.

12 – We announce strong support for the demands of teachers, nurses and other working classes of society and consider ourselves their allies, and call for the immediate realization of their demands.

13 – We are part of the world’s workers and strongly condemn the dismissal and imposition of any discrimination of Afghan migrant workers and other nationalities.

14 – We appreciate the international support towards workers’ struggles in Iran and express our adamant support for all protests and struggles of workers throughout the world; we consider ourselves their allies. We more than ever before emphasize on international solidarity of working class as the path to liberation from the hardships of the capitalist system.

15 – May 1st must be declared an official holiday in the country and included in the official calendar and any restrictions regarding recognition of the anniversary of this day shall be abolished.

Long Live May 1st

Long live the international solidarity of workers

May 1, 2010

Ordibehesht 11, 1389

Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company
Syndicate of Workers of Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane Company
The Free Union of Workers in Iran
The Founding Board of Metal and Mechanic Workers' Syndicate
The Founding Board of the Syndicate of Painters
Association of Kermanshah Electrical and Metal Workers
The Committee to Pursue the Establishment of Free Workers’ Organizations
The Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers’ Organizations
Association for the Defense of Dismissed and Unemployed Workers of Saghez
The Women’s Council

End of an era?

2010-04-29T15:21:00.000-07:00

And so, we could be entering the final seven days of 13 years of safe Labour rule. The stylish, witty, lacerating billboard ads which once mocked the hapless Conservatives are completely absent for the first time in over a decade. The right-wing press are gunning for Labour and Gordon Brown in a more sustained and vicious manner than they have done for a generation. The balance of power has shifted.

Nevertheless, it could be worse. Twelve months ago I thought the Conservatives would stroll into power in the next general election. Now, by all accounts, it's so close a hung Parliament is more likely.

What does this mean for socialists? If it meant the introduction of proportional representation at the behest of the Liberal Democrats, I would welcome it. But what if it led to a Tory-Lib Dem coaltion government? That, obviously, would be a disaster for working class people.

Not that a Labour victory or a Labour-Lib Dem coalition would be much better. As Blyth Valley Labour MP Ronnie Smith starkly pointed out, the choice offered by the mainstream parties in this election is basically a choice between having your throat slit or your head cut off. New Labour, like the Conservatives before them, have consistently championed the interests of neoliberal capital and now it is ordinary working class people who pay for their crisis -- ever the same old story.

Yet still I can't bear the thought of letting the Tories in. Please god don't let happen.

Three Fundamentals for Wannabe Labour MPs

2010-04-02T05:41:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning sees the hustings meeting of the Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland Constituency Labour Party to select a new candidate for the upcoming General Election, which is now just over a month away. The process of screening and filtering candidates through the Special Selections Panel means the chances of hearing a socialist voice on the platform are unlikely.

As a member of the Party I shall certainly be at the meeting. To win my vote (as insignificant a concern as that no doubt is!) a candidate would simply have to adopt the LRC’s model election programme. This advocates a living wage, public ownership of key industries (particularly the banks), redistributive taxation, abolition of tuition fees, a massive council house building programme, publicly owned utilities and services, greater investment in care (both for children and the elderly), tougher measures to stamp out workplace discrimination, scrapping Trident and the reversal of Thatcher’s anti-trade union laws.

Despite the prospects of a slightly more radical manifesto being produced by the incumbent Party leadership than has been concocted for recent elections, the LRC agenda represents too much of a traditional Labour Leftist wish list for me to expect any of the prospective candidates to be endorsing. This is because the very process of filtering candidates through the NEC is designed to eliminate more left-wing candidates. It may not matter much anyway if the conclusions of the Bochel and Denver study of 1988 remain the case: that the Left has always had a stronger sway in the constituencies, who then paradoxically tended to select candidates of the centre right.

