Wishful thinking on the far left

The release of Ken Loach's film and his subsequent statement has led to the establishment of yet another group to the left of the Labour Party which goes by the name of Left Unity. Not exactly original and frankly a name that is itself based in wishful thinking as one thing the far-left has never been good at is "unity".

They seem to be embarking on the road to establishing themselves as a political party with the name the Left Party now being touted around their inner circles.  They claim to have around 100 local groups though their membership does not seem to have increased much since I last wrote about them in March. Rather they have started holding meetings and are planning their first national conference to maybe agree some kind of manifesto around which the new set of comrades can agree.

Unique amongst the organised far left they do have an open and active blog which is worth dipping into on occasion. The contributions range from articles by quite genuine unaligned activists to the ridiculous, but at least they don't censor other peoples views.

What prompted me to cover this group again was an article by Will McMahon who wants an electoral alliance with the Trade Union & Socialist Coalition. The TUSC is the bastard son of the Socialist Party and has garnered not just the support of the SWP but the affiliation (and bankrolling ) of the RMT. Not that this had led to any breakthrough of any description. Not that this puts our Will off claiming:

 ....the capacity of TUSC to get credible votes in local elections (not withstanding some of its poorer votes). A series of three to five per cent plus votes in council by-elections, most recently in Southampton, in spite of the lack of serious organisational infrastructure at either local or national levels and a rather unwieldy name, indicates that the basis for an electoral vehicle for socialism still exists.

Given that the turnouts in these elections tended to be extremely low 5% of little represents nothing. has he so soon forgotten the Eastleigh by-election. But that's not all, Machon goes on to consider that:

A clear staging post on the way to a new mass socialist party establishing itself as a permanent feature in the national psyche will be the 2014 local and 2015 general elections. An electoral coalition made up of TUSC, Left Unity, local socialist groups and thousands of independent socialists, as well as the existing far left groups, that stood in over 120 constituencies in 2015, would begin to present itself as a national political alternative for the working class. The seriousness of such a project could draw to it tens of thousands of grass roots militants and campaigners alongside existing leaders of non-Labour affiliated trade unions

Given that most trade unionists and members simply want the removal of the Coalition Government , I suspect that even if the notice such an alliance, they will be voting for the candidates best placed to remove the Tories and their Lib Dem allies. The Tories will be under threat from UKIP which is also likely to attract support from sections of the disaffected working class.

Of course reference is made to previous "unity" projects on the far-left starting with the Socialist Labour Party launched by Arthur Scargill, the Socialist Alliance, and the TUSC. I leave out Respect because it seems to me to be more of a far-right formation in many ways, but that debate can take place another time when Galloway starts kicking off again. The point is all these projects failed. The reason? The involvement of the Leninist sects (SWP, SP etc) and their potential involvement worries the LU comrades.

Their discussion threads contain numerous references to what is basically the self centered and elitist nature of all these competing outfits who try to raid anything that moves to recruit them to the party. And yes it does sound a bit like a night out on the razzle.

The comrades at Left Unity are right to be worried, these groups wreck everything they get involved in (just look at my union PCS). It would be a pity if the efforts of ordinary people were wasted, so rather than found a new party that will probably cease to exist in a few years time, if that my advice is to adopt a more realistic approach.

Get involved in the unions or the Labour Party. There really is no alternative, sorry guys.

PCS members stuck between a trot and a hard government

The PCS union launched a "day of action" following the decision of it's National Executive Committee to call of a planned strike today. Unsurprisingly there was no mention of it across most of the media and the actual numbers of members who took part was quite limited. This action comes after Mark Serwotka the General Secretary of the PCS made a speech at the so-called Peoples Assembly in which he stated:

"PCS represents some of the lowest paid workers in Britain, and we have had a strike in every single week for the last month. 

True, but to what effect one has to ask. Lets see what John McInally, PCS Vice President has to say in The Socialist newspaper:

We know our action is having a real disruptive impact but ministers are refusing to talk to us because they are trying to make deals at departmental or group level without talking to the union nationally. They want to stop effective collective bargaining.

