Ipswich People’s Assembly.

Last night Enrico Tortolano,  spoke on neo-liberal economics  and politics  to a public meeting at he UNITE offices held by the Ipswich People’s Assembly Against Austerity.

Up to 30 people turned up her brother  Tortolano,  who has worked on human rights with social movements in Latin America, and now is a research officer for the PCS union as well as writing for Tribune.

Enrico gave a talk of great clarity on how the wealthy have established free-market economics as the foundation of state policy in many countries. Everybody is told to be ‘self-reliant’ as taxes are lowered for the well-off and all forms of redistribution are undermined. We have, Tortolano said, crept back to pre-First World War levels of inequality.

In Britain  attacks on welfare and privatising the state were being pushed through as part of what Naomi Klein called the “shock doctrine”. That is,  taking advantage of a crisis to push through extreme free-market ideas.

He noted that the first to apply this method had been Augusto Pinochet , the Chilean dictator.

The recently deceased Margaret Thatcher had admired the leader of the Chilean coup, which had left thousands of left opponents dead and many more imprisoned and tortured.

From annual get-togethers in Davos (Switzerland), to thousands of ‘think-tanks’ and sympathetic media, their message has been relayed by all the main political parties in the West.

British politics seem to be restricted to the limits set by the ‘orthodox’ free-market economics.

The People’s Assembly, Tortalano said, offered a real opportunity for the left to unite and to put forward a different economic and political strategy. Ultimately the threat to the planet’s resources from the market would affect everybody.

The audience, which included trade unionists, local Labour councillors, library campaigners, and activists from the Green and socialist parties, joined in a fruitful discussion on this talk.

It was suggested that the People’s Assembly should take up the issue of low pay (very important in Ipswich), of the Bedroom Tax, and the fight against the wave of further cuts in public spending that will affect council (above all  County Council) services in the coming months.

The Secretary of the Trades Council, Teresa Mackay pointed out that 80% of the cuts were still to come.

It was argued that the People’s Assembly needs a constructive and a positive message. It was not enough to just fight neoliberal economics and the hatred of the poor and migrant workers stirred up by the Liberal-Tory Coalition.

The left has to offer a democratic  and egalitarian  way of creating institutions  for equality  and collective need.

A co-ordinator will organise E-Mail contacts for the Ipswich People’s Assembly.

Transport will be available from Ipswich to take people to the London Assembly.

In the coming weeks we will be organising a campaign locally to draw attention to the links between Primark and other retail outlets and the terrible deaths of garment  workers in Bangladesh.

As an activist said, “The numbers of the dead just keep rising.”

Suffolk Elections, Labour Gains but County (and Country) now has its own Front National, UKIP.

Tory Judy Terry is Out: The Heavens Cry their Joy!

Suffolk Election Results leave the Tories in Charge.

Conservative 39

Green 1

Independent 2

Labour 12

Labour and Co-operative 3

Liberal Democrat 7

UK Independence Party 9

This is a good result for Labour and their candidates who have worked really hard, year in and year out, on the County Council (where they were only 4 till today) and have fought against austerity and privatisation tooth-and-nail.

It is a good result for the labour movement more widely as Suffolk Labour Parties have worked closely with the union and left campaigners against the Tory-led Council cutters and floggers-off.

One result brought great joy to the progressive Suffolk masses: the defeat of Judy Terry in Rushmere (figures and intro from Ipswich Spy).

“The Conservatives have LOST the Rushmere Division, previously held by Cabinet Member Judy Terry, to Labour’s Sandra Gage.

Ellis, Peter (UKIP) 401
Gage, Sandra (Labour) 1117
Jackson, Dale (Ind) 34
Jones, Garath (Lib Dem) 90
Terry, Judy (Con) 628
Wilmot, Kirsty (Green) 94″

As a County Council Cabinet member she has pushed through the privatisation agenda, notably creating a so-called Industrial and Provident Society (private ‘charity’) for the Library service. This  has caused great damage.

Overall Labour made gains in urban districts, notably Ipswich, which has more in common with parts of London (including the ‘inner city’)  than rural Suffolk.

In my own ward there was a very a good result (I campaigned for Mandy – Labour),

Labour have GAINED the St Helen’s Division from the Liberal Democrats, who were pushed into last place, with UKIP second, two votes ahead of the Tories, and the Green’s in fourth.

Gaylard, Mandy (Labour) 900
Lockington, Tim (Lib Dem) 155
Parkinson, Katherine (Con) 359
Tinney, Mark (UKIP) 361
Wilmot, Tom (Green) 201

There was also a by-election,

“Alexandra Ward By-Election – Ipswich BC – Labour Gain

Posted on May 3, 2013 by IS/BR

Labour have taken the Borough Council by election in Alexandra, a gain from the Liberal Democrats. Turnout was 27.6%.