Nevertheless, control of selection is the cornerstone of the New Labour rise to political dominance. In terms of modern history the issue dates back to 1970, when:

“At the end of Labour’s second ever period of majority government many within Labour’s ranks felt deeply disaffected. From as early as 1965 the Wilson government had ‘sadly disillusioned many Socialists’, wrote Richard Clements in Tribune. The cause of socialism had not advanced one step, unemployment had increased, Labour had administered the capitalist state, not governed it. The voice of the trade unions had been ignored, the White Paper In Place of Strife had caused deep resentment. The impetus for change, the seed for the substantial growth of the Left were in place. Electoral defeat in 1970 to the most right-wing Conservative government since before the war only added to the sense of failure in both Labour’s Parliamentary leadership and critically loss of faith in socialist revisionism as expounded by Tony Crosland.” (Source)

The issue of the European Union exacerbated the situation further. Eric Heffer suggested that the Common Market issue for the Left was not only the great divide, but ‘is really only the tip of the iceberg’. 69 MPs defied the whip over the issue, and the boost to the Left was devastating to Roy Jenkins’ chances of succeeding Wilson as Party leader. Douglas Houghton, whilst he was Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1972, wrote in his article ‘Making MPs Accountable’ that the issue had raised the issue of parliamentary accountability to the wider party (Political Quarterly, 43(3) p.375).

“In June 1976, Jim Callaghan announced the retreat from Keynesian welfare social democracy, ‘the government’s economic objective is to reduce inflation... Our second objective is to make inroads into the unacceptable high level of employment’. Was it a defeat for the Left? Tony Crosland thought that events had ‘totally demoralised’ the leaderless Left ‘because Foot and Benn have not resigned’. But, revisionism had failed and it discredited the Right leaving the Party with both a leadership and an ideological gulf that was filled by the Left.” (Source)

For the brief period in which Labour Left came close to control of the party, the issue of candidate selection was the most significant issue on both sides of the divide. For the Right it was a primary reason for a tidal wave of hostility directed at the grassroots activists and trade unionists that had the cheek to boot them out of the shadow cabinet and nearly elect Tony Benn as Deputy Leader, culminating in massive defections to the newly formed SDP. For the treacherous ‘gang of four’, the notion of a party in hoc to the intentions of its members was nothing short of unacceptable. The leadership must have the ideological room to lead the Party to the pro-EU, ‘responsibly’ monetarist position the SDP eventually did adopt.

For the Left, the lack of internal democracy was the source of the disappointing failures of 60s and 70s Labour Governments. The defection of Reg Prentice to the Tories had been an embarrassment.

“When mandatory reselection (MR) for Labour MPs was first introduced in 1981, it was hailed by its supporters as a watershed. MR was designed by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CPLD) to extend the control of Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs), and in particular of the General Committees (GCs) over MPs and the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). The result would be a shift in power away from the latter towards the GC activists. By being able to dismiss their MP, GCs could then exert a powerful influence over his or her behaviour. The PLP would thus become more ‘responsive’ as MPs activity came close and sustained scrutiny.” (Source)

As Chris Mullin wrote in his 1981 article ‘How to Reselect your MP’, mandatory reselection was not designed necessarily to remove large numbers of right wing MPs, but merely the removal of their right wing ideas.

The Social Democratic Party succeeded in wrecking any prospect of a Labour victory in 1983, but failed in its aims of replacing the Labour Party as the focal point of Parliamentary opposition to the Tories. They had not taken any activists with them. Their defections confirmed the suspicions of the Labour rank and file towards the Parliamentary Party. They had jumped the gun: the Labour Right was prepared in any event to fight back against the Left to take the Party towards where the SDP had gone.

D.B. below discusses the limits of Parliamentary and electoral politics in achieving working class socialist aims. Symptomatic of this is the frustrating desire of self-interested political leaders to appeal to narrow middle class interests and concerns. This was why Neil Kinnock upon his election as leader in 1983 set about dismantling internal Labour democracy (by setting up the National Policy Forum), undermining left-wing trade union leaders (such as Arthur Scargill) and witch-hunting successful left-wing Labour activists (such as in Liverpool). All of which took a priority over opposition to Thatcherism. Such explains the difference in attitudes on the part of the Labour Establishment towards Kinnock and the SDP defectors. The latter were traitors, but worse they were wrong in their tactics – they should have stayed and fought. Their actions cost Labour several elections. Kinnock on the other hand - so the mythology goes - embarked on the lengthy but ‘necessary’ task of preparing the ground for New Labour, thus earning his privilege and praise since.

Thatcher’s ‘Right to Buy’ policy of selling off social housing, eagerly endorsed by Kinnock, proved an incredibly cheap way of winning herself votes in the short term. What is more, it created a huge foundation of new Conservative voters and allowed her to bleat about her new ‘property owning democracy’. Suddenly a new majority of the population adopted traditional Conservative concerns – the protection of property and defence of Sterling. Building new houses in any meaningful numbers to be held in council ownership – the policy of Bevan as Housing Minister post-1945 – would be too damaging to house prices and thus electorally unpopular.