He continues:

One of the reasons PCS is able to deliver action consistently is that we've always consulted with members and activists, so that the action will be effective and sustainable.

Really? At no stage have more than a third of members taken strike action and in many departments the turnout has been from low to derisory. The leadership have failed to motivate the vast majority of members and whilst they clearly do have what they call an "activist base", the argument with members about the necessity of action at this time has been far from won.

McInally tells us there will be a long period of consultation with the members, ostensibly to find out members views. Whether many members will bother taking part is another question. Every year PCS members are exalted to the need for industrial action, usually coinciding with the internal electoral process of the union.

The era of austerity has sent to the wild eyed Trotskyists who run PCS into a state of apoplexy. The leadership of PCS, dominated by the Socialist Party and the SWP immediately launched a campaign for for strikes without really thinking things through, let alone considering whether plans for such long term action would be sustainable by the very people who would be expected to make the necessary sacrifice needed.

More to the point could PCS really do it alone? John McInally continues to "talk the talk" when he says:

We'll also try to build as many alliances as possible with other unions. Members are asking themselves why, while every part of the public sector is under attack, PCS seems to be the only union taking action.

Every time PCS has tried to make such "alliances" they have manged to fall out with their allies. Trying to support an alternative candidate against Len McCluskey of Unite botched that one and the National Union of Teachers are more concerned about getting the other large teaching union, the NASUWT on board rather than blindly follow Serwotka and co.

Today saw a major attack on the civil service take place. The Yorkshire Post reported that Chancellor. George Osborne announced:

The Chancellor said public sector pay rises will be limited to an average of up to one per cent for 2015-16 and automatic progression pay and re-grading were being scrapped.

He said: “Progression pay can at best be described as antiquated; at worst, it’s deeply unfair to other parts of the public sector who don’t get it and to the private sector who have to pay for it.

“So we will end automatic progression pay in the Civil Service by 2015-16.

So it would seem a new dispute is in the making. Except there is a real problem. The PCS/Socialist Party leadership has spent so long on promoting a Marxist inspired "generalisation" of the class struggle as a substitute for a proper trade union campaign that they have already undermined a substantial section, if not the majority of the membership.

This reductionism  is continued by McInally who writes:

The best way forward is to build mass coordinated action, including a 24-hour general strike in order to defeat austerity.

Even the "Peoples (or activists) Assembly" did not end up backing such a call much to the Socialist Party's chagrin.  They are heading towards a day of "civil disobedience" as the PCS website points out:

A national day of civil disobedience is planned for November 5 and a second national People's Assembly will be held in spring 2014. 

Such disobedience probably means UK Uncut bothering shoppers in Oxford Street and  a few hooded Anarchists smashing things up. Not an activity that PCS members could get involved with, if they want to keep their jobs. there are rules on "conduct unbecoming civil servants" that Management would probably jump at to use against Reps.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Dan Hodges says:

Then there are the union leaders themselves. Moderates, like TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady, think the whole idea is barking mad, which is why she successfully headed off calls for a General Strike a couple of months ago.

But O’Grady is expending quite a bit of internal political capital keeping the more militant unions in line. So much so, that there’s even been talk by some of them of just going ahead and organising one without the TUC’s official sanction.

There is a need not just for a futile one way consultation about the non existent prospect for further action amongst PCS members at this time, but also everyone needs to consider the future of trade unionism in these changed times.

A challenging prospect, but one that is really needed to ensure that unions not only survive and prosper but pick and choose the fights they can win without undue influence from parasitical outsiders that have their own agendas and not our interests at heart.

