Anti-fascists organize resistance as crisis grips Ukraine coup regime

Workers World, March 28, 2014
Just a month after a U.S.-backed coup d’état in Ukraine brought to power a regime dominated by neo-Nazis and pro-Western capitalist politicians, the ruling junta finds itself in deep crisis.

Threats from the government in Kiev and its U.S. and Western European patrons were unable to intimidate the people of the Crimean autonomous region, who voted overwhelmingly to break away from Ukraine and affiliate with Russia on March 16. Russian President Vladimir Putin and local leaders made it official on March 18.

Now infighting has exploded among the fascist factions in the ruling coalition in Kiev.
The International Monetary Fund, meanwhile, has agreed to give the coup-makers an $18 billion loan — but only if they accept painful austerity measures. These are almost certain to throw Ukraine deeper into chaos.

Further, Kiev has been unable to subdue the rebellious eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, where anti-fascists are digging in to organize grassroots resistance.

People in these major working-class industrial and mining areas are rising to oppose the junta and demand political and economic autonomy. They reject the rule of the billionaire oligarchs appointed as new regional governors by Kiev. Some are even calling for re-nationalization of privatized industries.

Thieves fall out
Overnight on March 27-28, members of the neo-Nazi Right Sector gang surrounded the Ukrainian Rada [parliament] and threatened to storm it — much as they had done a month earlier, when the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych was toppled.

But this time, the Right Sector was protesting its own erstwhile partners, some of whom were barricaded inside, including members of the far-right Fatherhood party and neo-Nazi Svoboda party. European television broadcast images of Svoboda politicians hanging out of windows shouting epithets while Right Sector goons hurled rocks at them from the street.

What happened?
On March 24, Right Sector leader Aleksandr Muzychko was shot dead during a police raid in the western city of Rovno. Muzychko had a long history of fascist terrorism and was on several international “most wanted” lists — a Ukrainian version of the anti-Cuba terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.

The assassination of Muzychko was followed by raids on Right Sector hideouts and seizures of weapons. The hit came on orders from acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, a representative of the Fatherland party associated with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Avakov has established a “National Guard” under his command to deputize the fascist gangs and bring them all under the junta’s control. He also masterminded the joint neo-Nazi/police patrols that have suppressed any resistance in the western cities.

Avakov represents the coalition of far-right forces that control the commanding heights of police, military and prosecutorial powers of the new regime. Some forces in the Right Sector, like Muzychko, didn’t want to follow orders. Avakov and his colleagues decided that those who wouldn’t play ball must be eliminated.

The fascist street gangs served their purpose as the violent fists of the Euromaidan protests that ousted Yanukovych. But when it comes to investments and military strategy, Washington, Bonn and the IMF prefer to work with well-groomed, business-suited fascists like Avakov and Svoboda leader Oleh Tyanhybok.

Tymoshenko: ‘Grab a machine gun’
U.S. imperialism has big plans for Ukraine. First, it contains pipelines that control much of the flow of oil and gas between Russia and Western Europe. In addition, stationing NATO troops and weaponry there is also key to U.S. plans to isolate and dismember Russia.

Even after promising the Kiev junta $10 billion in loans, Washington is worried about the stability of the coup. Means have to be found to stabilize the country — that is, make it profitable for the Western imperialists. That means not only controlling the far-right factions in the western part, but quelling the anti-fascist resistance in the south and east.

While the inter-regime crisis was unfolding in Kiev, a leaked phone call posted online revealed more about the fires of war that the Obama administration and congressional leaders are furiously stoking. The call was from former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, considered a leading candidate in the presidential elections planned for May 25. Tymoshenko, a leader of the so-called Orange Revolution of 2004, was imprisoned for corruption before the coup.

Speaking with a former military official after the Crimea referendum, Tymoshenko urged her supporters to “take up arms and kill the fucking Russians along with their leader.” Tymoshenko also said she was ready to “grab a machine gun and shoot [Putin] in the head.” The recording ends with Tymoshenko threatening to use nuclear weapons against the 8 million Russian-speakers living in Ukraine. After the call went public, Tymoshenko claimed the part about using nukes was manipulated. The rest, she confirmed, was accurate.

Anti-fascists build resistance
In the cities of southern and eastern Ukraine, the leftist Union Borotba (Struggle) is one of the groups organizing anti-fascist resistance. Borotba’s central office in Kiev was ransacked after the coup and its activists forced underground. Outside Kiev, Borotba and other anti-fascists work in a hazy state of semi-legality, operating more or less openly depending on the level of organized resistance in each city.

This creates special challenges for organizers. For example, print shop owners refuse to print flyers or newspapers due to threats from the fascists. However, Borotba has managed to get help from sympathetic workers to publish its materials. A 10,000-copy run of “Front,” the first issue of a newspaper published by Borotba and the Antifascist Resistance Center, sold out in just three days. Borotba activists have set up tents and information tables to spread their message and recruit people to local anti-fascist defense committees composed of activists, workers, youths and former Red Army soldiers.

In Kharkov, where the Right Sector murdered two anti-fascists on March 14, Borotba plays a leading role in organizing mass resistance. On March 22, some 2,000 people defied a ban and rallied at Freedom Square for a people’s speakout initiated by Borotba. A major goal of the event was to recruit supporters for the local defense organization, People’s Unity.

