Did anyone notice that PCS was on strike today?

The main civil service union PCS began a week-long series of regional strikes in its long running dispute with the Government over pensions, pay and conditions of service, not forgetting all the other issues such as cuts and austerity measures that  Mark Serwotka and his cronies have added to the list of demands. Trouble is no one seems to have noticed.

 

This afternoon I googled the dispute and the "top story" was from the Socialist Party's website which when accessed was just a reprint of the PCS press release. All the other first page entries were PCS website mentions plus the inevitable statement from the SWP front organisation Unite the Resistance who claimed "200,000 members were to strike". Not one single newspaper article nor references to television reports either. So what's gone wrong?

 

The strikes were actually taking place in the two biggest government department, the DWP and the HMRC. You'd think that would at least solicit some interest from the media? Unfortunately it hasn't and since strikes by PCS are almost constantly taking place somewhere they have no longer become newsworthy it would seem. The other problem which the PCS leadership refuses to face up to is the low turnout by members (under a third last time it went national) which continues to decline.

 

The announcement of the 2013 Pay offer in the DWP led to standard comments from members who were faced with a package that they were expecting. A 1% pay rise with a small but welcome bonus for all except the bottom performing 5%. There was no decision for members to be faced with either as the unions pay briefing document stated quite clearly there would be no ballot as the NEC automatically rejected any offer of 1%. Another one of Serwotka's "King Arthur" moments, he surely knows best. No point in asking us at all. Why should we bother with all this democracy nonsense, eh Mark!

 

Not that it would make any difference as the pay offer will be imposed on us at the end of July anyway.

 

This all happened on the day that Facility Time (used by Reps to deal with union/members issues) changed in the DWP, except no one Management or union knows what the new rules are. Except there's less of it, though no one actually knows how much less and any time used will be deducted from an unknown pot. Confused, we all were!

 

The (lack of) time to run the union and represent members was something PCS Reps knew was coming, much of what we do will now have to be done outside work, in our own time including Branch Executives and so on which will cause difficulties for Reps with children/caring responsibilities. Even locally there was a debate about not representing members who cross a picket line. Legally PCS has to, but lay reps are not obliged. Personally I think this attitude is not only impractical in the current circumstances but outdated.

 

With two thirds or more of members not taking part in strike action coupled with the fact people join the unions more for "personal insurance" reasons suggest that this could so easily become a self-defeating attitude. Making it difficult to get  representation is more likely to drive people out of PCS. After all members costs what, around £150 a year, all most people see is the (now bi-monthly) magazine and a diary once a year. Even a former member of the National Executive opined he'd rather spend the money on beer these days having given up his membership.

 

Yet there is a growing gulf between members and activists as a motion at the DWP Conference actually now makes this caveat to membership official policy. Whilst this may have passed most members by for the time being, as people become aware of it and are asked (and refuse to) take part in industrial action that was actually never going to achieve anything even at the beginning, the ineffectiveness of the dispute will add to those who are already questioning the point of belonging to PCS.

 

Some will drift away, but a few are asking if there is another union they can  join. If the PCS leadership carries on with its' current course such sentiments will grow and the PCS union may go into a decline from which it will never recover from.

 

A real question needs to be asked. Does the union belong to and represent its' members or does it exist only to further the interests of the activist class? At the moment the latter is the case. It's time to change that before it is too late.

The growing Islamist threat in Turkey

The current spate of demonstrations against the Turkish Government come at a time when the Islamist based Justice and Development Party are undermining both parliamentary democracy and the secularist constitution of the country. A more dictatorial system is being sought by Prime Minister Recep Erdogan as Le Monde reports:

Erdogan wants to conquer the Presidency in 2014. He wishes to do this after having reformed the constitution in the direction of a Presidential system. Many fear this will mean yet further clampdowns

When the rioting broke out, Erdogan was at a press conference speaking out against smoking, another of his steps towards the Islamisation of Turkey. Already attempts are being made to restrict the sale of alcohol and prevent "public displays of affection" which follow the continued censorship of not just the press and TV, but even the soaps and dramas that form a much needed export to the rest of the Muslim world.

