Issue 173 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published March 1994 Copyright © Socialist Review
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| Nurses fighting shift changes |
'It may seem hard to believe, but the UK recovery has already lasted as long--seven quarters--as the recession which preceded it. The trouble for the government is that the growth rate has been too slow to generate a "feel-good" factor among consumers.'
Financial Times, 19-20 February 1994. Despite all the talk of recovery, no one really believes that it is under way. The government must feel bitterly frustrated. After all, economic recovery in the mid-1980s left most people feeling better off. The Tories got the credit. Things are very different now.
Growth in the economy is at best uneven and economic indicators are contradictory. So while inflation has remained fairly low (but on a rising trend), manufacturing output fell in December, and bank lending was very weak in January. All the talk of a spending boom in the run up to Xmas was undermined by a drop in the real sales figures when they were released last month.
There is some economic growth, but from a very low base. Output in manufacturing industry is still well below its pre-recession figure: last December it was 5.5 percent below its peak of March 1990, and machine tool sales were just over half the level of 1990.
No wonder unemployment remains at nearly 3 million on the official figures and that it rose slightly in January after falling marginally over several months. And the jobs being created are hardly the sort to foster economic confidence. There has been a net loss of full time jobs. All the increase in employment is in part time work. Although some of these jobs may be relatively well paid and secure, a very large number are low paid, low status jobs.
So despite nearly two years of official 'recovery', an opinion poll carried out in Stephen Milligan's Hampshire constituency of Eastleigh in late February showed that 50 percent of those questioned thought that their financial situation would get worse in the next year.
All this comes before the tax increases due next month. Even the government has admitted that the increases will take an average of more than £12 a week from most households--rising to an incredible £20 a week in 1995.
Economists fear that the rise in tax will hamper any improvement in consumer spending and so slow down the recovery.
Certainly tax increases--the steepest since the war--will mean belt tightening for most working class families, many of whom have received pay rises at or below the rate of inflation. And their political impact is likely to be immense.
This is just beginning to dawn on some political commentators and Tory MPs, who hailed Kenneth Clarke's November budget as economic wizardry. They praised his (inadequate) compensation for VAT on fuel for those on pensions and benefits without realising that his other measures were creating even more problems.
The tax bombshell will hit just weeks before the local elections in May and the European elections in early June. Both are likely to demonstrate an unprecedented level of government unpopularity. The claim that economic recovery is leading to political recovery is the reverse of the truth.
There are many signs that the political hostility to the government is being channelled into activity: against hospital closures or the Child Support Agency, and in the fight against racism with the big TUC demo this month. There is also an increasing sense of discontent about pay and conditions in many workplaces.
This has not yet usually been expressed in action. But already groups of workers such as the predominantly female workforce at Girobank, who have staged a one day strike over pay and plan further action to win their claim, and college lecturers, who plan a national one day strike for 1 March against new contracts, are taking action. Trade unionists with little previous tradition of organisation are being pushed into action because of the savage and generalised nature of the attacks.
An employers' offensive is also leading to a fightback among MSF workers at J S Chinn in Coventry. Here, in a mini Timex dispute, the employers are attempting to victimise a shop steward in a traditionally militant area and hoping to weaken the union throughout the city. They are finding a high level of resistance.
And Tory minister Virginia Bottomley's attempts to close down large numbers of London hospitals are meeting a fightback. Workers at the 'flagship trust' Guy's Hospital are talking of balloting for strike action and have called a demonstration to protest at closure.
Time and again over the past months, workers have balloted, threatened action and often gone on strike. The problem is that so far there has not been any breakthrough. A dispute like that at Timex in Dundee had the potential to win, but ended up with the factory closing. The nurses' strike at UCH, London, kept the hospital open but with much reduced services.
Even when strikes are victorious, they do not have the impact on other workers which could lead to them also taking action. There have been few of the national strikes which could begin to have an impact across the working class. The blame here must lie squarely with the national trade union leaders, who have done everything in their power to avoid confrontation.
The signs are that the union leaders are under greater pressure to deliver, or else face possible unofficial action in the future. There are now large groups of workers in most unions who are absolutely fed up with the lack of fight. The recent rejection of a productivity deal by UCW post office workers despite the agreement of management and union leaders is a case in point.