The following day, hundreds marched down Rymarska Street to remember the two slain activists. They chanted: “Fascists kill! Power covers up!” Police then charged Borotba leader Denis Levin, a convener of the rally, with violating the ban and ordered him to appear in court on March 26. After a crowd of supporters picketed the court during his hearing, the judge dismissed the charge as “baseless.”

In Odessa, Borotba activists took up the case of Anton Davidchenko, a local resistance leader who was seized by the “Alpha” special police unit on March 17 and kidnapped to Kiev, where he is being held incommunicado. Some 1,000 people defied fascist threats and rallied at Odessa’s Kulikovo Field on March 23 to demand a referendum on autonomy. Led by Regional Council Deputy and Borotba activist Alex Albu, they marched to the prosecutor’s office to demand Davidchenko’s release and an end to the regime’s political repression.

Communist Party holds congress
The Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) has also been targeted by the junta. On its first day, the new regime threatened an outright ban of the KPU. The party’s headquarters in Kiev was trashed and is still occupied by the Right Sector. Party members have been attacked and beaten. KPU leaders have continued to assert their membership in the parliament although they have been effectively banned from Kiev since the coup.

On March 26, the KPU held its 47th Extraordinary Congress in the eastern industrial city of Donetsk. The party nominated its general secretary, Peter Simonenko, to run for president in the May elections. It is unclear whether the KPU will be allowed on the ballot, or what dangers party candidates might face.

Emphasizing the need of the party to preserve its cadres and organization, Simonenko said: “We have grounds for optimism. In a short time, the new regime showed its anti-people nature and incompetence, its inability to govern. The inevitable deterioration of the situation of workers as a result of the requirements of the IMF will inevitably create the basis for a new protest movement.”

Workers, youths and retirees alike are determined to defeat the far-right gangs and push back Western imperialism. They remember their history as part of the Soviet Ukraine, which defeated the fascist occupation during World War II, with support from the Red Army.

The role of PCS members in the bullying of benefit claimants

The VOAG has been concerned for a long time at the actions of PCS union members who work at Employment Centers. Many of the members of the Surrey United Anti-Capitalists – a local, independent,  left unity project, which the VOAG supports – have been unfairly treated, bullied and victimized by the staff. They have had their only source of income taken away from them on the whim of apparent union members who later go on strike and demand “working class unity and support”

The VOAG was pleased to read the article below, dealing with this very question on the Socialist Unity blog, and re-publishes it here.

Members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) are engaged in the widespread bullying and intimidation of benefit claimants in Job Centres up and down the country. The evidence can no longer be denied and the union’s leadership must now take steps to educate its members that solidarity is more than just a word on a leaflet during a PCS pay dispute, or else face the accusation of collaborating with the government’s vicious assault on the most economically vulnerable in society under the rubric of austerity.

The upsurge in the number of claimants having their benefits sanctioned for increasingly minor infractions correlates to the upsurge in the demand for the services of the nation’s food banks. This shocking revelation was contained in a report by MPs in January, the result of an investigation by the Work and Pensions Select Committee, which called for an independent review into the rules for sanctioning claimants to ensure that the rules are being applied “fairly and appropriately”.

Among its findings the report stated: “Evidence suggests that JCP staff have referred many claimants for a sanction inappropriately or in circumstances in which common sense would dictate that discretion should have been applied”.

The report continued: “Some witnesses were concerned that financial hardship caused by sanctioning was a significant factor in a recent rise in referrals to food aid. The report recommends that DWP take urgent steps to monitor the extent of financial hardship caused by sanctions”.

The majority of Jobcentre staff are members of the 270,000 strong PCS, the sixth largest trade union in the country, which represents thousands of Britain’s civil servants and public sector workers. The PCS has been a strong critic of the coalition’s austerity policies, making the case for an investment led recovery from recession and calling for mass opposition to spending cuts that have ravaged the public sector and been accompanied by a concerted campaign of demonization of the unemployed and economically vulnerable that is unparalleled in its viciousness. This only makes the role some of its members are playing in intensifying the hardship faced by the unemployed and people on out of work benefits even more deplorable.

It is unconscionable that any trade union would allow its members to engage in the wilful and systematic sanctioning of benefit claimants without offering any meaningful resistance. It flies in the face of the very principle of social solidarity that is the cornerstone of a movement founded on the understanding that the interests of working people – employed and unemployed – are intrinsically the same.

The human despair not to mention humiliation being inflicted on people in the nation’s Jobcentres is evidence that the Tory campaign of dividing working people section by section has borne fruit. It has reached the point where the oppressive atmosphere found in your average Jobcentre is on a par with the oppressive atmosphere associated with a district or sheriff court. Job seekers are not criminals and those sanctioning them so readily are not parole officers, yet you could be easily mistaken in thinking they are after spending just a few minutes in a Jobcentre anywhere in the country.

Enough is enough.
This culture of bullying, harassment, and intimidation against the unemployed must be confronted by the leadership of the leadership of the PCS as a matter of urgency. By no means are all PCS members working in Jobcentres guilty of this shameful practice – indeed many are low paid workers reliant on various benefits to survive themselves – but enough are involved in the practice to leave no doubt that we are talking about an institutional problem rather than the actions of a few rotten apples.