The Sunday Times tells us that these demonstrations are already being described as the "Turkish Spring" by some commentators.  Evidence of this is that members of the armed forces (who have been the natural defenders of the country's secular constitution) have been witnessed refusing to help the police and according to the Sunday Times even handing out gas masks to protesters.

Le Monde further reports that:

This electoral stranglehold allowed Erdogan to get rid of all those inside the state who might be opposed to the government. The army , the bureaucracy and the judiciary, the press, which had previously opposed him, have become instruments of the AKP, the ruling party and its leader.

Since Erdogan has been purging the armed forces in recent years it should be no surprise that there remains considerable consternation amongst their personnel. It also explains why there has been a three-fold increase in the numbers of police, though reports suggest some police have actually joined the protesters!

The evolution of Erdogan and his Islamist Government into an authoritarian regime should come as no surprise. In the nineties he had a reputation as a Islamic firebrand, being jailed in 1999 for reciting a poem calling for the overthrow of secularism in Turkey. Despite presenting himself as a "moderate" and a "democrat", he has proved himself to be neither.

This should serve as a warning to those foolish enough to have believed that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the Ennahda Party in Tunisia could be trusted with the reins of power. In all three countries the regimes have not just attacked secularism, but also the basic tenants of democracy right down to the trade unions.

The Salafists, allies of Ennahda have been physically attacking the trade unions for months. The Turkish Government have launched mass arrests of trade unionists (see: http://howiescorner.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/act-now-arrested-turkish-trade.html) and despite the seeming retreat of police from Gezi Park the threat remains to not only the protesters but all democracy activists across Turkey.

One has to ask why the Erdogran feels it necessary to destroy a public park and build a replica of an Ottoman-era army barracks in its' place? Is this part of a growing desire to promote the days of an Islamic empire as part of his growing desire to expand his version of Islamic hegemony through alliances with Tunisia & Egypt via a conflict with both Syria and the Kurds?

Whatever Erdogan's motive, democrats, human rights activists and the trade union movement in Turkey must be supported against yet another clerical fascist regime.

Update: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-02/erdogan-reviled-as-autocrat-in-protests-clouding-presidency-bid.html

Promote HOPE not hate. Fight back against all forms of fascism!

The Hope not Hate organisation has arranged for the publication of a letter from Eddie Izzard in today's issue of the Daily Mirror to call on people everywhere, no matter what their background to oppose the marches of hate being organised by the misnamed English Defence League.

According to an e-mail I received this morning this has been counter-signed by 36,000 people.

Go to: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hope-not-hate-letter-mirror-1925188

Hope not Hate can be found at:

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/


Peter Tatchell the veteran gay rights campaigner has issued the following statement with a call to the Unite Against Fascism organisation to take the threat of Islamist fascists seriously:

This was published at Harry's Place: http://hurryupharry.org/

The BNP & EDL claim to oppose Islamist extremist bigotry but in reality they generalise and abuse all Muslims. Many of their protests are menacing, even violent.

Islam is not the main problem. Islamist fundamentalism and violent jihad are what we should focus on opposing. It is important to make a clear distinction between Muslims and Islamist extremists. Don’t confuse the two. Unite to isolate the main threats: the Islamist far right and its BNP and EDL equivalents.

I support today’s Unite Against Fascism (UAF) counter-protest against the BNP. But UAF is not consistent. UAF commendably opposes the BNP and EDL but it is silent about Islamist fascists who promote anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism and sectarian attacks on non-extremist Muslims.

This silence and inaction by the UAF is a shocking betrayal of Muslim people – abandoning them to the Islamist far right.

Islamist fascists want to overthrow democracy, establish a clerical dictatorship, suppress human rights and kill Muslims who don’t conform to their hard-line interpretation of Islam.

It is time the UAF campaigned against the Islamist far right, as well as against the EDL and BNP far right.

