unity!communist-party.org.uk

by Ben Chacko

OSBORNE’S Budgettold us nothing newabout the Chancellor

or the government. Despite theabandonment of the cuts indisability benefits it representsan acceleration of theConservative programme totransfer wealth from workingpeople to the rich and toabolish or marketise the publicsector.

These attacks on some ofBritain’s most vulnerable areevidently not because themoney is running out, since theBudget was packed withgiveaways for big business.

Corporation tax is to be cutto 17 per cent by 2020 eventhough the UK’s 20% rate is

already the lowest in the entireG20. Osborne’s supposedwillingness to introducemeasures to clamp down on taxavoidance by transnational firmswill hardly make up for thislargesse if his record on Googleis anything to go by.

Capital gains tax is also to becut — the headline rate from 28per cent to 20 per cent and thebasic rate from 18 to 10 percent in another bonanza for therichest.

Business rates are to fall,with calculations switched fromCPI inflation to RPI inflation,and Osborne says he willcontinue his attack on localgovernment funding with “allcouncil funds to be raisedlocally.” How councils will makeup for the resulting losses

without far greater revenueraising powers is not mentioned— because they won’t. Cuemore bed-blocking in hospitalsas elderly patients cannot besafely released due to guttedlocal care services, more libraryand youth club closures, morewomen’s refuge and children’scentre closures — the furtherdestruction of communitiesacross the country.

The great ideologicalexperiment rolls on. Fromoutlawing ethical investment bylocal authorities togerrymandering parliamentaryconstituencies to attackingopposition funding and seekingto cripple trade unions, thisgovernment is dismantlingdemocracy.

continued overleaf

March 2016

by Anita Halpin

AGENERATION AGOJacques Delors told TUCdelegates that the

‘European project’ wouldguarantee jobs and workersrights and safeguard the post-war ‘welfare state’ settlement.

It was a con trick. TheMaastricht Treaty jammed openthe door to big business tocapture public services andutilities in a privatisationscramble that has left mountingenergy bills, failing public servicesand soaraway fares.

The free fire zone for bigbusiness and the banks has givenus an unemployment crisis,youth unemployment tops 60per cent while millions ofwomen are driven out of thejobs market or suffer forced parttime working.

Places like Spain, Portugal,Ireland and Greece suffer hugespending cuts to pay for ‘bail-outs’ by the ‘Troika’ of the IMF,the European Union and theEuropean Central Bank.

The European Court ofJustice – in the Viking, Laval,Ruffert and Luxemburg ECJcases – reverses decades of hardwon employment rights.

continued on page 3

A Tory budget for the rich

Solidarity withthe hospitaldoctors . . .because this attack onthe working conditions,pay and hours of workof our fellowprofessionals is part ofthe neo-liberal offensivedesigned to protectprofits, promoteprivatisation and rollback the post-warwelfare state.

by Gawain Little

OSBOURNE’S BUDGETstatement and theeducation white paper

which quickly followed set outthe latest and most drasticassault in the 40-year waragainst state education. From1976 onwards, public discussionof education in Britain has beendominated by what Stephen Ballrefers to as a “discourse ofderision” about teachers andteaching. This was madeconcrete in policy terms by the1988 Education Reform Actwhich set the trend, consistentthroughout Tory, New Labourand Coalition governments,towards the announcements ofrecent weeks.

Every school is to be forced tobecome an academy and parentgovernors will be removed fromgoverning bodies, where thesestill exist.

The impact of this onteachers’ terms and conditionswill be severe, essentiallyending the School Teachers Pay

and Conditions Document (stillfollowed by the vast majority ofacademies) and all collectiveagreements, and replacing thesewith chain by chain negotiationsin a fragmented, privatisedsystem.

But it goes much deeper thanthat. The reconfiguring ofeducation as a narrow economicprocess, and its conversion intoa market commodity, is anessential part of therestructuring of society alongneoliberal lines. And, as DavidHarvey has argued,neoliberalism is and always hasbeen, “a project to achieve therestoration of class power to therichest strata of the population”.

Nelson Mandela said,“Education is the most powerfulweapon which you can use tochange the world”. Our enemiesare well aware of this and areacting accordingly.

The scale of the battle,and of what is at stake,therefore dictates thenature of our response.This is an attack on the

whole of the class and we needto be able to mobilise the wholeof the class in response. Thatmeans restructuring our unionsto genuinely engage the mass ofthe membership through beingrooted in every workplace upand down the country.

It means overcoming thedivisions that have weakened thecause of education and creatinga single education union, fit forthe twenty-first century.

It means creating strong andlasting alliances with parentsand the wider trade unionmovement, and establishing astrong base in every localcommunity, taking up not just‘trade union’ issues but widersocial justice concerns as well.