Many of those being sanctioned are being trapped due to mental health issues or language issues making them more vulnerable to violating the plethora of rules regarding the obligations they must fulfil when it comes to searching for work. Many are being sanctioned for turning up five minutes late to a scheduled appointment, regardless of the reason why. In some cases suicide has been the result.

You would hope that the leadership of the PCS would at least acknowledge the despair their members are inflicting on the most economically vulnerable people in society. You’d be wrong. In an article which appeared on the PCS website back in February, addressing the volume of criticism being levelled at the DWP over sanctioning, the union denied culpability in the process. On the contrary they assert in the article:

PCS believes our members do the best job they can in very difficult circumstances. Rather than face criticism, this work should be recognised and valued by management and they should start by ensuring a proper pay increase for DWP staff in 2014.

Any trade union member who allows him or herself to be used as an instrument to attack the poor and the unemployed is deserving of contempt. And any trade union leadership that fails to act to prevent it happening is reactionary.

Stop The Alisa Street Waste Management Development in Poplar, Tower Hamlets!

Leabank Project Ltd (A Not-For-Profit Ltd Company) Public Meeting.
Stop The Alisa Street Waste Management Development!
February 18, 2012. Truissler Hall Community Centre, Poplar.

The VOAG has been on holiday in East London. And together with a local activist, attended a public meeting “To Consider the proposal of Tower Hamlets Council that land in Ailsa Street be reserved for a waste management facility, to assess the likely consequence of this, and to agree if possible on how best the people of Poplar may respond.”

The 5.8 hectare site comprises of a long strip of land running between the River Lea and the A12. At the north end of the plot lies ACME House and the A12/Glender Street junction. The Southern limit is adjacent to Aberfeldy Street. The site is dissected East-West by Alisa Street and Lochnagar Street, which run parallel to each other and divide the site in to a northern part and a southern part.                                                       Proposed waste facility site
The Northern half of the land is used for a mixture of industrial activities and a small waste transfer station. The Southern half is largely disused land, a former primary school and some warehousing. Within the area lies Bromley High School, a listed building, with two more graded buildings on its boundaries. The site borders the Aberfeldy and Teviot estates.

Tower Hamlets intends to use this space for a waste transfer station to eventually deal with the entire boroughs waste, estimated to be around 300,000 tonnes. The facility will receive the waste from domestic collection lorries and store it until it is carried off by larger vehicles for subsequent treatment or disposal. The plan will mean an extra 200 trucks will travel down the A12 and along the A13. Just south of the location, opposite the Aberfeldy Neighbourhood Centre, on land presently housing a gas works, there is a plan – already approved – to build a primary school, a housing development, and a public park to link up with the Lea River Park.

The Tower Hamlets Local Development framework, which calls for the waste site, says it must be “integrated in to its surroundings”. It “should minimise negative impacts on the environment, transport and amenities and respect the surrounding environment”. It should also “protect heritage assets on the site and surrounding area”; “address noise and air pollution”, “enable ‘activation of the river side”, and “improve walking and cycling access and connections”.

John Baker, the founder and director of Leabank Project, presented the case that the proposal for the waste transfer station made no reference to the planned gas works redevelopment. Neither plan takes account of the impacts one would have on the other. The waste management facility would negatively impact the development planned for the gas works site. He told the meeting that lorries entering and leaving the site would significantly increase traffic congestion and pollution along the A12 and A13. He said that the river side will suffer and access to it would be further restricted. For these reasons he believed the waste facility proposal was incompatible with the council’s own Local Development Framework, and there were better uses for such a river side location.
  

John Baker is also the treasurer and founding director of Tower Hamlets Council For Voluntary Service Ltd, a registered charity which is endorsed by the mayor and funded by the council. Its web site says it aims to “Provide ‘third sector’ organisations with the necessary support, information and services to enable them to pursue or contribute to any charitable purpose.” According to THCVS’ February e-bulletin, their Council funding was overdue and in a recent letter John Baker had asked the mayor for an assurance their funding wasn’t going to be cut.

Previously, in January 2006, John Baker was one of the founding Directors of New Mill Consultants. It was originally set up by Poplar HARCA – a large, not-for-profit, social landlord – as a group of residents to provide the government’s Guide Neighbourhoods Programme. The centrally funded programme is “awarded to social housing groups to “encourage regeneration, empower and include residents in planning decisions and promote a range of environmental and social benefits”. Once the residents group was established it incorporated as a company and operated independently of Poplar HARCA. After six months John Baker resigned.

New Mill founded the Linc Cafe as a drop in and advice centre. Its web site says: “the company provides professional courses and consultancy services to community and residents groups” and has helped to set up residents trusts. Between 2002 and September 05, John Baker was also a director of Poplar HARCA.

John Baker made the case that the riverside should be “recovered and developed with houses, shops and leisure facilities. I don’t even mind luxury flats” he said. “There should be protest and unanimous opposition to the plans”, But he continued: “the campaign must submit viable waste management alternatives. A NIMBY attitude will not be good enough to dissuade the council”. “What we need is more information, research and more residents’ participation”.