A riposte to the Socialist Unity website

A few days ago I found reason to take issue with the comments policy undertaken by the Socialist Unity website. In doing so I noted that there was little opportunity to tackle the shibboleths of the politics of the far left, but noted that whilst the main parties of the Trotskyist milieu (Socialist Workers Party and  Socialist Party) did not allow comments on their sites, Socialist Unity was one of the places where there was at least some debate.

However the debate there became noticeably limited when it came to discussing the Woolich Terrorist atrocity. In raising this issue again I note that the main censor at Socialist Unity Tony Collins does not consider the incident to be terrorist. He attacks the Socialist Party/National Shop Stewards Network thus;

FFS, even the Socialist Party’s National Shop Stewards Network has given in to the narrative and called the murder a “terrorist attack”. What happened to not surrendering to mass media hysteria?

Bizarre to say the least.

In another post criticising one of the posters he opines that:

Grow up and debate like an adult.

Really Tony? Sounds like double standards to me. He refers to my recent article published both here and at Harry's Place:

One right-wing commenter is upset cos I wouldn’t allow his comment through. He said “we need to deal with the EDL and hate preachers equally” – but then guess what he did? He spent the entire comment only talking about the Muslim side of the equation, about the problem with these Muslims. 6 paragraphs. Nothing at all about the EDL – apart from the platitude, the “we must take them seriously”. The rest of the post was about the Muslims.

You people are appeasers and are totally surrendering to racism. And seriously, don’t bleat about censorship. You’ve got the entire mass media saying exactly the same things you are bravely saying.

The real censorship comes from you people, who won’t even admit the rest of us to the debate unless it’s on your terms.

I’m proud of the anti-racist stand this site takes. We don’t give in to fake concern about racism from people who never do a damned thing to combat it. There’s one consistent thread from these people – they never simply stand with Muslims to fight against racism. They always, always try to switch the debate to “what are we gonna do about these extremist Muslims then?”

The reason I took this issue up is not because he censored my views (which he distorts in his response) but he undertook to censor everyone who dared raise the question of how we should deal with hate preachers. This was noted by the blogger from Hatful of History whose "complaint about being deleted" was duly deleted. The censorship was also picked up by "treelover" over at Urban 75, one of the few places on the far-left where wide ranging free debate does take place.

For the record the thread on Socialist Unity had published 40 comments nearly all of which had seemingly concentrated on the far-right/EDL. I responded to the following comment:

This morning the EDL page has over 114,000 ‘likes’, meaning that over 114,000 people are now part of the EDL network and receive EDL messages in their fb feed. I’d say that this is important in a political sense.

My rather innocuous contribution was:

That is worrying and shows why we need to respond to the the atrocity by (a) standing up to the BNP/EDL and (b) the Hate preachers of Islamism at the same time.

Another left wing blog had problems with local Salafists last weekend:

http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/jimas-gets-police-to-threaten-tendance-coatesy/

These people are dangerous and a threat to us all regardless of how “left-wing” people consider themselves. The Salafists in Tunisia have already been attacking Trade Unions and at one point burnt down 3 TU offices which was reported on Labourstart.

It needs to be remembered that these people are also a threat to Muslims, not just because they aim to create strife in the wider community (by provoking the boneheads of the far-right) but want to impose their will on other Muslims the vast majority of whom just want to get on with their lives.

Everyone needs to remember by the way that there is no one Muslim Community. My immediate neighbours are from Kosovo and are totally westernised whilst many of my work colleagues differ in country of origin, dress and culture.

Tackling the hate preachers will have to take a multi-faceted approach.

Too much for Socialist Unity, which is seemingly becoming more shrill in its debating methods.  Hardly bleating on about "Muslims" as Tony Collins puts it so nicely.

Andrew Coates responded to my comments on the thread at Harry's Place by stating that "Socialist Unity live in their own little world".

The far left prove yet again that they are part of the problem and never the solution.

PCS: Its time to end the current dispute

Despite all the evidence showing that the continuing industrial action is (a) having no effect on the Government and (b) is leading to lower turnouts of members as each of the piecemeal strikes take place the PCS Grandees led by Mark Serwotka are hell bent on carrying on regardless.