UK: TUFI attacks union support for BDS; TUC clarifies – boycotts of settlement goods only

Cross-posted from TULIP http://www.tuliponline.org/

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

In an article published last week on the Left Foot Forward website, Alex Bjarnason, organiser and communications Officer for Trade Union Friends of Israel, attempts to explain why many British trade unions have supported the campaign to boycott the Jewish state.
He writes:

“I’m often asked what motivates these activists, beyond the reaction to genuine injustice that angers us all. Many belong to far-left fringe groups and view the State of Israel as a colonial experiment supported by American imperial ambitions, based on occupying stolen Palestinian land, a case study of everything wrong with the modern world that must be resisted.

“More cynically, they recognise the Israeli-Palestinian conflict provides an irresistible opportunity to recruit for political groups that are dying because the next generation have lost interest in Marxist  revolutionary politics.”

He adds that “Such views have become worryingly common in the British trade union movement, with many trade unions voting to support the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.”

Bjarnason concludes by saying that “we need to work on building stronger links between moderates in the UK and progressives in Israel and Palestine who recognise the urgency of supporting the peace process and realise a better-future will be based on friendship, tolerance and co-existence.”
In the comments section following the article, Owen Tudor, the head of international affairs for the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) clarifies the organization’s stand:

“In the context of the statement about ‘many trade unions voting to support the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign’ it is worth noting that the TUC Congress policy is toboycott goods from illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, a policy supported by the vast majority of UK unions. It is not helpful or sensible to blur the distinction between boycotting Israel (which is explicitly not the policy of the TUC) and boycotting illegal settlement goods, which is indeed in line with other international boycotts – most recently of the regime in Burma.”

Please also see: http://www.leftfootforward.org/2013/06/we-should-be-supporting-progressive-forces-in-israel/

One Law for All: The Pro-Islamic Left (Press release)

Siding with the Oppressor: The Pro-Islamist Left

A new report by One Law for All entitled “Siding with the Oppressor: The Pro-Islamist Left” exposes Stop the War Coalition, Respect Party, Unite Against Fascism and individuals such as Ken Livingstone and George Galloway and their agenda and methods.

This section of the Left uses accusations of racism and Islamophobia and a conflation of Muslim with Islamist in order to defend Islamism and Islam rather than out of any real concern for prejudice against Muslims or their rights, particularly since Muslims or those labelled as such are the first victims of Islamism and on the frontlines of resisting it.

The report has been written as a companion volume to “Enemies not Allies: The Far-Right”. Like the far-Right which ‘despises’ multiculturalism yet benefits from its idea of difference to scapegoat the ‘other’ and promote its own form of white identity politics, the pro-Islamist Left also uses multiculturalism to side with the oppressor by viewing the ‘Muslim community’ and ‘Muslim world’ as homogeneous entities thereby ignoring and silencing dissenters.

This politics of betrayal sides with the Islamic far-Right and the oppressor. Challenging this perspective is especially important given its wide acceptance as ‘progressive’ in mainstream society.

Any principled point of view must oppose all forms of fascism, including Islamic fascism, and instead side with the countless people, including Muslims, who are fighting and challenging Islamism here in Europe as well as the Middle East, North Africa and the world.

Multiculturalism and Child Protection in Britain: Sharia Law and Other Failures

Another new report by One Law for All entitled “Multiculturalism and Child Protection in Britain: Sharia Law and Other Failures” reveals how a multicultural approach, adopted by local authorities and other public authorities, to child protection is placing children in danger and creating parallel societies.

The report also exposes Sharia tribunals and their increasing authority in the issue of child custody, and questions the impact this has, and is likely to have, on the equal protection of children regardless of race or ethnicity.

Both reports are available for free download on One Law for All’s website. The books are available for purchase at £4.00 from One Law for All.

http://www.onelawforall.org.uk/

ACT NOW! Help PepsiCo Indian workers get justice!

Workers who are members of Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) at West Bengal warehouses exclusively contracted by PepsiCo are fighting for fairness and justice in the face of mass dismissals as a result of exercising their right to join a union. 162 workers out of 170 have been brutally fired by PepsiCo.

Act Now - Send a message to the executives of PepsiCo to stop their anti-union campaign, reinstate the unfairly dismissed workers and recognize the legitimate union in India.