“The council has other vacant land available. Houses have been good investments recently in the area, due to environmental improvements and investment from the council and housing associations. If the plans go ahead property prices will fall. Public money spent on regeneration projects will also be wasted” John Baker said, “because the value of the investment will decrease with the property values. Businesses and landlords will also suffer”. “Poplar HARCA, many councillors, and the MP Jim Fitzpatrick have all stated their support for the campaign”.

“Tower Hamlets Council have been working on the proposals for months, yet the idea has never been discussed in public. Their scheme only came to light when it was included in the 212-page Tower Hamlets’ Development Plan Document (DPD) – part of the Local Development Framework – buried on pages 127-9 and 130!. There followed a wholly inadequate, six week consultation period during which most residents were unaware of the plans”.

I counted seventy people, seated in groups of five, around tables. Most were residents from the Aberfeldy and Teviot estates. There were four landowners, and a couple of ‘small businessmen’. Representatives from Poplar HARCA, one of whom was another director of Leabank Project, were also present.There were four councillors present. Three of them were on the board of Poplar HARCA. They all voiced their opposition to the plans. However, Cllr. Shiria Khatun pointed out that: “There was a shortage of alternative land. Transporting the waste out of Tower Hamlets would be costly and not the best environmental solution. There were options that could be looked at for example locating the facility underground or autoclaving the waste instead of moving or incinerating it.”.

Autoclaving, treats the waste by sealing it in tanks and passing high pressured steam through it. The majority of waste is biodegradable which is shredded into strands. There are presently no plants of this kind in the UK, and there is no market for the resultant biomass. Glasgow Council has been advocating large scale autoclaving, but recently distanced itself from the process, opening up its waste disposal contract to tenders with alternatives to autoclaving. Autoclaving is energy intensive, and since there is no market for the resultant biomass it usually ends up in land fill where it degrades to produce methane, a ‘greenhouse gas’.

John Baker, knew almost everyone in the meeting. In a gesture to the landowners, “who have not been allowed to develop or sell ‘their’ land, he said: ”Housing should be developed on the site, I don’t mind luxury flats, we need proper returns for the landowners. The Deputy Mayor, independent Councillor Ohid Ahmed joined in: “We want housing on the site, that’s what the developers want”. John Baker hands petition to Dpt Mayor Ohid Ahmed
The Deputy Mayor giggled nervously and looked bemused as he addressed the audience. He was obviously unprepared to speak to the meeting. He said “the council did not support a waste facility in Poplar”. “After the Fish Island site was decided against as a location for the waste plant, we had to come up with an alternative place to put it – for reporting and central government purposes. – To fulfil our statutory obligations. We have no intention of actually putting it there”. He went on to say that many of the businesses in and around the proposed site were sited on illegally held land. The VOAG found these remarks astounding, but they went completely ignored and unchallenged.

One of the Landowners spoke to the meeting. He was a friend of John Baker. He suggested smaller waste sites spread across the borough as an alternative, which could be used to produce electricity or gas. “I’m not a business man, coming in from outside the borough just to make money.” he said.

Several residents spoke out from the floor. One said:”they’re not thinking of the residents, they just think about themselves.”. Another said:”we must persuade the council” Another resident called the estates “the forgotten estates”. Labour councillor, Rajib Ahmed, also spoke to the meeting. He said that London Thames Gateway Development Corporation (LTGDC) has the power to over-ride Tower Hamlets Council (THC). Cllr. Kosru Uddin, Development Committee member and board member of the (LTGDC) added: “The (LTGDC) is being disbanded in the Autumn. Some of its powers will be transferred to THC, whilst others will go to the newly formed London Mayoral Development Corporation, which will have to approve any plans of THC once the powers have been transferred.

Shiria Khatun, Councillor

Oddly it seemed, John Baker stressed several times that the mayor and the council were not responsible for the decision to build the waste plant. It was “down to an officers job and ‘administration”. John Baker was at great pains not to criticise the council executive especially the mayor. Cllr. Shiria Khatun addressed the meeting. “London Thames Gateway dictates that THC must have a plan for waste management, but it must take into consideration air quality and nature reserves”. She emphasised that it was the mayor and the executive that was responsible, not the “clerks and council officers” as John Baker had said earlier. “You must demand another meeting with the mayor” she urged the meeting. The Labour Councillor went on to suggest Leabank Project organise a lobby of the council and apply to speak to a council meeting.

Cllr. Khatun, together with another councillor was sitting at the same table as the VOAG. At one point she whispered in my ear “why don’t you speak, go on ask John Baker why he doesn’t want top blame the mayor”. Naturally, the VOAG said nothing. The VOAG has never been to a meeting quite like this. Hidden agendas hung like shadows between the lines of everyone that spoke. It has become clear to the VOAG since the meeting, that the reason John Baker is reluctant to criticise the mayor is because the mayor is holding the funding for the Tower Hamlets Council For Voluntary Service which John Baker is a director of.