At the same time, Labour's parliamentary leadership seems less and less capable of relating to how ordinary working people feel. Such is their detachment that there have even been grumblings from within the shadow cabinet about Labour's latest plan to attract private investment in public industry.
The plan follows closely on acceptance of many of the NHS 'reforms', the refusal of Gordon Brown to pledge any Labour government spending on anything and the vote by two shadow cabinet ministers to keep the age of consent for gays at 18.
It would be a mistake to believe that these policies are representative of the many who look to Labour in hope of winning change and even a better world. But the lack of action, or even of fighting talk, in parliament and at the top of the unions can have a debilitating effect on some socialists. It is often hard to see the whole picture--something which amounts to a slow, patchy and partial growth in working class confidence and organisation.
That means we can set our horizons very low, feeling that nothing much is changing. Rather we should understand that there is a sizeable audience for socialists, particularly if they can link their political view of the world with a strategy for beating back Tory and ruling class attacks. The big student protests, the TUC March Against Racism this month and the Anti Nazi League carnival which follows it and the growing protest and anger over pay and conditions, can all help to fuel a very big movement to fight back.
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| Not interested in marching? |
Students are back on the streets. After years when they seemed less concerned with politics than with their courses, there are signs of a higher level of politicisation than at any time since the 1970s.
The Tories' budget announcement last November that student grants would be cut by 30 percent was met with a massive wave of anger. Even before this cut, students shared with single parents the honour of being at the bottom level of living standards in Tory Britain.
Immediately after the cut was announced there were demonstrations of 2,500 in Leeds, 800 in Norwich, 1,000 in Glasgow and 3,500 in Aberdeen--where pensioners and health workers joined the protest. There was a four day occupation by hundreds of students at the University of East Anglia and other occupations at Glasgow University, Strathclyde University, the London School of Economics and Bradford University. At SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies in central London, students occupied to defeat increased library fines and won. On 23 February student unions from across Britain joined together in a 30,000 strong national demonstration in central London.
The Tories have succeeded in turning education into as much of a political hot potato as the health service. Many students were quick to point to events in Paris where a demonstration of a million recently overturned the French Tories' attempts to privatise state education.
The unpopularity of Tory measures and the weakness of the government have already forced retreats. Plans to enforce 'voluntary membership' of college students' unions--effectively ending all political and campaigning activities--have been dropped.
That reflected divisions within Tory ranks. NUS will claim this success was achieved by its lobbying of the House of Lords. In reality, at the merest hint of confrontation, Major and Patten retreated.
Students may have little economic power in society but widespread student protests can help to create a political movement of opposition to government policies on a range of issues.
The upsurge of anger and activity has occurred despite the refusal of the Labour run National Union of Students to take even token protest action against the grants cut. NUS president, Lorna Fitzsimons, began by claiming protests would only fuel the Tories' attempts to introduce voluntary membership of NUS. She no longer has this excuse. She then argued that demonstrations did not work. Eventually the NUS executive decided to call a national demonstration--but during the Easter holidays!
A minority of Labour Party members on the executive grouped in Left Unity took part in initiating the national demonstration on 23 February, but they too were more concerned with manoeuvring within the NUS leadership rather than building occupations. They tended to concentrate their venom on attacking the SWSS call for a march on parliament.
The 23 February march and the other protests have been built from the bottom among the rank and file in the colleges--free from the internecine warfare in the NUS leadership. They demonstrated just how volatile student struggles can be. They tend to spring up from nowhere and lead to rapid radicalisation. Students are less likely than workers to carry with them a collective memory of the defeats which dominated so much of the 1980s. While students might not have the collective strength of workers they can act as a catalyst to wider protest. Events in France in 1968 are the most famous example of when student unrest can break through to workers. Then they led to the biggest general strike in history.
Yet in 1968 the concerns of students seemed remote from most workers. Today many working class families have someone either going to college or hoping to go to college. Few students, apart from the most privileged, can look forward to a well paid and secure future. After having to work in McDonalds or Safeway to eke out their grants they will leave college to find employment mainly in low paid white collar jobs.