Post the miners’ strike, the defeat of trade unionism allowed the Tory Government to set about privatising public services and dismantling the welfare state. The rise in property ownership and deregulation of finance allowing for cheap and easy credit meant that home owners could avoid the decline in living standards that would have otherwise resulted from Thatcherite policies. People could use debt to finance the purchase of shiny consumer goods from abroad, and individualism triumphed.

With Tony Blair’s ascendency to the Labour Leadership in 1994 the Party adopted an openly Thatcherite platform, mixed with more ‘fashionable’ liberal social policies. Media management and personality based electioneering funded by donations from wealthy capitalists seeking to back the right horse provided the basis of electoral success.

The present political situation is radically different from that of the 1990s. People’s inability to find somewhere to live in the more notionally wealthy Western world was what led, at a fundamental level, to the collapse of the international banking industry. The wealthy capitalist backers and right-wing press are now firmly behind the Tories again. What is more, all three major parties now intend to make working people pay for the cost of rescuing the ruling class system. Only a working class-based fight can counter this, and the question for prospective Labour MPs that socialists must ask is: on whose side are you on?

There is now a legal precedent that management of any company may secure an injunction against a strike on economic grounds, and even the basic right to political representation for the organised working class is under threat. The Labour Movement cause is not aided by the position of the Labour leadership.

If a candidate intends to oppose the cuts and the other nasty measures (VAT on food, for example) they become worthy of support, but he or she must recognise that this is a position of dissent. Three broad fundamental intentions must therefore be demonstrated:

-- To fight the proposed savage cuts in public services, and the recognition that this requires dissent from the Party line;

-- Solidarity with, and not opposition to, any trade unionist taking action for rights and living standards;

-- To specifically, explicitly identify class politics as being necessary to counter the effects of recession on the living standards of the population.

Labour MPs and the working class

2010-03-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

In his post below, Joe rightly points out that the late Ashok Kumar was bound by the same limitations faced by all Members of Parliament in a "representative" democracy. How depressing it is, then, that many of the tributes we've seen (particularly Joe's) then proceed to make virtues out of those very limitations and end by eulogising not just the man but also his politics. Maybe that would be fine elsewhere, but what we're interested here is socialist class politics.

Paul Foot was indeed astute to observe that for an MP in a parliamentary democracy to do their job properly, they must effectively represent "everyone and no one at the same time." As every professional politician knows, it's one thing to politely listen to the concerns of your constituents and raise them in the corridors of power, and another to actually fight for change. And as every socialist knows, it's another thing still to actually join the struggle for working class liberation and be serious about it. Often those who most faithfully carry out the former are those most eager to prevent the latter. You could argue that one of the key features of bourgeois democracy in the UK is that it encourages MPs to be diligent, conscientious constituency MPs, safe in the knowledge that they can do it without ever changing anything.

One reason why so few Labour MPs have a genuine interest in independent working class politics is that the institutional framework in which they operate is largely designed to prevent those politics from being realised. Inevitably the MPs themselves are conditioned by the powerful institutions they work for and the inherent caution and moderation those institutions represent. More often than not, Labour MPs in present times are openly hostile to the interests of working class people. (Hence, for example, the reluctance of Teesside's Labour MPs to back the local population's calls for the Corus steelworks to be nationalised; hence perhaps Ashok Kumar's strong support for the current Labour leadership's policies of privatisation, war, militarism etc.)

Lenin famously described the Labour Party as a "bourgeois workers' party", operating in a bourgeois democracy which offers little in the way of genuine democratic representation for working class people. As Ralph Miliband observed of Britain's capitalist democracy:

"Democratic institutions and practices provide means of expression and representation to the working class, organised labour, political parties and groups, and other such forms of pressure and challenge from below; but the context provided by capitalism requires that the effect they may have should as far as possible be weakened ... [The Labour Party], as the party if organised labour, was bound to exercise a powerful attraction to socialist activists ... But they did find that they were members of an organisation whose leaders had, as one of their main purposes, the containment of their socialist activism."