This perspective of socialjustice should guide everythingwe do, as trade unionists, aseducators. We face the most

virulent of attacks but we havea world to win.

Gawain Little is amember of the NUT

National Executive

Global education reformEdited by Gawain Little,foreword by Christine BlowerGeneral Secretary NationalUnion of Teachers£7.99 (+£2 p&p), 126 pages,

A new type of union

continued from page 1

This is what we have cometo expect. But if the “same oldTories” mantra still applies,British politics has changed.

This was the first OsborneBudget to be answered by asocialist leader of the LabourParty. The rejection of theentire austerity programmestood in stark contrast to fiveyears of mixed messages fromLabour over the lifetime of thecoalition government.’

The developments of Laboureconomic policy over recentmonths and weeks has seen arenewed emphasis on publicand co-operative ownership.’

And John McDonnell’s fiscalrule, while clearly an act ofpositioning to challenge Torymyths that Labour spendingbroke the economy, allows theparty to move beyondKeynesian inspired stickingplasters and to look at thefundamental causes of injusticesand inequalities in the Britisheconomy — which are notabout how much money wehave but about who’s got it.

The Labour leadershipremains fragile, with significanthostility within the PLP, and thelabour movement has yet tounderstand the scale of the taskthat faces it — or the severityof the consequences if it fails.

It is time we took on thischallenge.

We must place ourselves atthe heart of communitystruggles to resist the austerityof Osborne and build thePeople’s Assembly, which mustbecome the street wing of alabour movement thatrecognises the true potential ofthe Corbyn revolution.

We must mobilise for theApril 16th demonstration andplay our part in ensuring apositive showing for Labour inthe May elections acts as aspringboard for furtheradvance.

Ben Chacko iseditor of theMorning Star

Building an economy forthe people An alternative economic andpolitical strategy £6.95 (+£1 p&p)

by Robert Wilkinson

THE NUT delegation tothe EducationInternational conference

in Canada last July endorsed theResolution on Privatisation andCommercialisation in and ofEducation.

It deplored the fact thatmany governments haveabrogated their responsibility toensure the right to education forall through a fully accountablefree quality public educationsystem, and are increasinglyturning to, and partnering with,or subsidising private actors todeliver education.

The Resolution observedthat education privatisation andcommercialisation has createdand exacerbated inequalities in

access to and in the quality ofeducation, particularly for thesocio-economicallydisadvantaged, and that wealth,gender, ethnic and geographicalinequalities are deepened byprivatisation, furthermarginalising and excludinggroups from access to andparticipation in education.

It was made obvious thatEngland and Wales were notunique by any means in facingincreased class sizes, a reductionin services provided for children,the use of unqualified teachersand the casualisation of theterms and conditions ofemployment of educationalpersonnel from pre-school tohigher education.

Last December The Teachercarried an article by Kishore

Singh, UN Special Rapporteuron the Right to Education. Heemphasised that ‘Education is asocial responsibility. Civilorganisations and the intellectualcommunity, as well as studentsand parents, must beencouraged to safeguard theright to education against theforces of privatisation’.

‘Because of these dangers ithas become critical to develop aregulatory framework thatcontrols privatisation, withsanctions against abusivepractices. Such a frameworkshould be prescriptive,prohibitive and ban privateproviders of education fromemploying unqualified teachers’.

However this argumentignores another Resolution ofthe EI conference on stoppingTTIP, TiSA, CETA, TPP andother similar trade andinvestment agreements. ThisResolution recognised that theTransatlantic Trade andInvestment Partnershipbeing negotiatedbetween the EUCommission andthe USA posed adirect threat to theprovision of quality

public services includingeducation, in particular throughrestricting governments’capacity to regulate in the publicinterest, encouraging furtherliberalisation of services andexpanding the rights ofmultinational corporations.

It drew attention to a‘ratchet clause’ as a device toensure that parties to theagreements ‘automatically bindany autonomous liberalisation’.

This means that if agovernment were toexperiment with liberalising theeducation sector in whole or inpart, future governments wouldbe unable to undo this withoutpaying significant compensation.

Whatever hopes we mighthave for reversing the tide ofprivatisation of education wouldprove fruitless if we continue tounderestimate the likelyconsequences of the TTIPagreement. This is the elephantin the room that cannot beignored any longer.

Robert Wilkinson is aformer NUT NationalExecutive member and amember of the Communist

Party EU Commission

Books@manifestomanifestopress.org.uk

continued from page 1European TUC leader

Bernadette Ségol said, EUpolicies attack industrialrelations system and putpressure on wages, weakenpublic services and weakensocial protection “ ...the coreaspects of the social model”.

In the ‘real politik’ of the EUit is not the Eu parliament butthe Council of Ministers and theshadowy world of corporatelobbyists where real decisionsare taken.