The change in students' expectations has not registered with many people. The Guardian was content simply to trot out a recent article claiming students were no longer interested in marching and occupying as they were in 1968! The Students Fighting For Socialism weekend event organised by the SWP last month attracted over 1,000 students for an intense weekend of discussion and planning for action. Today's students, unlike those in 1968, are protesting against a background of war, recession and resurgent fascism. When journalists talk of apathy in the colleges they are mistaken. There exists a rejection of the grey politicians in Westminster coupled with anger and bitterness over what is happening all around them.
It is an explosive mix.
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| Public enemy |
If anyone needs confirmation of just how nasty the Tories can be as they hit out in an effort to cover their weakness, take a look at the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill.
Home Secretary Michael Howard has suffered a number of well publicised reversals on both this and his Police and Magistrates' Bill.
At the time of writing, a combination of Tory lords, chief constables, the Police Federation--even the Lord Chief justice--appear to have forced a climbdown from the plan to pack police authorities with Tory appointees. But the most disgusting elements of Howard's bill remain. Labour will not even vote against it.
First, there is the crackdown on children. The bill will give judges the power to lock up those as young as ten--while still criminalising 16 and 17 year olds for gay sex. It will also launch a new generation of private borstals for 14 and 15 year olds. Second, there is the criminalisation of squatters, ravers, travellers and hunt saboteurs.
There will be new police powers against 'public assemblies of trespassers', aimed at New Age travellers and young people attending raves. These will allow a chief constable to issue a blanket ban against 'assembly' if the police consider there is 'a threat of disruption'.
It will be a criminal offence for ten or more people 'to gather to play loud music during the night' and fail to comply with a police order to leave. Having served a ban, police will have the power to turn away everyone within a five mile radius and seize all vehicles and equipment.
There will also be a new offence of 'disrupting lawful activity'--directed at hunt saboteurs, but also ready for use against trade unions and pickets. Councils will be forced to evict travellers. Police will get new powers to stop and search drivers and their vehicles.
However, the red meat of Howard's bill is in a third area--the new powers of police questioning and abolition of the right to silence.
At present, officers are not supposed to interview anyone until they get back to the police station and the suspect has a chance to obtain a solicitor or--if under 18--a parent or social worker. The bill will allow police to stop and question people anywhere.
This directly contradicts the recent Royal Commission on Criminal justice, set up in the wake of all the headline cases of miscarriages of justice such as the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six.
At the same time, Howard's bill will replace the right to silence with a new police warning that, 'If you do not mention something which you later use in your defence, the court may decide your failure strengthens the case against you.' According to the Law Society, 'This will increase what is already a highly pressurised situation and could lead to false confessions.'
People will feel compelled to speak and risk incriminating themselves before they have had a chance to get a solicitor. As it is, 80 percent of police interviews take place with no solicitor present.
The scope for miscarriages under the new system will be enormous. To be pulled in and say nothing will be considered an admission of guilt.
The police will pressurise teenagers they pick up regularly, threatening the kids that they will be found guilty anyway if they do not talk. The police will have a whole new range of tricks to play on people caught up in public order offences--maybe after a demonstration like Welling. They may say, 'We know you did nothing. But say nothing and the court could find you guilty. Better to tell us what happened.' Someone who merely admits to shouting could find themselves on a charge of 'incitement'.
Howard has also included a clause to make constructing a defence more difficult. Lawyers will be compelled to disclose their clients' defence to the police.
Where this happens already--when solicitors have to give advance notice of a defendant's alibi--the police routinely go round to pressure the alibi witness.
The whole point of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill is not to ensure a better chance of justice. It is to secure more convictions and send more people to jail. For all his liberal image, Lord Chief Justice Taylor backs Howard's abolition of the right to silence because he knows it will guarantee more convictions. So does Labour.
The party leaders' refusal to oppose the bill in parliament is not mere spinelessness. On the contrary, more convictions fit shadow home secretary Tony Blair's policy of 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' quite happily.
British journalists in Algeria have been shocked by the recent spate of killings there. A journalist working for Australian television was among those foreign nationals shot by the Islamic GIA. Yet many of those now horrified at the chaos backed the military clamp down which has led to it.
The present situation of civil strife is the direct result of events two years ago, when multi-party elections--almost certain to be won by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS)--were halted by the military, who have ruled Algeria through a junta ever since.