As socialists we should have no illusions in what most Labour MPs represent politically and what they offer working class people other than courtesy and protocol (and some not even that!). One question we should always ask of our local MPs is what side of the divide mentioned by Miliband do they stand on: do they fight to contain our socialist activism, to stamp it out, to pacify it or to extend it? It's one thing to offer political support to Labour lefts who do fight to mould Labour into a socialist force and another completely to offer wholehearted support to a committed provincial politician who, though efficient, contributes little or nothing to the cause of working class socialist politics.

Dr Ashok Kumar MP 1956-2010

2010-03-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

There was a very real sense of loss on Monday with the tragic passing of Dr Ashok Kumar, Member of Parliament for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland since 1997. He was just 53. It was not merely a loss to the local political scene, but to the whole community in which he lived and served. For, in the hearts and minds of at least many of those of us who were his constituents, ‘Ashok’ was our MP. ‘Ashok’ was the name by which he was known, as he was on first name terms with those of us he’d never met, as well as those he’d met on only a couple of occasions. Of course there were plenty of people in the area who did regard him as a friend and a neighbour in addition to being their MP. He served with dignity, diligence and dedication.

It was Paul Foot who most insightfully identified the inherent contradictions (and limitations) faced by any Labour Member of Parliament:

“Parliament represents only one form of representation: by geography. In Parliamentary democracy, the people are represented solely as inhabitants of areas. They are not represented... as miners or engineers or housewives; but as Smethwickians or Huytonians or citizens of West Fife. The Labour Member of Parliament, therefore, does not, in Parliament, represent labour in any form. He represents his constituency: all the people of his constituency – employers, workers, Catholics, Protestants, Rotarians, trade unionists, restauranteurs, and dustmen. The more marginal his seat, the more devoted his attention towards each sectional interest in his constituency. If he does his representative job properly, he must represent everyone and no one at the same time.”

(The Politics of Harold Wilson, Penguin Books 1968)

And yet with even what popular buckles there once were over the exercise of power disappearing, the idea of representative democracy surely becomes all the more important to defend. Fundamentally the reason behind Ashok’s local popularity was because he knew what it was to be a representative, and was good at it. Neither of which is no mean feat considering most MPs fail at that particular task. Born in India and educated in Derby, Dr Kumar was a brilliant chemical engineer, his PhD in Fluid Mechanics. That in itself – the ownership of a field of expertise in which he genuinely knew what he was talking about – was something else that set him apart from the fast-tracked career politicians that have come to dominate the Parliamentary Labour Party in these days of Blairism. He moved his life to Middlesbrough when his career brought him to British Steel in 1985. He would come to consider it his home. The man’s dignity was self-evident in the way he overcame crude racism whilst fighting the Langbargh by-election of 1991 to win the seat: A victory in defiance of some Labour strategists who had thought at the time that the selection of an Asian candidate in a marginal seat was unwise.

A secularist and member of the British Humanist Association, Dr Kumar’s Indian ancestry made him one of few Parliamentary figures to give voice to the more unfashionable (politically speaking) Hindu population. Following the July 7 bombings in 2005 he was the only Member of Parliament to raise concern about the verbal abuse of Hindus in ignorant attacks.

Whatever people’s politics, by and large his constituents wanted him working in Parliament on their behalf. Let it be noted too that Ashok welcomed, if not encouraged, a lively debate on the issues. It is another argument in favour of representative democracy that its aim is a more peaceful, more civilised type of society. ‘More jaw-jaw, less war, war’ as the saying goes. Whilst he was a popular figure on a personal level, his relationship with the constituency was often a frustrated one. This was usually due to his unswerving loyalty to the New Labour party line. He voted in favour of the Iraq war for instance, and tuition fees. Nevertheless he was more than content for people to challenge his position to his face, and always stood his ground where people disagreed with it, always respectful and dignified.

Ashok was no socialist agitator, but it would be entirely wrong to dismiss his legacy as that of a Blairite or Brownite flunkey. In fact he despised the pompous, bullying behaviour of people who found themselves often fortuitously in positions of authority. He was consistent in his neatly ‘soft-left’ convictions, his belief in the goodness of humanity and the virtues of a more egalitarian society from his first election onto Middlesbrough Council in 1987, through his brief stint as MP for the previous constituency of Langbargh in 1991, and all the way up to his young death this week.