Cook, John (Labour) 772
Cotterell, Stephen (UKIP) 279
Phillips, Edward (Con) 274
Toye, Kenneth (Lib Dem) 126
Wilmot, Thomas (Green) 193
Rejected 7

“So the Liberal Democrats have gone from first to last in what was a bastion of Liberal Democrat power in the town – just three years ago they held all three Borough Council seats, plus the County Council seat. It means the Liberal Democrats are reduced to just three councillors on Ipswich Borough Council.” So says the Spy.

In fact it was not so much as a Liberal Bastion but a freak base, created by boundary changes, and a protest vote against the Labour government, which was always going to go back to Labour when real politics kicked in.

The worst result is in Whitehouse and Whitton where UKIP slipped in.

9 UKIP councillors on the County Council is a disaster.

They did well elsewhere though not enough to win.

Note that in the area I live  (St Helen’s/Alexandra, which cover the town centre and is largely working class or employee,  and highly ‘mixed’, including a substantial migrant worker population) UKIP came above the Liberals and even the Tories with hardly any local activists whatsoever.

Or indeed none...

Their vote comes from a ‘virtual’ campaign of leafleting, and the full-time agitation of the far-right daily press, the Mail, the Express and the Sun.

They beat poor old Kevin in his vain attempt to win Chantry for the Tory (Holy Roller) Party.

UKIP put the Tories into 4th and 5th (no guessing which Tory came 5th) and the Liberals, way out on the margins at Monster Raving levels of support. (Algar, Kevin (Con) 1043 Armitage, Helen (Labour) 2169 Broom, Barry (Green) 404 Cenci, Nadia (Con) 1096 Fletcher, Julie (Lib Dem) 243 Gardiner, Peter (Labour) 2051 McHardy, Stuart (Lib Dem) 146
Newton, Robert (UKIP) 1301)

Across the County UKIP  have pushed the Liberals out to the fringes (7 seats) and are not far behind Labour.

Campaigning on an openly racist basis, against the threat of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants, they join a sorry list of European far-right populist parties.

The left has long shouted about the menace of the tiny and irrelevant  English Defence League.

Dealing with UKIP is going to be a lot harder than shouting ‘nasty Nazis’ at them.

But this is a start,

 

Galloway and Miliband: Worse than a Crime, a Mistake.

Galloway and Friend.

Galloway in Secret meeting with Miliband, the Mail reported on Sunday.

Phil in a quick response on A Very Public Sociologist unwisely commented,

It’s good politics to explore areas where some form of cooperation can be reached across party lines, even when a MP is from an organisation many times smaller than your own. And, needless to say, it is an utterly mundane and common occurrence. The only surprising thing about Ed and George’s meeting is that it hadn’t happened before now.

This led to the usual crew of pro-Galloway cretins (as one could politely call them), praising the Great Man whose immense political weight has been recognised at last.

Now in the  Guardian Mark Ferguson of Labour List comments,

There’s been a certain amount of (entirely justifiable) anger and confusion from many Labour supporters today at reports in the Mail on Sunday that Ed Miliband met George Galloway in his Westminster office recently. The spin from the Mail – to the surprise of no one at all – was that “Red” Ed Miliband was attempting some form of reconciliation with George Galloway, in an attempt to have him rejoin the Labour party.

Thankfully, this is not the case.

A senior source in Miliband’s office told me this afternoon that this was “certainly not about reconciling with Galloway”, while another told me that “there is no possibility, prospect or chance of George Galloway rejoining the Labour party”. Allowing him to rejoin the party would happen over my dead body – and I suspect a substantial proportion of the party membership feel the same way.

In fact, the meeting was about a rather more prosaic – but crucial – matter: the boundary changes vote that at the time looked like it might come down to just one or two votes. All parties in parliament (except the Tories) were approached, and it paid dividends as the boundary changes fell. A Labour party spokesperson confirmed that this afternoon, saying:

“There is no attempt to bring George Galloway back into the Labour party as many of his views are unacceptable and extreme. Ed met him purely as a courtesy to discuss the recent vote on changing parliamentary boundaries. No communication has taken place since.”

Now  this is may well be a matter of winning a “crucial Commons vote” .

But why on earth did Miliband have to talk face to face with Galloway?

One can imagine that Galloway is chuffed.

We will no doubt learn more, from other sources if not directly from  North Korea’s greatest friend’s own foam speckled mouth.

On this meeting one could say, “”C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute!”

Before Thatcher: the Movement for Workers’ Control.

The 1970s and the Movement for Workers’ Control.

“Trade unions have historically bargained for better terms for the sale of labour power; they have not been able to challenge the existence of the labour market itself. Today, however, the relation between ‘political’ and ‘economic’ struggle have changed.”

Perry Anderson. The Limits and Possibilities of in: The Incompatibles. Trade Union Militancy and the Consensus. 1967.