The company was officially informed about workers joining a union after the workers submitted documents for registering their union on February 27, 2013. The management immediately started to threaten the workers with dismissal if they insisted on forming the union. PepsiCo India managers hired some local union-busting thugs who assaulted the workers and the company dismissed 50 workers as a first reaction to unionization.

In response to these attacks the union reacted by going on a one-day warning strike from midnight of 29 April 2013. Workers along with the union leaders made a police complaint about coordinated threats and assaults by management but no action was taken by the police no doubt heavily influenced by PepsiCo management. After this incident, management fired a further 112 workers without any notice and recruited new workers as replacements.

In addition to denying these basic rights PepsiCo is also using labour contractors that are not officially licensed (something that is mandatory). Workers are therefore not paid the current minimum wages set since January 1, 2013 and no social security payments are made for them as required by law.

A public action at the ILP cricket match on May 26 criticized PepsiCo's role in the mass termination of workers and human rights abuses at the warehouses contracted by PepsiCo.

ACT NOW- Tell PepsiCo to respect human rights in India, reinstate the dismissed workers and start negotiations with the union.

PepsiCo should end its anti-union campaign in India, reinstate the unfairly dismissed workers and negotiate a fair agreement with the union for pay and conditions fully respecting legal rights of workers!

For updates go to: http://cms.iuf.org/

Atheism from Islamic and Jewish backgrounds

With discussion taking place on a number of websites about One Law for All, Islamophobia, and related religious questions, I was intrigued by the pair of posters issued by the  American Atheists (http://www.atheists.org/) back in March 2012.

Links to two articles about athiesm, one from an Islamic background and the other from a Jewish perspective are reproduced below:

The Golden Era of Arab Atheism?

By As'ad AbuKhalil - Tue, 2013-05-21 16:51- Angry Corner

It is unlikely that Western media will take note, but there seems to be a rejuvenation of Arab atheism. Western media never take note of Arab intellectual trends, especially if they deviate from the classical conventional assumptions about the Theologocentric (as Maxime Rodinson called it in his La Fascination de l’Islam) impulses of all Arabs and all Muslims.

Secular trends in the Arab world have been long ignored in Western media and even scholarship. Furthermore, Saudi and Qatari media, which dominate the bulk of pan-Arab media, will certainly suppress such news, but there is a new phenomenon. Arab atheist groups are spreading on the Internet and Facebook groups dedicated to Arab atheists are increasing in popularity. And the Egyptian newspaper al-Wafd even took note and published an article about “the secret world” of atheists. There are reasons for this phenomenon.

Read the rest at: http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/angry-corner/golden-era-arab-atheism

Jewish Athiest

Who the hell am I, and why would I have the chutzpah and azus (brazenness) to make this blog?

I’m probably not too different from you. Except that I’m an atheist.

I was raised Jewish (Orthodox), studied in yeshiva in Israel for a few years, and got really into Judaism. It wasn’t overnight. I needed convincing and some answers, but it seemed that I had gotten them, and soon I took the plunge.

Looking back, I guess I was “fundamentalist” - though back then I might have preferred a term like “ultra orthodox” or “yeshivish”. I even did kiruv (outreach) and anti-missionary work in my zeal. Sure, I was perhaps a bit eccentric, but I was more or less an average yeshiva bochur (student), and I was appreciated as being “the guy who has the answers to lots of secular questions.” Or so we all liked to believe.

I suppose my exposure to tough questions doing kiruv was a first step in opening my mind to some questions. I soon discovered that despite what most of my rabbis said, evolution actually did make a whole lot of sense. I soon discovered that Judaism is often not all that different from Christianity and many other religions. I realized that, looking objectively, there is some pretty crazy stuff in the torah and judaism. It might’ve bothered me at the time, but never shook my faith; in fact, reconciling it probably bolstered my faith - at least for the time being.