The VOAG noted that although the councillors, one independent and three Labour, arrived more or less at the same time, they entered the hall separately and sat as far away from each other as possible. There was a tension between the councillors and also between two of the councillors and John Baker. The source of this tension and the issues behind it, are not quite clear to The VOAG – yet.It was all-in-all an intriguing meeting which left open many questions regarding a serious local issue. There were many different concerns and contradicting agendas represented. What did the councillor mean when he said “the council had no intention of putting the waste facility on the site”? Are the councillors seriously opposed to the project? What are the interests of the landowners? How does the close relationship between the various stakeholder organisations and the councillors effect the dynamics of the debate? And lastly; what on earth was the councillor referring to when he said “many of the businesses were sited on illegally held land”. But as you know: The VOAG is always watching!

SEVEN MORE REASONS WHY WE ALL SHOULD BE MARCHING FOR THE ALTERNATIVE ON MARCH 26TH

Disabled Housing Benefit Slashed
Government figures show about 450,000 disabled people will see their incomes cut under one of the changes planned to housing benefit. From April 2013, housing benefit for working age people in social rented homes will be linked to the size of property councils ‘believe they need’.

An assessment from the Department for Work and Pensions shows the change will leave 450,000 disabled people an average of £13 a week worse off. Many disabled people will have to leave their current home. The government will not even guarantee an alternative.

The government’s Communities Department has announced a review of councils’ statutory duties. Under the reviews proposals, councils would be allowed to decide not to provide any services to disabled people, including residential care and respite for families and carers. This is a very real threat to the lives, security and future of disabled people.

Disability Alliance policy director Neil Coyle said: “We’ve been contacted by people who’ve said that if they lose the kind of support that helps them get to work for example, if they’re no longer entitled to that support, they’ll lose the ability to be independent”.

The Great Pensions Robbery
The Hutton Report into pensions was published on 11^th March. Hutton wants to raise the retirement age to 66 by 2020. Hutton claims that retiring early, say at 55, is no longer acceptable when people are living longer.

Hutton wants to do away with “generous final salary” pension schemes. Instead they will be set at the average salary across a person’s career. Thirdly, Hutton says workers should up their contribution to the pension scheme from 6.4% to 9.4%: i.e. a 3% pay cut or, with inflation running at over 5%, an 8% real pay cut. Scandalously, many unions have already agreed to this increase.

There isn’t anything generous about public sector pensions. The average pension is about £4,200 a year. The Coalition has already linked pension increases to the lower, CPI rate of inflation, so they will depreciate – by as much as £10,000 over the average retirement. http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=47,2797,0,0,1,0

As Unemployment Rises – Job Centre Cuts
Around 7, 000 staff in Jobcentre Plus (JCP) call centres have begun voting this week in a strike ballot over intolerable working conditions. The ballot widens a dispute which led to two days of strike action in January by more than 2, 000 workers in the seven newest contact centres, who have been forcibly moved from processing benefit claims to handling enquiries by phone.

The union says managers have “an obsession” with hitting call centre targets at the expense of providing a good quality public service. The oppressive conditions are resulting in high levels of stress and sickness, and staff are leaving at an alarming rate. Since April 2010, more than 2,700 staff have left – over 20% of the total call centre workforce of 12,800.

The ballot also follows an announcement by senior managers that they want to close more of the department’s benefit processing offices and call centres. JCP is planning to reduce staff from its current 73,000 to 65,600 by 31 March 2012. This is down from a peak of 84,000 at the end of 2009.

HSE Health And Safety Visits May Be Cut By A Third
A leaked letter from the Health and Safety Executive outlines plans to withdraw inspections from entire sectors of industry, including some where “significant risk” remains. Unannounced workplace safety inspector visits may be cut by up to a third. The possibility of an unexpected visit from either an HSE or a local authority safety inspector helps keep employers on their toes; even now, workplaces can go decades without ever seeing an inspector.

 NHS Job Cuts
50,000 NHS staff posts are set for the axe, destroying government claims that the NHS is in safe hands. The news was reported by the Anti-Cuts website False Economy, from information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

David Cameron famously claimed before the election that he would “cut the deficit, not the NHS”. However 10 months into the coalition government, the reality couldn’t be more different, with NHS cuts across the country as local health trusts struggle to save £20bn from their budgets.

The total confirmed NHS staff cuts across the country currently stands at just over 53,150 posts – and that’s before a host of trusts are expected to announce staff cuts over the next four months. The national total is already twice the previous estimate of 27,000 job cuts, published by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) last November.

Here in Guildford, the Royal Surrey has already seen four hundred job losses, together with a reduction of beds per ward. Many NHS trusts are seeing job losses of around 20% of the workforce. http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/more-than-50k-nhs-job-losses

Unemployment
It was reported in the guardian last week that the IMF held a conference about the financial crisis. The policy to emerge from the conference was “internal devaluation”

The idea is that countries with high labour costs relative to its trading partners will get its costs in line by lowering wages. The way they lower their wages is to force workers to take pay cuts under the pressure of high rates of unemployment.

An alternative, argued some would be to promote higher inflation in surplus countries. A higher rate of inflation would have the effect of eroding debt in real terms. A higher inflation rate will also increase the costs of the surplus countries relative to the costs of the deficit countries. It would allow the deficit countries to regain competitiveness.

The IMF and the central banks however have reaffirmed their programme of austerity and mass unemployment. Under our Capitalist system no government or bank is going to compromise its own competitiveness –however short term – for the common good.