He was a strong supporter of the successful public services that have actually been introduced since 1997, in particular SureStart. He signed the Early Day Motion last year condemning the idea to privatise the Royal Mail. Kumar was also prominent in the campaign to reopen Guisborough Swimming Pool. His style was a constant nagger of the New Labour Government, lately over the fate of Corus. Other topics of his prodding and poking ranged from his reminder to the Government of the high proportion of serving armed forces to originate from the North East of England, the issue of fizzy drinks in schools and their effects on the health of students, the difficulties of single mothers in securing incomes and the scandal of elderly people struggling to pay energy bills. To list every individual case and cause he took on personally would make this post several pages long. It is not necessary to do it: his legacy will lie in the memories of those who benefitted.

He was an underdog MP and an underdog’s MP; somebody who encouraged his constituents to have pride in our industrial heritage, and the importance of Teesside to the history of the world. The following are extracts from his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 27 November 1991:

“It has been said that Langbaurgh was discovered by the national media during the by-election, and many representatives of the media were amazed to find—to quote The Times— the constituency was surprisingly beautiful. I suspect that many of the people who flocked into the constituency from outside—the media, the party hacks and the pollsters—were surprised to find, not grim steelworks or a photo-chemical smog, but pleasant villages and estates, and attractive countryside and coastline. That is not to say there are no problems in my constituency—there are. Many of them are common to the whole northern region: unemployment, under-investment, isolation and Government indifference. It was due to the popular recognition that the Labour party intends to tackle those problems boldly and head on that I was returned to the House.

I represent a constituency that is a microcosm of British society. It includes former mining villages, large council estates, market towns, seaside resorts and leafy suburbs. It was that cross section of British society which returned a Labour Member to the House, and which will return a Labour Government at the next general election...

It is little use senior Ministers telling local people that the recession is technically over. They should try telling someone who has lost his house that it was a technical repossession or someone who is still waiting for an urgent operation that he or she feels only a technical pain. Many of my constituents suffer from severe housing problems. Too many people are still inadequately housed, too many young people are still waiting for their first proper home and too many people in the villages of East Cleveland are still living in pre-1919 terraced houses that are long overdue for renewal and modernisation. A crying local need that is given public voice through Langbaurgh borough council's housing needs survey is for low cost accommodation for low wage earners.

The distress that unemployment, poor housing, idleness and ill-health brings should be self-evident to everyone. It is evident to everyone except, it seems, for the Government's Front Bench team. In parts of Langbaurgh—in many of the isolated villages of East Cleveland and on South Middlesbrough council estates—high and continuing unemployment has become a feature of everyday life. For the one in seven of the total working age population who are unemployed in the south Middlesbrough area of Hemlington, or for the 19·8 per cent. of men who are jobless in the steelmaking town of Skinningrove, life is becoming ever more mean and brutish. The social isolation and poverty that comes with such unemployment is biting deep into the very fabric of our local society, and it is not so unexpected, is it, that such alienation has led to problems of split families, mental and physical distress, and the various manifestations of crime, vandalism and other forms of anti-social behaviour? That is not to say that crime can be excused—it cannot. But crime must not be used as an excuse for doing nothing about unemployment.”

Corus: keep on keepin on

2009-12-20T13:37:00.000-08:00

The Evening Gazette reports on an emergency meeting last Thursday on the Corus job crisis:

TODAY we must unite to save the industry Teesside was founded on -- and to ensure our region has a future. That was the battle cry at an impassioned emergency meeting about the potential loss of 1,700 Corus jobs.

Steel workers and other members of the public sat alongside councillors, trade union activists, the Mayor of Middlesbrough and MP Sir Stuart Bell. They agreed our combined strength is our greatest asset in keeping steel-making on Teesside alive. There was also resounding backing for calls for some kind of national support during the gathering at Middlesbrough Town Hall.

"As it stands I haven't seen one sentence from any politician anywhere from any party asking for government intervention." He reiterated earlier criticism of a meeting with Lord Mandelson in which Teesside was "fobbed off" with £60m to develop new "low carbon" industries and added: "I have got one objective just like you - to save 1,700 jobs - and I believe the fight isn't lost."

But Sir Stuart Bell assured Teessiders the £60m is not an alternative to keeping Teesside Cast Products open. He said: "The first priority is keeping the plant open. The second priority is to use the £60m. The third priority is we must have unity in the community."

