Letters

LU or Tusc?

Around 20 Left Unity supporters came to Vauxhall last Saturday to support Simon Hardy’s general election campaign in the constituency. We managed to leaflet a good part of one working class estate and spoke to many potential voters.

My own experience was that, while there were the usual ‘Not today, thank you’ responses, and many residents didn’t bother answering the door at all, of those that did a small but significant proportion expressed real interest and said they would consider voting for Left Unity on May 7.

Of course, the campaign is not yet in full swing and LU was the only party out on the knocker at this early stage, but the team of canvassers certainly made a good impression - which was added to by comrade Hardy’s appeals for action against austerity, which could be heard booming out through the speakers attached to the election car.

The Vauxhall campaign looks as though it will be one of the few (if not the only one) to be run under the LU name and not as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. For example, I was canvassing alongside a comrade from Southwark branch, which has endorsed the local contests of Nick Wrack in Camberwell and Peckham, and Kingsley Abrams in Bermondsey and Old Southwark. He told me he had previously turned up to help comrade Abrams, who is not a Left Unity member, and unsurprisingly LU did not feature in what was strictly a Tusc campaign. He felt that the branch had no democratic control over either of these Tusc contests and so had decided to help out in Vauxhall instead.

It was gratifying that comrades from several parts of south London came along and I would urge LU members and supporters in this part of the capital to prioritise the Vauxhall campaign in the general election.

Peter Manson
South London

Vote Green?

Below is an exchange between me and the local Green candidate here in Hornsey and Wood Green, Gordon Peters. I sent exactly the same wording to Catherine West, the Labour Party candidate in the same constituency, and received a very evasive answer.

I have also found out that a Class War candidate may be standing in our constituency. While they are a programmatically rudderless, anarchist organisation that I could not uncritically support, a vote for them would at least be heard in the returning officer’s declaration as a positive endorsement of the idea that there is such a thing as class struggle, rather than my vote simply being lumped together with spoilt ballots of varying degrees of political sophistication.

I wrote to Gordon Peters: “I would vote for you at the next general election if you were standing on a platform of independent working class politics: ie, if elected you would not vote for any austerity measures or any other attacks on the working class. Otherwise I shall add a box at the bottom of my ballot paper and write next to it: ‘A candidate standing on a platform of independent working class politics, had one been standing.’ This is what I did in the last local and European elections.

“I have always been very politically engaged and have never not voted at any UK election where I was eligible to vote, and I now take any election seriously as an opportunity to express a political preference and for those on the revolutionary left to assess the level of class struggle by standing candidates on the sort of platform I describe above and seeing how much support they get. At the moment the level is evidently dismally low.

“I look forward to hearing from you on your individual political platform at the election, and hope that I shall be able to vote for you.”

He replied: “My position on fighting the election is that rising inequality and the wastage of the planet’s resources, with the catastrophic consequences for humanity through climate change and more and more exploitation of ordinary working people, is indeed caused by international capitalism. I therefore argue for a living wage, the NHS in public hands, a wealth tax, control of housing speculation and of rents, free education for all, cancelling of Trident, and much stronger regulation of banks and of tax avoidance and evasion, and public or regional/municipal control of transport. Such reforms are barely discussed - and, if they are, only as token statements - by the mainstream parties contending for government. Labour, for instance, will still not get rid of the purchaser-provider split in the NHS, which has allowed in privatisation.

“You may consider such a reformist platform only ameliorative at best for the ills of capital accumulation. But my position is that even such demands are now, if you like, revolutionary, as, in the words of Walter Benjamin, ‘humanity reaching for the emergency brake on the train before it goes into the abyss’. Hence I tend to say to those with a vested interest in the system as it is, deliver decent welfare and rights for people. I may not use the language of class war, but, as Gramsci said, it can be necessary to convince people in their own language or way of using it.

“I have been actively fighting against Haringey council’s savage cuts to welfare - and will continue to do so, elected or not - as locally in this borough we see a nominally ‘socialist’ council attacking its own working class through housing ‘regeneration’ and acceptance of the ‘austerity’ agenda. The struggle is to reverse that.

“I wish you all the best whomever you vote for, and my pitch is that in the Green Party we now have both Labour and Lib Dems worried (without mentioning Tories and Ukip) and we are the only ones campaigning to change the political agenda being craven towards corporate capital and who also have a real chance of election - even with such an unfair electoral system as we currently have.”