Here in Britain, the unemployment rate is now 8%, with youth unemployment running at 20.6%. There are 2.54million presently unemployed according to the ONS, (Office of National Statistics) and another 1.19 million in part-time work because they can not find a full-time job. https://suacs.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/voice-of-anticapitalism-in-guildford-unemployment/  Unemployment is at a 17year high and is set to rise much further once the cuts proposed by the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review are implemented.

Apart from the threat of unemployment and the cuts to pensions and wages, a further attack on wages comes from the government’s plans referred to as the big society. Legions of volunteers, the government hopes will take over the running of public services where skilled workers were previously employed. The unemployed are also to be dragooned into working for their unemployment benefits, to take over the jobs once performed by fellow workers.

Families Could Lose Over £2,700 A Year Despite The ‘No Losers’ Welfare Pledge
Low and middle income families will suffer annual benefit cuts of over £2,700 a year by 2013, despite the government’s pledge that there are to be ‘no losers’ in the setting up of the new universal credit system, the TUC warned last week.

The government has said that no worker will be financially worse off when universal credits replace the current system of tax credits and benefits in April 2013. But in order to fulfil the ‘no losers’ pledge the government will have to reduce benefits before the changes take place in 2013, and so is making swingeing cuts to tax credits and benefits that will leave families thousands of pounds worse off in the run up to the April 2013 changeover.

Between April 2011 and April 2013, the government is introducing a series of welfare cuts which include reducing the amount of childcare costs that can be met by tax credits, freezing elements of working tax credit and child benefit, ending government payments to the child trust fund, and ending child benefit for higher rate taxpayers.

In addition, switching the measure for rating benefits from RPI (Retail Price Index) to CPI (Consumer Price Index) will reduce the value of key benefits over time, saving the Treasury £5.8 billion by April 2015, says the TUC. Housing benefit cuts will also lead to significant reductions in family incomes, including those of many working households. A TUC analysis shows that changes to the tax credit and benefits system alone could leave working families £2,700 a year worse off by April 2013.

Join the TUC demonstration against cuts in London, March 26th. There are coaches leaving from Guildford, subsidised by Unison. Only £2.00RTN. Click on the link at the top of the page for details.

UK austerity measures to throw 1 million into poverty

“The share of the national output going to wage earners fell from 65 percent in 1975 to 53 percent in 2007.” (New Political Economy Network)

The British Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government’s austerity measures will throw almost 1 million more people into poverty over the next three years, including hundreds of thousands of children.

These are the findings of a study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank, produced in collaboration with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

In October, the coalition government announced public spending cuts of £83 billion, including significant cuts in welfare benefits and a wage freeze across the public sector. The measures are not only a deepening of efforts to force working people to carry the cost of the Labour government’s multibillion-pound bailout of the banks. They mark a significant escalation in the attempts of successive governments to force down wages and fully dismantle essential social and welfare provision.

The IFS forecasts that there will be an exponential increase in the numbers of children and adults living in absolute and relative poverty, and a stagnation in the incomes of the broad mass of the population.

The numbers in absolute poverty—defined as households with income of less than 60 percent of the median in 2010/2011, adjusted for inflation—will rise by 900,000 by the end of 2014. Of these, some 200,000 will be children, the first rise in absolute child poverty in 15 years.

The numbers forecast to be pushed into relative poverty are just as damning. The benchmark for relative poverty is determined by median income. But, the IFS states, this target will itself fall, due to the decline in real earnings. As a consequence, relative poverty is forecast to rise by approximately 800,000.

The government’s cuts in housing and welfare benefits, combined with the previous Labour government’s decision to raise National Insurance contributions from next year, hit across the board. Poverty amongst working-age adults without children is expected to rise by 300,000 and 200,000 for absolute and relative poverty respectively.

Families with two children on “middle-incomes” have already suffered a 3.4 percent decline over the past two years, the IFS reported. They earned £988 a year less in 2010 than in 2008. They are expected to lose a further £300 in real terms over the next two years under the government’s spending cuts.

The IFS predictions come under conditions in which almost 2 million children in Britain are already living in conditions of “severe poverty” and fully 4 million are living in poverty.

The government’s measures have been condemned by anti-poverty charities—the very organisations tasked with filling the gap of declining social provision under the coalition’s grotesquely named “Big Society” plan.

They complained that the IFS projections will place the government in breach of the Child Poverty Act, passed into law earlier this year, which commits current and future governments to cut relative child poverty to 10 percent and absolute child poverty to 5 percent over the next decade.

But the government has already stated that it intends to redefine poverty so that “isn’t just about getting above an arbitrary line, but is about improving people’s life chances.”

It was Conservative Howard Flight who gave vent to the class sentiment motivating the assault on welfare. Speaking last month, just after he was selected as one of more than 20 new Tory peers, Flight complained that child benefit was being removed from higher earners. “We’re going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it’s jolly expensive. But for those on benefits, there is every incentive. Well, that’s not very sensible”, he said.

His remarks came barely a week after Lord Young, one of Prime Minister David Cameron’s senior advisers, was forced to resign after stating, “For the vast majority of people in the country today, they have never had it so good ever since this so-called recession—started.”