Next week a series of regional strikes are due to be held in the two largest Government Departments, the HMRC and the DWP. Members where in clear despair when they discovered they were being called on yet again to lose yet another days pay for what they increasingly see as being for "no good reason", even some of the more "hard core" members are questioning the continuation of the dispute.

With barely a third of members having participated at the height of the strike, the numbers are now clearly set to decline as in addition to one day strikes next week, PCS has also announced a further national one day strike at the end of June.

There was even consternation amongst many PCS reps on the ground, who whilst "loyally" handing out leaflets for next week are themselves under no illusions as to the veracity of continuing action. Their mood can be described as simply "going through the motions". This dispute also comes at a time when union reps in the civil service face huge cuts to "Facility time". This will seriously affect the ability of Reps to conduct their duties on behalf of members.

The far-left who continue to dominate the PCS union seem oblivious to the consequences of continuing a dispute which not only has no end in sight but also so far has achieved zero. The Socialist Party who effectively control PCS through the Left Unity formation no longer can even claim to have a "General Strike" in view as their ultimate aim. This is clearly a non-stater despite all their earlier protestations.

Members will only be prepared to go so far and although it could be said that a protest was necessary to let the Government know our feelings, the key "demands" of the dispute are long defeated. Pensions have already been changed, the Pay freeze will continue to be implemented and changes to conditions of service will not hit current members. That's the reality.

The right to strike is a basic human right and there will be times when they are necessary, but there also comes a time when striking simply because the PCS leaders are motivated by an unrealistic political agenda (and by a couple of vainglorious egos) become damaging.

That point has been reached in the current dispute.

The current strikes must now come to an end. 

There may come a time when members in some areas will need to take action, especially over the threatened privatisation of the Courts. A campaign needs to be launched on this issue and links made with the large sections of magistrates, police and the judiciary that are opposed to this.

In other words the PCS union needs to sit down and re-think its' long term industrial and political strategy. The current one isn't working.

Mark Serwotka and his  Socialist Party allies are not up for the task. They are stuck in a mindset that isn't fit for the twenty-first century. They need to go.

The far-left have badly damaged this union. If they carry on this way they'll totally wreck it. 

Just ask the members in SOCA!

Unite leader welcomes Islamic Jihad terrorist to the UK

Cross posted from Trade Unions 

Linking Israel & Palestine

Adrian Weir [pictured], the assistant chief of staff at Unite, Britain’s largest trade union, gave a speech recently at a demonstration protesting Israel’s hosting the UEFA Under-21 football championship.

He began the speech by delivering “the solidarity greetings of General Secretary, Len McCluskey, the Executive Council of Unite and our 1.5 million members in Britain and Ireland”. The speech is the usual litany of half-truths and outright lies that one expects from the PSC — e.g., Israel “is effectively an apartheid state” — but also includes this sentence: “Friends, on behalf of Unite I welcome Mahmoud Sarsak here today.”

Mahmoud Sarsak is, apparently, a member of the Palestine national football team who was detained by Israel and held without trial. Following a hunger strike, he was released from jail in July 2012.

The Israelis accused Sarsak of having planted a bomb that injured an Israeli soldier and being a member of Islamic Jihad, one of the more extreme and violent Islamist groups. Sarsak’s supporters deny this.

But according to this report in a Turkish newspaper, upon his return to Gaza, where he was greeted as a hero, doubt was cast upon his version of things. Here is what Today’s Zaman wrote:

“Israel has accused Sarsak of being active in the violent group Islamic Jihad, a claim he denied while in custody. However, senior Islamic Jihad officials were present during his reception Tuesday, and one of the group’s leaders, Nafez Azzam, praised the footballer as ‘one of our noble members.’”

Oops.

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Trade Unions Linking Israel & Palestine can be found here: http://www.tuliponline.org/

The far left, hate clerics and censorship

Most websites run by far-left groups lack one thing; a comments box. This is certainly the case with the two "biggest fish" in the very small pond that the far-left operate in, the Socialist Party (Militant) and the Socialist Workers Party. These two groups don't even have a proper letters page in their main publications The Socialist and Socialist Worker. The only letters they take are platitudes from their own supporters, Socialist Worker being the worst culprit with seemingly almost "made up" letters.