Bernie Taylor, an active GMB union member who has worked in the steel industry, said at the meeting: "If we can stick together surely we can continue to raise the profile." Retired ICI trade union convener Peter Warner said: "I think it's absolutely and totally scandalous what's happened. We need these MPs in the Teesside area to unite together and go to the government and put the case for Corus forward."

Ian Creighton a steel worker for 45 years who retired last year, said: "We must develop some kind of re-thought-out strategy for manufacturing and redevelop the steel industry because if it's left to market forces, we won't have a steel industry in 10 years."

While some reinforced calls for government handouts, Councillor Maelor Williams suggested a state programme to stimulate demand for cast products, similar to the government's car scrappage scheme.

Deputy Mayor, Councillor Dave Budd, said: "I think one of the things people outside this area don't understand is the emotion that this industry generates in people. We need people outside this area to be involved in this."

In truth it was a largely depressing affair, notable more for its cautious restraint and backslapping than anything else. A Labour councillor and trade union activist quoted above summed up the position of the Middlesbrough political establishment by telling the packed Council chamber that unity was the key, politics should be forgotten and it was "disappointing" that people were criticising the Labour Party and the Labour government. Likewise, the rarely-seen-in-Middlesbrough MP Sir Stuart Bell answered criticisms of local Labour politicians with desperate pleas for unity, otherwise Corus and/or Tata would be "laughing at us all". These were blatant attempts to channel the widespread discontent felt across Teesside into safe and manageable avenues that do not threaten to rock the boat or indeed damage Labour's respectability in the eyes of the bosses and the middle class.

Indeed, while some councillors called for the government to nationalise Corus, most present seemed to fear the "n" word. Some preferred the term "public ownership" but most called for the government to subsidise the industry only until the market picked up. (It was pointed out, however, that short-term subsidies in Wales had led to the reduction of working hours to 3 days a week.)

Aside from the devastating effect of the Corus closures on the workers and their families, the debate was framed mainly in terms of how it would affect the people and economy of Middlesbrough, with some expressing their desire to keep steel on Teesside to give it a competitive edge over other parts of the UK. Much was said about the decline of steel and manufacturing "in this country" and some speakers criticised "foreign" owners and "foreign businesses". There was no talk of class solidarity (let alone international class solidarity) except in terms of national solidarity with other "British workers" to defend the nation's industry.

To his credit, Council Executive Member Mike Carr criticised the cross-party "neoliberal consensus" which had led to the economic crisis affecting Corus, while the President of the local Trades Council Association, Pete Widlinski, spoke from the floor against the emergency motion being put forward, arguing that it was too moderate and should call explicitly for Corus to be nationalised. Mayor Ray Mallon was impressive in places and made it clear in no uncertain terms that he would be watching Stuart Bell to ensure he gave support to the struggle to keep the works open, not "mothball" (or effectively close) them and merely accept the £60 million pledged for regeneration.

The meeting ended with Mallon somewhat theatrically announcing that instead of voting on the motion which the meeting had been called to discuss (which did nothing more than call upon the government to do "everything within its power to ensure" that the Corus works remained open) he would send a letter to Business Secretary Lord Mandleson summarising all the points made during the preceding discussion -- a letter which appeared in the Evening Gazette that evening. In it, Mallon calls upon the Government "to consider subsidising the production of TCP for a period of one year", adding that such an approach "would attract European Commission support." Interestingly, the letter is much stronger than the proposed motion and includes the suggestion that "even more radical options are possible including the Government taking over ownership of the plant until the market recovers. While in different circumstances this approach has been adopted with various banks and recently the East Coast rail line."

This "radical" option stops well short of calling for the full-scale nationalisation of Corus and the industry -- let alone democratic workers' control -- but at least it can be said that Mallon is attacking the arrogance and complacency of MPs who have been dragged kicking and screaming into a campaign to keep Teesside steel alive rather than accept defeat.

Corus Workers' Support Group

2009-09-12T03:36:00.000-07:00

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

Teesside men and women of steel march to save jobs

2009-07-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

Workers in mass protest at Wilton International site

2009-06-24T07:01:00.000-07:00

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.”

Justice For Iranian Workers

2009-06-24T02:42:00.000-07:00

Justice For Iranian Workers

Statement by the Free Trade Union of Iranian Workers (23rd June 2009)

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.

Left Unity on Teesside

2009-06-13T04:30:00.000-07:00

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.