In December 1991 the Algerian people used the opportunity of the first free elections to move against the ruling FLN and the army and vote in the FIS. Two weeks later the army forced President Chadli Bendjedid to resign, cancelled the second round of elections, banned the FIS and set up a five man high state committee (HCE). FIS leaders were either jailed or forced into exile.
Despite the army breaking every possible law they themselves had written, they did so in the name of democracy. Many on the left supported their actions, on the grounds that the FIS was neo-fascist and undemocratic.
Far from stabilising the political situation, the cancelling of elections has led to the increasing state of civil war in Algeria. Thousands of Islamic militants are in desert prison camps, subject to vicious torture and what Amnesty International calls 'incommunicado detention'. Special military courts have been set up to persecute Islamic militants. In the last two years 3,500 people--mainly opponents of the regime--have been killed.
The recent killings of foreign workers are mostly carried out by the Islamic Armed Group (GIA) which is independent of FIS. Many Algerians have suffered heavily too, including intellectuals, journalists and women who have been caught in the increasing polarisation between the junta on the one hand and the GIA on the other.
There seems no way out of the crisis for the Algerian ruling class. Despite the state of emergency and repression the opposition has not been silenced. The junta is not helped by the acute economic crisis, with 80 percent of Algeria's export revenues (mainly from oil and gas) going to cover its $26 billion external debt last year.
Algeria gained its independence in July 1962, after a bitter struggle against its French colonial rulers which left the FLN in power. Whole industries were nationalised and the FLN attempted to develop a centralised state capitalist economy. The collapse of oil prices in the mid-1980s pushed an already weak and corrupt ruling class into isolation. In 1988 strikes followed by riots took place in Algiers and spread throughout the country. It was then that the political reforms were conceded, with rival parties to the now discredited FLN being set up.
The impasse since the banning of the elections has led the HCE to talk of reform. It set up a 'national conference for dialogue' in January. It was meant to bring together the different political organisations including the banned FIS and the military junta. Although the FIS did not attend the conference, and nor did any other major party, contacts are taking place between the junta and FIS leaders inside and outside the country. The junta has also replaced its original hardline prime minister with a reformist, Redha Malek.
But there is no sign that the military is about to give up power, as shown by the recent appointment of yet another general, Lamine Zeroual, as the new state president. It would however like to see a way out of the crisis, and it is certainly possible that the FIS could make a deal with the military.
The FIS itself is not free from crisis. Many of its leaders are abroad, and their decision to engage in guerrilla struggle against the ruling class has weakened their popularity and made it difficult for them to control much of what is happening in Algeria. The killing of 12 Croatian workers in December led the FIS leaders abroad to condemn it.
This apparent split between the FIS and GIA on the one hand, and pressure from French politicians on the other to persuade the Algerian government to break the deadlock, has led to the generals in power saying, 'the government would now consider talking to leaders of the FIS who show respect for the law of the land.'
Pressure from the French government comes from fear that the conflict will have its effects among the large Algerian population in France itself. The French interior minister, Charles Pasqua, who backs the military junta, is busily arresting blacks and North Africans. He has also promised to double expulsions at the borders and to remove automatic rights of French citizenship at 18 and for foreigners in mixed marriages.
According to recent statistics, before the introduction of the so called Pasqua Law non-European immigration to France had fallen by 5 percent, the number of families reuniting by 8.3 percent and the number of people getting political refugee status by 30 percent.
Three months ago over 80 Algerians alleged to belong to the armed wing of FIS were arrested. Not a single one has been convicted.
The spectre haunting the French and other European ruling classes is of Algerian economic collapse and mass emigration. As a recent Financial Times editorial put it:
'An Algeria racked by civil war and deprived of much of its westernised middle class would not attract foreign investment and would be likely to stagnate economically. Europe could face more and more poor and angry people on its very doorstep.'
That is certainly true. But responsibility for that lies firmly with the military dictatorship and its backers in the big capitalist powers.
Europe is also facing poor and angry workers from within, as Algerian workers witnessed when they saw the Air France strikes on satellite television. Politically, a large number of Algerians are not taken in by the armed guerrilla methods of the Islamic opposition, and want to fight for a better world.
The working class in particular will be expected to pay the price for any supposed solution to the crisis. Recent strike action points to the beginning of a workers' fightback.