 

The SWP in particular are and have been shown to be quite hostile to the Internet as their recent internal dispute showed. They expelled members for the "crime" of discussing issues pertaining to the internal workings of the SWP on their Face Book pages. In one way this showed a generational divide between the hard-line hacks who grew up in the era before the advent of the Internet and the younger (student) generation that uses tools like e-mail, twitter and Face Book  as a normal part of their daily routine.

 

Part of this imperative is that groups like the SWP issue "statements" on behalf of their party and these edicts cannot be challenged in public (and in private it would seem) by their members or supporters, so anyone else outside their group is highly unlikely to get the opportunity to raise a direct challenge on their website pages.

 

Of course there are exceptions to this. The tiny Alliance for Workers Liberty certainly does encourage debate, but with few readers the comments are few and far between. The Weekly Worker published by the tiny Communist Party of Great Britain has a very lively letters page but currently lacks a comments facility though in their case probably because of limited resources.

 

The Internet has led to the rise of numerous political forums, some like Urban 75 engage in open and free debate, though it is more of a chat room than a political entity in itself. There is however a website called Socialist Unity which when I first came across it a few years ago seemed to offer the same, except it doesn't.

 

The terrorist attack and brutal murder of Lee Rigby was at the heart of most political websites attention for the past few days. Socialist Unity published a couple of articles on the subject and debate was opened. It soon became abundantly clear that discussion was being limited by Tony Collins one of the sites Editorial Board. At first there seemed to be no problems, I posted a brief link to give an alternative view but later on I noticed that a further contribution was "awaiting moderation" (and never published) even though there was certainly nothing untoward in my contribution.

 

Later by chance, I noticed the guy from the Hatful of History blog questioned where his comments about the Islamic preachers had gone so I chipped in to. Both these were deleted. This continued policy of deletion was picked up by someone on the Urban 75 thread where the same issue was under discussion. The poster noted that "Tony Collins appears to be deleting any posts on SU which argue that Islamic extremists should be challenged at all levels."

Earlier Andy Newman, the main individual associated with SU had stated there needed to be a discussion so that we could "understand" why this had happened. How can we understand anything without discussing the influence and nature of the Islamist/Salafist Preachers of hate? What exactly are the political reasons behind the refusal of SU to allow debate on this?

 

The answer for now is we don't know. Had there been a debate we might have found out. It's difficult to speculate on the reasoning but I do note that SU tends to be a fan of the populist George Galloway and doesn't tend to offer much in the way of criticism of "Islamism". Indeed there was some consternation when SU published an article by one of Iran's clerics. One poster enquired what this piece was doing on a "socialist" website. Indeed.

The latest issue of Socialist Worker has now appeared on line and is interesting to read as their main article Together we can challenge the bigots contains no condemnation in fact quite the opposite

Socialists can see why some people want to lash out to avenge the victims of imperialism.

But individual acts of violence won’t beat our rulers.

The SWP are disgusting, no other word for it.

Like the "preachers of hate" they conflate British foreign policy with these attacks which is nonsense as these are the same people who all those years ago called for the death of Salman Rushdie just because he wrote a book they didn't like. The "Hate" tendency has always been there.

As a letter writer in The Times points out today:

....the implication... that the solution to Islamic extremism is to tailor our foreign policy to suit the wishes of those who would otherwise risk becoming violent. This is tantamount to saying a violent minority should be allowed to shape our foreign policy.

Quite.

These extremists would find something else to get violent about. Have people so soon forgotten the "Muslim Patrol" that hassled women and others minding their own business because they were in a so-called "Muslim area". 

These thugs need no excuse. They simply want to impose their will on the rest of us.

As do the Marxist-Leninists such as the Socialist Workers Party. This group (and others of their ilk) will seek to take advantage of this atrocity for their own advantage.

Those of us who believe in democracy must stand up against extremism whether it comes from the far left, the far right or religious fundamentalism.