Letters

Abandoned

Two former elected branch officials of the Public and Commercial Services union who were sacked by their employers, Sofia Azam and myself, protested outside the union’s HQ at Falcon Road, Clapham Junction, on December 2, when the union’s national executive committee was meeting.

We are arguing that PCS, which has a ‘leftwing’ reputation, has abandoned us despite our dismissals by our respective employers - the American IT contractor, Hewlett Packard, and the examinations and qualifications regulator, Ofqual - for carrying out activities directly connected with our role as union branch leaders.

I was sacked after I sent to union members details of information on proposed redundancies that my employer was statutorily obliged to supply to the union for the purposes of consultation. The employer had asserted that the information was confidential.

However, instead of gaining the support of union officials, I was effectively hung out to dry. I later discovered that I had been removed from the union after PCS officials decided not to help me with an employment tribunal claim for automatically unfair dismissal (I won that case). Now I’m seeking justice from PCS and asking that they pay my legal costs. The union’s national disputes committee has rejected the calls despite the tribunal win.

Sofia Azam, from Birmingham, was sacked in very similar circumstances - after sending details of the grading of posts following a staffing restructure. In this instance, she initially received help in a tribunal claim, but this was not successful at the first-tier tribunal. Sofia says that this was because, in contrast to the approach of my solicitor, the legal strategy adopted by the union’s lawyers was wrong. That she has reasonable grounds for appeal has been accepted by a judge at the employment appeal tribunal and yet the same PCS union committee has prevented the appeal being backed by the union.

In other words, two sacked PCS representatives have been put into the appalling situation of needing to protest their own union after they were victimised by the employer and sacked for their trade union activities. What do you do when the very union you defend and support as a representative lets you down? If a union cannot protect its representatives what chance do ordinary members have?

Our cases have important implications for all union representatives at grassroots level: in both cases, the employers tried to block legitimate union involvement by improperly attaching a ‘confidential’ stamp to industrial relations data, which the union members affected had a right and an interest in having presented to them by their elected union representatives.

We are calling for the support of the whole trade union movement, but especially the members, activists and staff of PCS.

John Pearson
Stockport

Contradictory

On Saturday November 15 I attended a debate between the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty in Wakefield. The SPGB publicly advertised this meeting, but seemingly the AWL did not.

The AWL claimed their activity in trade unions and the Labour Party was about targeting a particular audience who might be sympathetic to their politics. However, no otherwise-unaligned Labour members or trade unionists seemed to have been invited by the AWL to the debate. Nor did any of the 20 or so who were enjoying pints in the bar next door in the Labour club venue seem interested - except in the case of one person, who informed us our meeting had to make way for a concert.

A recent issue of the AWL paper (Solidarity November 12) contained headlines such as ‘Scottish Labour: vote Findlay!’, whilst also claiming elsewhere: ‘We want socialist revolution’. Clearly these two contradictory political messages wouldn’t be put to the same meeting, as far as the AWL are concerned. The AWL approach is one sort of politics for members and another sort for non-members.

Jon D White
SPGB

Safe enough

I’m sure Ian Hartman means well in his desire to protect all members and “our areas” in Left Unity, but so far I have not come across racists and sexists in LU, or, for that matter, those who wish to bully people (Letters, November 27). Nor is there any sign that such people are trying to join. However, “our areas” includes the wider world - a place we cannot “leave and never return”, even if we wanted to. In practice we all come across people outside Left Unity who display these traits, often without being really conscious of it, and if we are prepared to talk with them they can be won to our point of view.

Left Unity is not a club where the timid, shy and retiring can hide from a cruel world. We have to confront the world and change it for the better. Active politics is a bruising and confrontational arena. Not everybody is suited to it. Honest political disagreement comes with deeply held emotional convictions. Conversations do get heated, and on occasion things are said that would have been better left unsaid. Comrades are not always friends. A thick skin is a blessing that helps prevent you from taking umbrage and walking off in a huff. Also it enables you to remember all the other good points your opponent has.

Not all of us have the courage and determination of a Kollontai to stand up and be counted, but surely she is a more inspiring example of how a politician should behave than the patronising arguments that tells us that Left Unity can only survive if no-one is allowed to say boo to a goose.

Phil Kent
Haringey

Agency appeal

As a long-time subscriber to Socialist Appeal, I was very interested to read Daniel Harvey’s article (‘Doing a Scottish jig’, November 27) about its change of tack in Scotland. If Daniel is correct, Socialist Appeal has told all its supporters in Scotland to join the Scottish Socialist Party. This is very interesting, given that Socialist Appeal and its forerunners have been buried in the Labour Party for 50 years.

However, this change of tack in Scotland seems to have been reflected in England and Wales also. No longer does the Socialist Appeal newspaper have the subheading, ‘The Marxist Paper for Labour and Youth’. It has been replaced by ‘Paper of the International Marxist Tendency’. Potential recruits are no longer asked to join Socialist Appeal, but are now being asked to join the International Marxist Tendency.

Such a change is to be welcomed. A more independent stance is probably a result of its experiences within the student movement. Its Marxist Student Federation, bringing together Marxist societies in 25 universities across the UK, has been a great success. I would guess that few of the 2,000-plus members of the Marxist societies feel able or are willing to carry out work within the Labour Party - not only in Scotland, but in England and Wales as well.