Tim Reid
London

Free everywhere

If the Q&A exchange featured in last week’s Weekly Worker is anything to go by, Left Unity is doomed to the same fate as all its predecessors. Far from being a vehicle for radical social change, free from the baggage of leftwing orthodoxy, it appears to be little more than a talking shop for disenchanted lefties to engage in ideological point-scoring with each other. The Socialist Alliance was the last half-decent project of the left, until that too was destroyed by sectarianism. Nothing since has come close to it.

On a more optimistic note, the Scottish independence campaign was one of the few inspiring political events of recent decades. While many on the left see any secessionist movement as inherently xenophobic, the Free North campaign believes that struggles for independence and self-government based on a progressive, leftwing platform can capture the imaginations of working class people and lead to a revival in what has become a dormant political culture.

That’s why we will continue to campaign for an independent socialist republic in the North of England. We also support the efforts of Yorkshire First (a regionalist party - no relation to Britain First), the North East Party, the Hannah Mitchell Foundation and the Campaign for the North.

Mick Taylor
Free North

What solution?

As far as I can see, the implication of the article by Michael Roberts on the falling rate of profit is that the old defence of capitalism no longer works, even in its own terms: the profit motive brings fewer and fewer benefits to society in general (‘The lucky generation’, March 12).

Though the system may not collapse immediately, it’s certainly declining. Forget exploitation: profit-seeking no longer provides even much in the way of jobs. Profiteers turn increasingly from production, so that investment sinks - squirreled away in finance and football (for example). Minimum and no-minimum wages, short-term and zero-hours contracts all bite into a decent living.

Neither is automation, like the virtual economy, an alternative bonanza of paid work. A net company such as Instagram has over 300 million users, but only employs around 14 people. Nor can we all be contract cleaners in Silicon Valley.

Perhaps, as we earn less, commodities will become more substandard. States afraid to tax big business will cut education and privatise more services, with new investment only going to glory projects like overpriced sports stadia and nuclear weapons. Who can blame the profit-seeker for not going for expensive, if competitive, technology or under-educated workers? Playing the market is a better bet. But if the profit motive no longer does the business, it’s goodbye Adam Smith: the ‘hidden hand’ is closed.

Meanwhile, rightwingers imagine impractical solutions like independent island nations or working caliphates. Keynesians pine for the 60s, while bigots long for the nuclear family. But the genie is out and women aren’t going back in the bottle. Perhaps there’s a windfall in supplying one car per family in China and India - if they can afford it - but carbon exhaust already threatens a climate change that will fry or flood us all.

Creeping paralysis of economy and politics is met with dreams of a return to an unworkable past. Most people, atomised amongst deteriorating facilities, may yet reach out to each other in solidarity. What’s the solution?

Mike Belbin
London

Calumny

On February 5, you published my report of a meeting in Nottingham, where Gilad Atzmon, author of The wandering who?, answered his critics, whose main reason for living appears to be to heap calumny on him.

This meeting is now available in full on YouTube, (simply type ‘Gilad Atzmon Nottingham’ into the search bar), so people can judge for themselves. I think that all reasonably objective people without a hidden agenda will understand that Atzmon is attempting to deal with some extremely complex issues concerning Jewish identity and is in no way a racist, as the simple-minded have announced.

From his position as self-appointed expert on the ‘Jewish question’ Tony Greenstein, by contrast, has nothing to offer except to repeat ‘ideas’ and slanders which he has been churning out for years. Indeed, Greenstein appears miffed that his proprietorial ownership of the debate has spilled out of the boundaries which he had previously set for discourse. He appears upset not only that Atzmon has ideas regarding Jewish identity which he does not agree with, but rather that Atzmon has ideas at all which are impinging on his ideological marketplace.

By contrast I have enjoyed Ian Donovan’s contribution to this subject, where it is obvious that he is himself honestly attempting to grasp and develop arguments - unlike much of the so-called left, the guy is ‘thinking’.

For all their much vaunted ‘openness’ the Weekly Worker crew are not enamoured by such independence of mind. Get this Kafkaesque passage from Jack Conrad in Weekly Worker March 5 (great cover, by the way, comrades): “Of course, within Left Unity the Communist Platform is committed to openness, democracy, accountability and radical change. In line with the constitution, all our Communist Platform meetings are reported. That includes dealing with differences and sharp arguments (eg, when we expelled Ian Donovan because of his retrogressive attitude towards Jews).”