But questions remained. Slowly I took certain parts of it less seriously and gradually became much less observant - but still quite unsure of how I felt about Judaism on the whole, though god was still in the picture, if only in the background.

I thought to myself, “damn, I’m probably just a few good atheist books away from really giving up on this.” And so I avoided those books! Or at least, put them on the shelf, so to speak.

In the past few months I moved away from the Jewish neighborhood I’ve been living in for awhile. It’s been a good opportunity to finally start thinking about my beliefs and of what makes sense to me. So I finally reached for those forbidden books (actually, mostly youtube videos at first!).

And I’ve realized something.

Pretty much nothing about God or the foundations of Judaism really make a lot of sense.

For the rest go to: http://jewishatheist.tumblr.com/post/21836433754/first-post 

A road to nowhere at the "Peoples Assembly"

Fir the last few months the left, and in particular the far-left have been promoting an event they describe as a "Peoples Assembly". This finally took place yesterday and attracted around 4,000 participants apparently. The initiative, launched by the Counterfire group (a breakaway from the Socialist Workers Party) managed to get the backing of a number of trade unions and even manged to to persuade TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady to appear.

In addition they managed to wheel out the venerable Tony Benn, one of the last of the generation of Labour lefts that managed to make the Labour Party unelectable in the 1980's along with one or two of the modern types like Owen Jones. Nonetheless the event remained the kind of attraction such events really boil down to, an assembly of the remains of the Trotskyist left and others that populate the fringes of British political life.

There certainly was the usual fare on sale outside the hall with a virtually deserted SWP stall, the shrill sellers of some obscure rag called Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism plus the usual suspects, though one group the Alliance for Workers Liberty was missing, preferring to have its own event in the dark recesses of the University of London. Probably for the best as the rest of the comrades tend to treat them as some kind of pariahs.

Meanwhile the Assembly was entreated to speeches proposing a course of action against "austerity" which included the following statement which caught my eye in particular as it contains a reference to my own union the PCS:

We support all current industrial actions by the unions. We encourage and will help to organise the maximum solidarity action with the PCS and teaching union members taking strike action the week after the People’s Assembly, as well as with other action by unions planned for the autumn.

Of course, the "Dear Leader" of PCS, Mark Serwotka was there to promote his (and that of the Socialist Party) agenda, but this assembly comes at a time when the PCS dispute has to all intents and purposes come to an end. The reason? Simply put the strike campaign failed to garner enough support from PCS members to warrant a further strike which was "pencilled in for next week". 

The National Executive have down graded this to a "day of action" in which activists and members are expected to make 15 minute protests at lunchtime waving little red cards with messages on them. Sounds quite Maoist to me, but then Serwotka has built a bit of a "cult of the personality" around him.

Truth is that even at its' height the strikes never had the participation of more than a third of PCS membership, and during the weeks of regional and departmental action was certainly far less than even that, with some areas having quite derisory and humiliatingly low turnouts.

Meanwhile the blog A Very Public Sociologist  tells us that John Rees of Counterfire said:

when the PA meets again in the winter he wants to see the thousands attending not in their capacity as individuals but as delegates representing hundreds of thousands of people active against the cuts.

Wishful thinking methinks. The whole assembly failed to gain much media attention and was probably ignored by the majority of people who act as union reps around the country, most of whom would probably prefer a visit to the dentists than sit in a hall of "wild eyed loons" most of whom haven't realised the world has moved on somewhat from the days of the Bolshevik coup.

The problem with these rallies is that they attract the wrong people. It was hardly a "Peoples Assembly", more of a "Activists Assembly", and these came from a somewhat limited milieu themselves. The title of the Assembly was illusory to say the least. 

There is a need for a new movement to take on the arising struggles against unfair Government policies, but its' going to have be far more open, pluralistic and geared to recognising that people are individuals and not just some amorphous "class" that the outdated Marxists like to classify everyone in.

The current left is actually part of the problem, and only when they are finally consigned to the dustbin of history can we hope for a renewal of ideas and movements to build a more rational world.