A Treasury spokesperson dismissed the IFS report, claiming that “uncertainty” in the model it had employed meant that the “small differences they identify may not be meaningful”.

Elements of the coalition’s cuts package were also criticised by the Labour Party. The real measure of its stance, however, is made clear by the fact that it is Labour MP Frank Field who is drawing up the government report on “redefining” child poverty.

The coalition’s austerity measures come after a 30-year period in which successive governments have conducted a systematic assault on the social position of working people.

According to a report by the New Political Economy Network, the share of the national output going to wage earners fell from 65 percent in 1975 to 53 percent in 2007. It was Labour that fuelled the increase in the “working poor”. Through its various welfare “credits,” it ensured that business had access to a large army of workers on minimum pay, funded at taxpayers’ expense.

During the same time frame, as wage rises fell behind productivity, personal debt as a proportion of disposable income rose from 45 percent in 1980 to 160 percent in 2007.

As the report noted, “People did not borrow to increase their consumption. They borrowed to compensate for wages that were increasingly falling behind productivity increases. As household debt rocketed between 2001 and 2007, levels of consumption as a proportion of GDP actually fell”.

Even prior to the 2008 financial collapse, Labour’s policies had led to a vast increase in social inequality. A survey by the National Equality Panel based on figures from 2007/2008 found that the richest 10 percent of the population were over 100 times wealthier than the poorest 10 percent, and that income inequality had reached its highest point since the end of the Second World War.

Now, unemployment has crossed the 2.5 million mark, rising by 35,000 in the three months to October. Much of this was accounted for by the fall in pubic sector employment by 33,000, as the spending cuts began to make their mark.

The situation is even worse amongst the young. The number of 18- to 24-year-olds claiming unemployment benefit has quadrupled since 2008, from 5,840 to more than 25,800. In July, UKJobs.net reported that the average annual salary had dropped by more than £2,600 in the past six months, with across-the-board wages falling from £28,207 to £25,543.

As a consequence of huge levels of indebtedness, rising unemployment and the undermining of welfare provision, millions are now threatened with penury.

According to the Independent, the number of emergency welfare loans paid out to people in dire distress has almost trebled in the last five years. More than 3.6 million “crisis loans” were made in the last financial year—up from 1.3 million in 2005/2006. The government has now said that, from April, Job Centre staff will begin issuing vouchers for people to exchange for emergency food supplies.

The Bank of England has also forecast a tightening financial squeeze on many families due to soaring commodity and utility prices, and the planned Value Added Tax hike to 20 percent from January 1. It warned that more than one in two people with unsecured debts are struggling to cope. This is especially the case where some credit companies are charging up to 2,600 percent interest a year.

On Monday, the Confederation of British Industry warned that interest rates would have to rise almost sixfold due to inflation over the next 24 months—from 0.5 percent to 2.75 percent by 2012. This would mean millions of homeowners facing a hike of almost £200 on the average monthly mortgage payment.

Meanwhile, the directors of the FTSE 100 companies have seen their total earnings rise by an average of 55 percent over the past year. The Incomes Data Services revealed last month that chief executives at the 100 most highly capitalised firms on the London Stock Exchange had received an average of £4.9 million in total in the year to June.

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Councillors Must Join The Anti-Cuts Movement And Resist The Cuts

Councillors, If you want our votes Fight The cuts!

In many areas Labour councillors say they will “fight the cuts” — but also implement them! They say they have no choice. In fact they can and should use their council positions as platforms to mobilise to defy the cuts.

The alternative is not a little harmless trimming. Central government is set to cut councils’ funding by 25% over the next four and a half years. Since much that councils do is “statutory” — background stuff that they must do, by law — a 25% cut is huge social destruction.

Poplar’s Labour council, in 1921, and the Labour council of the town of Clay Cross, in 1972-4, upheld the interests of their working-class communities by defying central government constraints, and won victories.

Poplar extracted extra funds for councils with a poor local tax base; Clay Cross created the pressure which made the incoming Labour government in 1974 repeal Tory legislation to force council rent rises.

During the Thatcher cuts of the 1980s, Liverpool’s Labour council went to the brink of defying the government over cuts. It won solid working-class support for defiance.

The Liverpool council leadership, under the influence of Militant (now the Socialist Party), dodged and blinked at the crunch, and ended up making cuts. But if the councillors had held firm, Thatcher could probably have been beaten back over cuts (and the great miners’ strike then underway could have won).

Defiance involves risk for councillors. The Poplar councillors were jailed for a short period; the Clay Cross councillors were surcharged and made bankrupt.

Like industrial strikes, council defiance cannot be made risk-free. The question for councillors, as for workers in a strike, is whether they are prepared to take risks in the cause of working-class solidarity, or choose to save their own position at the expense of others. The risks of defiance are smaller now than they used to be. The details are given later in this article.

 Labour councils which put working-class solidarity first should:
• Not make social cuts now! Whatever the coming central government cuts, councils are large organisations with complex finances which give them leeway. They can cut top management, payments to consultants, and councillors’ expenses. They can juggle accounts to move spending items from one financial year to the next. Although there are legal limits on councils borrowing, there may still be loopholes. (Liverpool council found one in 1985, borrowing from Swiss banks).
• Mobilise council workers, council tenants, and local communities for a fight. Financial gambits are no long-term answer, but they can allow for time to mobilise. Obviously councillors will have little credibility when calling on workers and tenants to fight unless they make a stand themselves.
• Aim towards a concerted act of local working-class defiance — councillors refusing to budget within central government limits, council workers striking, council tenants rent-striking, residents withholding council tax — with the demand that central government restores the money for local services.