Finally, Socialist Appeal will be going fortnightly in the spring of 2015 in readiness for the May general election and beyond. A fortnightly Socialist Appeal, together with its more independent stance, will be welcomed by all Marxists as a useful addition to working class newspapers in the UK.

On another issue, in Fenland, employment agencies have grown like weeds in a garden. Most factories in Fenland now have a majority of their workforce supplied via these employment agencies.

They are used by big business to lower factory workers’ wages - usually to no more than the minimum wage of £6.50 an hour. Some workers supplied via these agencies are only guaranteed one day’s work a week. Others are on zero-hours contracts.

Agency workers are difficult to organise into trade unions. However, unions such as Unite, the GMB, and the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union are recruiting them. Workers should be directly employed by the factories that they work in. Trade unions should be given control over hiring and firing.

It is time to put all employment agencies out of business.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire

Another con

On the surface, the December 3 autumn atatement, delivered by chancellor Goerge Osborne, may appear to some to be fairly neutral. Changes to stamp duty will make the headlines. Closer inspection, however, shows it simply continues the policy of making the poor and ordinary working people pay for an economic crisis they did not cause.

The government has not dealt with the country’s debts. Instead, we’ve seen four years of austerity measures that made most people poorer, while prices for everyday essentials have risen. George Osborne now forecasts government borrowing to be £91.3 billion this year, whereas in March the forecast was for £87 billion. Despite all the suffering, public debt has actually risen.

Particularly severe is the cut in benefits. Osborne announced that welfare spending would be £1 billion lower than forecast in March. There will be a two-year freeze in working-age benefits - tax credits - and the same freeze on universal credit. This will hit over three million families, many of whom are already struggling to live on their wages or benefits. Some have had to borrow more and get second jobs to make ends meet - people working round the clock to ensure they can keep their homes, pay their bills and feed their families will now be further affected. In contrast, last year the same government slashed the income tax for those earning over £150,000 per year. One rule for the rich, another for the poor.

Much was made before the statement about the additional £2 billion the government is putting into the NHS, a figure confirmed by Osborne. In fact, the extra £2 billion includes £750 million being reallocated within the NHS, and the rest comes from underspending in other government departments. Despite Tory claims to the contrary, there have been severe cuts to the NHS, meaning targets for accident and emergency, hospital operations and cancer patient waiting times have been missed. A&E departments have been closed to save money, as we know all too well in Rugby.

The same is true for flood defences - another con. The £2.3 billion is not new money. The flood protection budget had previously been cut by £100 million pa, and the government is actually spending less on flood defence in the 2011-15 spending review than the previous one. Further misleading statements.

In his speech, George Osborne announced that the government would be spending £10 billion less this year than forecast. That means jobs will go and cash-strapped local councils will see their budgets cut further. With Labour refusing to fight the cuts, and with its own plans to continue with austerity, this will mean fewer buses, further cuts to street lighting, closures of youth and day-care centres and cuts to the fire service, whoever wins the general election. And there is worse to come, with the chancellor announcing he was continuing with a freeze on public-sector pay until 2017 - meaning public-sector workers will have seen their pay held back below inflation for seven years. He also said there would be “substantial savings in public spending” if the Conservatives continue in government.

We have been saying for many years that public spending cuts are not necessary: they are a political decision. How much longer are the majority going to be forced to pay for the mistakes of the few?

Pete McLaren
Rugby Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition

Celtic disgust

I write to express my disgust at the vilification of Israel and Jews in the pages of your paper.

I am chairman of Plant Buddug (Children of Boudica), the leading Prydeinydd (Celtic-Britainist) organisation. The Cymry (Welsh-Cornish-Cumbric) are an oppressed minority in their own homeland and we demand our own safe nation-state comprising the whole of Ynys Prydain (the Island of Britain), just as the Jews do in Israel. Despite what excidium-denier (Anglo-Saxon invasion denier) Jack Conrad says, the Cymry were the only inhabitants of Ynys Prydain before and during the Roman occupation and were driven subsequently to its fringes by English imperialism.

We demand:

(1) the return of all Cymry to Ynys Prydain, in particular Cymry Cymraeg (Welsh-speaking Welsh) from Y Wladfa (Patagonia) to refound our historic homeland;

(2) the expulsion of all English from Ynys Prydain - after all, they mostly seem to regard their country as an extension of the English-speaking USA, and it is not as though there are not plenty of bits of the former English empire worldwide that they could be resettled to;

(3) the refoundation of Buddug’s historic capital at Thetford;

(4) free and compulsory schooling or adult education in Cymraeg (Welsh), Kernowek (Cornish) or Cumbric (we have a crack scholarly wing working on the revival of this language) for the returning population when necessary, in preparation for a monoglot Brythonaidd (British-Celtic-speaking) Ynys Prydain;

(5) the recognition of Ynys Prydain by the United Nations as the nation-state of the Cymry.

Teimoth ap Gruffudd ap Rhys
Brennin Gwynedd a Phowys (King of Gwynedd and Powys)

Capital idea

Excellent article by Tom Munday on Russell Brand’s book, Revolution (‘Reinvigorated spirit,’ November 27).

More than just a review, it helps readers understand why Marx’s theory is a tangible alternative to capitalism. Thorough, well researched, engaging and very well written. More, please. Perhaps a review of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital (by the same author)?

Pavan Bhullar-McDonald
email