04.03.2004

'E' for equality

Party notes

Last week The Guardian exposed the bloated “fat cat” lifestyle of Neil Greatrix and Michael Stevens - leaders of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers (March 1). This officially registered trade union was born as a strike-breaking outfit in 1984 and was always more or less confined to the Nottingham area. Since the defeat of the miners in 1985 and the subsequent decimation of the coal industry it has not only been the National Union of Mineworkers that has virtually disappeared. The UDM now consists of just 1,431 members.

Despite its diminutive size Greatrix and Stevens have shown no compunction whatsoever in overseeing various dubious deals which have sent their incomes soaring. Greatrix (UDM president) now commands a basic salary of £100,250, while Stevens (vice-president) takes £91,313. On top of this the pair are on the receiving end of payments into a pension fund equivalent to a third of their salaries, plus subsidies for their mortgages, fuel, telephones, council tax and water bills for their homes and cars. According to the last available figures, in 2002, that gave Greatrix an extra £17,869 and Stevens £19,702. In total their annual cost to the UDM is estimated to be over £150,000 each.

Greatrix and Stevens are obviously rightwing trade union bureaucrats of a particularly revolting stripe. But they are far from alone. The new generation of leftwing officials, the so-called awkward squad, inherit salaries and perks which give them an elevated social position - one far removed from that of their rank and file members. Take Derek Simpson, leader of Amicus: he has a basic salary worth £90,000, to which another £40,000 is added in the form of benefits, such as pension contributions, etc.

Local and regional government, Westminster and Brussels are essentially the same. They are stuffed full of career politicians whose main concern is self-advancement and lining their own pocket. Members of the European parliament, for example, are set to get salaries of £72,000, which they can augment by all manner of means, fair and foul. Under these conditions workers’ representatives are vulnerable to conservative and backsliding pressures. Even the most determined militant can thereby be turned into their opposite. Not surprisingly Socialist Worker reports that young people often automatically presume that “deceit, spinning and personal ambition” are endemic amongst politicians (February 28).

And it is not only youth. Opinion polls routinely show that wide swathes of the population regard the entire political establishment with utter contempt. That contempt is well deserved. And who can blame the 30% or 40% who subsequently abstain in national elections. Clearly Britain’s parliamentary system is rotten and in historic decline. Real power and real decision-making exists elsewhere. Debates are farcical, the House of Lords is nothing but an unelected delaying mechanism, MPs are bleeped voting fodder and the whole institution is increasingly seen as remote, unaccountable, corrupt and self-serving.

The ‘e’ in Respect supposedly stands for ‘equality’ and could, if it were taken seriously and made concrete, have a profound impact on a working class that has grown sick and tired of Labourite politicians and their naked careerism. The Blairites are hated with a particular venom. It was surely an own goal then, when at the January 25 launch of Respect, the Socialist Workers Party used its majority to defeat a motion which would have committed all our elected representatives to take a personal salary equal to the average skilled worker.

For our part, to ensure that the ‘e’ in Respect is not dismissed as ‘enrichment’ we shall be asking each and every candidate to make a personal pledge: ‘If elected I will take an average skilled worker’s wage and promise to donate the balance to the movement.’

Obviously the SWP has landed itself in a hopeless mess over the question. Paul Holborrow, for instance, urged the Respect convention to vote down our motion because “Respect is not a socialist organisation” (Weekly Worker January 29). Quite frankly this is risible: limiting the pay of representatives is a principle which our tradition applies to all spheres of representation.

The 1871 Paris Commune - originally the equivalent of the Greater London Authority - guarded against the “inevitable” danger of the “transformation of the state and the organs of the state from servants of society into masters of society”. It filled all posts - administrative, judicial and educational - “by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the same electors”. Furthermore all officials were paid “only the wages received by other workers”. In this way, said Fredrick Engels, “an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up” (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 27, London 1990, p190). The Bolsheviks continued in these egalitarian footsteps. In Lenin’s celebrated ‘April thesis’ we read: “The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elected and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker” (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p23).

Only three years ago the SWP had no problem voting for equality in the Socialist Alliance. Indeed there was unanimity amongst us. Every one of our 98 candidates in the 2001 general election - not least our chair, Dave Nellist - proclaimed that if elected they would be a workers’ MP on a worker’s wage. Tommy Sheridan and the Scottish Socialist Party made the same stand ... and won considerable esteem in the working class as a result. Today their six MSPs are on something like £23,000. Roughly half the official Holyrood salary.

The SA unproblematically extended the principle of equality to the entire labour movement. People before profit - the SA’s election manifesto - demands that trade union officials must be regularly elected, accountable and “receive the average wage of the workers they represent” (p7). Ditto a recent pamphlet penned by Martin Smith, the SWP’s industrial organiser. After slating the “astronomical” salaries enjoyed by the trade union bureaucracy, he promises that “a rank and file trade union official” would be expected to take home the “average wage of the workers he or she represents” (M Smith The awkward squad London 2003, p26).

Holding true to a principle in the abstract is easy. Only when there is a price to pay - eg, a government ban, temporary unpopularity, loss of big names - do we discover what is authentic, serious and worthwhile and what is merely a cheap pose. Presumably the SWP calculated that sticking to a workers’ representative on a worker’s wage risked the departure of George Galloway. He has publicly stated that he needs a minimum of £150,000, if he is “to function properly as a leading figure in a part of the British political system”.

Top SWPers - crucially John Rees and Lindsey German - vociferously defend Galloway. He has done sterling work, has never claimed expenses, etc, etc. But our aim was never to single him out, or anybody else. We do say, however, that he and all Respect representatives should make available their accounts for inspection by the movement. They can then claim legitimate expenses and with good conscience.

Our intention in Respect is not to pauperise but to enlighten. In other words critical engagement with a view to winning a majority to the realisation that what is needed in Britain is not a populist election front nor some amorphous left party. Objectively the situation cries out for a Communist Party - a revolutionary combat party of the working class which is solidly based on an agreed Marxist programme.

Towards that end dismissing or boycotting Respect would be foolish indeed. There is a huge space on the left in British politics waiting to be filled. Respect is led by Britain’s largest revolutionary grouping, the SWP, and represents the continuation of the 2003 anti-war movement. Now in 2004 the advanced part of that mass movement is trying to organise itself into a political party. Undoubtedly Respect is attracting encouragingly large numbers to its meetings and rallies. There is also a not insignificant involvement by leading trade unionists.

Respect marks a step back from the SA politically. Its platform is minimalist in the extreme and prone to substitute empty platitudes for concrete demands in the attempt to be all things to all people (eg, the Muslim Association of Britain). Moreover, the SWP is moving sharply to the right. “Shibboleths” like equality are being sacrificed in the name of “making a difference”: ie, getting elected. This, of course, being the standard refrain of generations of Labourites - and we all know the sorry results.

People before profit was no revolutionary programme. It did, however, unite the groups and practically marked a shift to the left: from auto-Labourism to actually presenting the working class with an alternative. Criminally though, the SA was to all intents and purposes liquidated. The SWP was threatened by, feared and recoiled from the perspective of building a genuine party (necessarily with democracy, centralism, open criticism and the right to form permanent factions). Instead it irresponsibly treated the SA as an on-off “united front”, albeit of a “special kind”. And after the 2001 general election that meant off. The 2003 upsurge against the Iraq war confirmed the liquidation of the SA … but posed the party question anew.

Following June 10 and super Thursday the danger is that SWP will do exactly the same thing again.