Apparently, then, you are only ‘open’ with those people who agree with you! Personally I did not detect any such “retrogressive attitude” in Donovan’s writings, but even if such an attitude existed since when was it a reason for exclusion from not even a revolutionary grouping, but that grouping’s front in an already decaying social democratic outfit?

Ted Hankin
Nottingham

Red mist

Ian Donovan (Letters March 5) in his polemic against Tony Greenstein chooses to ‘do violence’ to the normally understood meaning of ‘picket’. It originally meant a sharpened post for staking in the ground - many of them in a line make a fence. And, of course, this symbolises human solidarity and moral force, not an implied “threat of force or violence”. Yes, in certain circumstances pickets can develop into fighting units, but then they are not really pickets any more.

So Ian Donovan, as he well knows, has no grounds for asserting that comrade Greenstein intended a threat of violence to those attending a Gilad Atzmon meeting organised by the Socialist Workers Party. It is not as if Tony has any record of violence within the workers’ movement, unlike comrade Donovan himself.

I’m afraid a red mist has descended before his eyes. His outrage at the way the Israeli state is treating the Palestinians is leading him to excuse holocaust deniers.

Phil Kent
Haringey

Defend Sofia

A key test case on the scope of statutory protection for trade union representatives against dismissal for their union activities is to be heard in the Employment Appeal Tribunal in London, on Thursday March 19.

Sofia Azam, from Birmingham, was sacked for gross misconduct in November 2013 by the examinations and qualifications regulator, Ofqual, in retaliation for an action which she had carried out in her role as chair of the Public and Commercial Services union branch at Ofqual’s Coventry HQ.

Section 152 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 lays down that a dismissal shall be regarded as automatically unfair if the reason, or principal reason, for it was that the dismissed employee had carried out trade union activity at an appropriate time.

Sofia had sent to union members a spreadsheet containing details of the salary gradings that Ofqual proposed to assign to posts within a restructured staffing organisation, following a job evaluation exercise. The employer had insisted that the information was confidential and so Sofia was in fundamental breach of contract.

Sofia’s claim of unfair dismissal was unsuccessful at the Birmingham employment tribunal. The basis of her appeal is that the tribunal judge failed to apply the important precedent of Mihaj v Sodhexo (2014). The judgment in the latter case was that a union activity should only be deemed as falling outside of the scope of statutory protection if the union representative had acted dishonestly, or in bad faith, or in pursuit of some external cause.

Sofia asserts that her case has important implications for all workplace union representatives: “My employer tried to block a legitimate union action. It improperly and unilaterally attached a ‘confidential’ stamp to industrial relations data which concerned the interests of my union members and which they had a right to have shared with them by their elected union representatives. The union duty which I was dismissed for performing is a commonplace one for union reps throughout the civil service. It is the job of elected union reps to fully inform their members of proposals by the employer that affect those members’ interests. This is fundamental to a union being democratic, run by the members for the members. There is statute law that protects union reps in their carrying out of such duties. Ofqual flouted the law when it dismissed me.”

Sofia is, however, fighting the appeal without the support of the PCS union. On February 23 she received a letter from the union’s general secretary, Mark Serwotka, stating: “We have decided not to support your case, as an adverse judgement may narrow the protection provided for trade union representatives, by providing a further concrete example to employers as to why dismissal of trade union representatives in specific circumstances will be lawful. That would potentially further the narrow the scope for trade unions, which the current law gives to us. The funding of the case is not the issue.”

Sofia said that the argument that the union’s supporting her appeal may jeopardise future cases is morally repugnant: “It is true that whenever an appeal is brought on a point of interpretation of statute law, the court or tribunal will be setting a precedent binding on lower courts and tribunals. That precedent could be beneficial or harmful, depending on which way it goes. However, it is surely unconscionable to deny a union member the funding to pursue her right to justice because the end result might possibly be undesirable for others.” She added: “This is even more so the case when we consider that I was an elected branch officer of the union who was dismissed for carrying out my duties towards the union’s members.”

Sofia concluded: “The pessimistic view of the union’s senior officials is strange, when the optimistic view would be that a victory for me at the EAT will enormously strengthen the statutory protection for trade union activities by establishing as precedent that an employer cannot place a union activity outside the scope of protection by unilaterally placing a ‘confidential’ tag on industrial relations information that concerns the rights of the union members and which they have the right to see and to be consulted about.”

Defend Victimised Reps
defend_victimised_reps@outlook.com