If all Labour councils took this stand, then the Lib/Tory government would have to retreat very quickly. If even a sizeable few did, then the government would be in big trouble. Poplar and Clay Cross showed that even a single council, on its own, can win a victory.

Once mobilisation is started, it should be controlled democratically by a local delegate committee of working-class organisations- an Anti-Cuts committee, with the councillors taking part alongside others. The time to move to all-out defiance should be decided by that delegate committee. It will depend on the tempo of mobilisation, on possibilities of linking up with other working-class struggles against the government, and so on.

Deficit budget
The idea that Labour councils should mobilise against the cuts, rather than implementing them, is often expressed in terms of asking them to set “a deficit budget”.

This is slightly misleading, for two reasons. Central governments often set deficit budgets (budgets in which spending exceeds income). They make good the gap by borrowing, or just by printing money.

Councils cannot print money, and have tight legal limits on their borrowing. A “deficit budget” is essentially an agitational gesture. It may be a good agitational gesture. But it will be a gesture to help mobilise, not the aim of the mobilisation.

The “deficit budget” formulation focuses everything on council budget day in April. That might be the right time to “go over the top”. Or it might not. The decision should be based on the democratic discussions of the local campaign, rather than administrative schedules.

The semi-defiant Labour councils of 1985 delayed budget-setting rather than setting illegal budgets. In the end they all set legal budgets. Liverpool and Lambeth councillors got surcharged, not for any decisive act of defiance, but for their delay in setting a budget.

Before 1985, left Labour councils had relied on raising rates (local property taxes, charged on tenants rather than owners) to offset central government cuts.

Nothing similar is an option now. Business rates are set by central government, not by councils. Domestic rates have been replaced by council tax.

Council tax income is as little as 10% of councils’ budgets, most of the rest coming from central government and from fees and charges, so to offset cuts of 25% in central government funding, council tax would have to be raised maybe 100%. Council tax is a regressive tax. In any case, central government has, and uses, powers to “cap” council tax rises.

In the past, defiant Labour councillors have been jailed and surcharged. In the 1980s, there was a standing threat of “commissioners” being sent in to push aside the elected councillors and run the local authority.

Under current legislation, those penalties seem no longer to exist. The first move against councillors taking a defiant stand is that unelected council officials — the Chief Financial Officer and the Monitoring Officer (usually the Deputy Chief Executive) — are legally mandated to issue “warnings” to councillors acting “out of line”.

The councillors can override the Chief Financial Officer and the Monitoring Officer, though only after a “cooling-off period”.

If they do override the Officers, anyone can bring a complaint against each individual councillor to a body called the Standards Board, which in turn can refer it to the Adjudication Panel. (Thousands of complaints against councillors are brought to the Standards Board routinely, without any such previous drama. Presumably a complaint brought after councillors had defied the Officers would get further than most others do).

The Standards Board and the Adjudication Panel can fine, temporarily suspend, or disqualify councillors, but not surcharge or jail them, or send in “commissioners” to take over the council.

The Tory/Lib government has announced that it plans to replace the Standards Board regime by a different one, but it has not done that yet, and it is not clear that the different regime would reintroduce the more severe penalties.

For now, in short — unless some keen lawyer comes up with another, more obscure, legal path — councillors face smaller risks than in the 1980s or 1920s.

Local Labour Parties serious about fighting cuts do, however, need to identify “substitute” council candidates who will stand in by-elections created if defiant councillors are disqualified.
Whole labour movement fight
No Labour council today is offering even the general talk about defiance which was fairly commonplace in the early 1980s. It is hard to find even individual left-wing Labour councillors bold enough to vote against cuts. For that matter, council unions are generally less defiant and demanding than they were in the early 1980s.

To do anything other than accept huge damage by Tory cuts, the whole labour movement has to reshape and reorient itself now. It won’t be Labour councils that lead that reorientation. But Labour and trade union activists need to start arguing now about what Labour councils can and should do as part of a developing militant anti-cuts movement.

The first argument is that council Labour groups should integrate themselves into local anti-cuts committees, and make their strategies and options a matter for democratic debate in the local labour movement, rather than “there is no alternative” announcements.

With local elections due in May, anti-cuts groups should be asking the candidates about their willingness to defy the cuts. If councillors or candidates are unwilling to defy local cuts or set budgets outside the central government’s framework, anti-cuts groups should select their own candidates to stand against them.

If candidates in the forthcoming elections want the support of the anti-cuts committees, we need to see them on our streets, on our demonstrations, and in our meetings. They need to be leading the local resistance to the cuts.

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Dates to remember:
26^th January: Demonstration in Guildford: Against the education and public service cuts. Give us back our EMA!

26^th March: TUC National Demonstration Against The Cuts in London – Buses are leaving from Guildford £2.00rtn. Email:guildfordagainstfeesandcuts@yahoo.co.uk to reserve a ticket.