Perry Anderson was writing about incomes policies. Attempts to impose, or reach by union consent, agreements about pay levels would be made by successive governments, Conservative or Labour, right until Margaret Thatcher’s victory in 1979. That is, pay disputes became political because the Cabinet and the State were involved.

These, as is well-known, featured prominently during the decade. The unions’ efforts to defend and increase their members salaries, from the late ‘sixties ‘wage drift’ to the need to adjust to inflation, led to countless disputes. Some on the left thought that the resulting “profit squeeze” of the period was a sign of growing working class strength. Other held them responsible for the country’s (relative) decline.

There is a library of literature on this subject. But Anderson could equally have referred to the way in which the authority of British capitalism was challenged from the inside. That is through demands and efforts to make real workers’ power within companies. This movement had an influential and coherent voice. The Institute for Workers’ Control was formed in 1968, with the support of Hugh Scanlon of the Engineering union (AEU) and Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (T & G). It was influential (though never dominant) within the Labour Party and the wider left. The Institute’s conferences debated a broad range of proposals to introduce industrial democracy Above all, management’s right to manage was disputed.

In the wake of Thatcher’s death her supporters have shouted loudly about the role of the unions in the 1970s. They state that organised labour had undue influence over the Wilson and Callaghan Cabinets (1974 – 1979), that they pressured them to shore up unprofitable industries, that they stifled enterprise. It was common to talk about “corporatism”, the way in which efforts were made to draw unions, employers and the state together formally through bodies such as the National Enterprise Board (NEB).

The media has given ample publicity to those who claim that Thatcher freed them from union backed State regulation. That an open market enabled them to succeed. That they took responsibility for their own fate and succeeded. Everybody should be like me – look at my wad ! – is the boast.

Perhaps instead of pointing to the delusions of those who think so highly of their own talents, or to the victims of the same market process, we should consider the forward-looking ideas of the 1970s left. Indeed, with their grass-roots democratic hopes, it might be better to look at this not so distant past, before going further back to the 1945 Labour Government.

An Offensive Movement.

The Institute for Workers’ Control was not a defensive but an offensive movement. It asked the simple question: if democracy is such a good thing for politics, why is it not the rule at work? If individual responsibility is to forced down people’s throats (as is now happening again under ‘welfare reform’), what is wrong with people taking responsibility for the companies that employ them? Marx described the way in which in the market we are ‘free’, the “very Eden of the innate rights of man”? But at the same time, within production, factory, office or shop, there is a sign “No admittance except on business.” (Page 280. Capital Vol. 1. Penguin Edition). In this respect have we not gone beyond the 19^th century?

Workers’ Control. Another World is Possible. Ken Coates. (2003) offers valuable material from the Institute for Workers’ Control (which dissolved in the 1980s). Ken Coates article, Democracy and Workers’ Control (published in Towards Socialism. Eds. Perry Anderson, Robin Blackburn. 1965) describes the “antithetical natures of private property and democracy”. He criticised ‘paternalistic Fabianism”, that is the nationalised industries run by civil servants.

Manchester: Respect Beats Monster Raving Looney Party!

Showed Raving Loonies What’s What.

All left-wing  eyes are on Manchester where Respect’s Catherine Higgins (182 votes, 1,1%) unexpectedly beat the Monster Raving Looney Party’s Howling Laud Hope (78 votes, 0,5%).

It’s onwards and upwards for Britain’s fastest disintegrating  political party.

	Labour Co-op	Lucy Powell	11,507	69.1	+16.4
	Liberal Democrat	Marc Ramsbottom	1,571	9.4	-17.2
	Conservative	Matthew Sephton	754	4.5	-7.3
	UKIP	Chris Cassidy	749	4.5	+3.0
	Green	Tom Dylan	652	3.9	+1.6
	BNP	Eddy O’Sullivan	492	3.0	-1.1
	Pirate	Loz Kaye	308	1.9	N/A
	Trade Unionist & Socialist	Alex Davidson	220	1.3	N/A
	Respect	Catherine Higgins	182	1.1	N/A
	Monster Raving Loony	Howling Laud Hope	78	0.5	N/A
	People’s Democratic Party	Lee Holmes	71	0.4	N/A
	Communist League	Peter Clifford	64	0.4	N/A
Majority			9,936	59.7
Turnout			16,648	18.2
	Labour Co-op hold		Swing

 

Catherine Higgens, who supports the 9/11 ‘truth’ campaign, could not be contacted at the time of writing.

Update. National Respect issued the following statement,

This brilliant result shows that if you want change in Britain vote for Respect. Catherine Higgens has shown that nowhere is safe for the Monster Raving Loony Party. Yvonne Ridely and George Galloway are at present recording a rap, “do the Taliban mash”. Watch out Rotherham, we’re coming!