This referendum is of greatpolitical importance. It is vitallyimportant that anger at Torygovernment policies and thehopes generated by Labour’sresurgence does not end in ablind alley of unprincipledalliance with banks and bigbusiness.

Real opposition to a bigbusiness-dominated anti-democratic EU cannot comefrom UKIP and the hedge fun

lobby which supportsprivatisation and attacks onworkers rights alongside a raftof policies which workingpeople decisively reject.

With our ruling class dividedon EU membership Labour andthe unions should be mobilisingagainst this enforcement arm ofneo-liberalism.  Where the left,communist parties and tradeunions challenge the EU – as inPortugal and Greece – andincreasingly in Spain and Italy, sothe right-wing parties arechallenged. Where social-democratic, left and trade unionbodies swallow the myth that a‘social Europe’ is possiblethrough reforming the EU, thenthe far right have an open goal. 

It is instructive that theBlairite right wing inLabour – the peoplewho would have takenus into the euro –want Labour to givepolitical cover to

Cameron and Osbourne in thereferendum. But millions ofpeople – including many of thethree million Labour voters thatBlair and Brown lost – remainsuspicious. 

A clear majority of Britishpeople reject the Tories’austerity policies. But thisuniversal sentiment means littleunless we reject EU treaties thatunderpin austerity, curtaildemocracy, compel privatisationand lead directly too theprivatise our transport andpostal services.

The proposed EU-US TradeAgreement threatens theexistence of our NHS.

A vote to leave the EuropeanUnion is a yes to a publicly-owned, socialised health care

service free at the point ofuse.

Anita Halpin is Unity!editor-in-chief

The Empire and Ukraine the Ukraine crisis in its context by Andrew Murray £11.95 (+£1.50 p&p)138 pages

by Hank Roberts

THE BRITISH trade unionmovement was once thestrongest in the world. It

saw off legislation attempting toshackle the unions (In Place ofStrife and the IndustrialRelations Act) and their threat ofa general strike forced therelease of the imprisoneddockers.

We are now halved innumbers and the assaults on ourability to defend ourselves, nevermind advance, is in my lifetimeat an all-time low.

What to do? In truth, ourorganisations, from our unions tothe TUC, are not yet fully fit forpurpose. Look at education andtheir plans. All schools to beturned into academies andfollowing with certainty theirbeing opened up for privateprofit. Plus all the other outragesteachers know so well, complainabout, but still in the main,tolerate. Having 6 unions assiststhis process by a non-unitedresponse enabling theGovernment to get away withdivide and rule.

None the less, educationbeing the most unionisedprofession puts us in the forefrontof the Government’s attack,because their true aim is todestroy not just effective tradeunionism, but trade unionism perse.

This requires that we uniteour forces. The prospect that thiscould occur between ATL andNUT is wonderful; a breath offresh air. We will urgently needto address the task of uniting allin education – teachers, lecturersand support staff – to counterattack on a united front. Longterm I think it should go further –the US model, ‘If you’re in thebuilding you’re in the union’. Wein education can give a lead. Butthe process must extendacross the TUC. We needa coherent structure.Competition betweenunions for members isnot just a waste of our

money and resources but acomplete misdirection of oureffort and activity, so vitallyneeded to confront our enemies.

In addition to restructuringour army – the TUC andconstituent organisations, weneed to do vitally two otherthings. We need to become socialmovement trade unions. Thewrongs we face are not facingjust our sector. They face thewhole of society, or rather thewhole of society excluding thetiny ruling elite. We are, asunions and workers, all undermassive attack on multiple, buttotally interconnected fronts.Government actions in one areahave connotations to andrepercussions in, other areas.

So we must understand, actand fight as one. Next, becausein relative terms at the momentwe are weak and they are strong,we have to concentrate ourforces. Strategically one against10: tactically 10 against one. Wehave to choose one issue at atime. Pick their weakest point.Pick an area we can win on andunite our forces to achieve it.Where we have the strengthbecause we have control, we cando it. We’re not forcing them toconcede something (as we haveto do with pay for example). No,we can simply not implement it;a good example Baselineassessment. We need guerrillastruggles in workplaces, makingadvances one at a time on thebasis of what the membersprioritise and is achievable tobuild our strength.

If ATL and NUT form a newunion fit for the 21st centuryfrom that moment attention mustbe turned to widening thisprocess to encompass all ineducation. Acting in unitythrough one united organisationat workplace level is an absolutenecessity in the present situation

to save our state educationsystem and indeed ourcountry. Let’s get to itHank Roberts isOrganising Secretary

of Unify

Organising for unity

THE BATTLEFOR THELABOURMOVEMENT£2 frommorningstaronline.co.uk