workers - cpbml.org.uk · standstill as the members reject cthe union ... it is unprecedented for...

JOURNAL OF THE CPBML

VOTE TO LEAVE!Steel The big challenge

Working hours Ever longer

Media Investigations hit

Agencies Directive con

Academies By brute force

TTIP Obama’s empty threatIF YOU WANT TO REBUILD BRITAIN, READ ON

EU Falling apart

BBC Into battle

plusNews,

Book Reviews

Historic Notes

and more

WORKERSWWW.CPBML.ORG.UK MAY/JUNE 2016 £1

WORKERS

NewsDigest 03

Features 06

Contents – May/June 2016Disarray over local government pay, p3; Private ambulance chaos, p4;Health bursaries scrapped, p5

The slow death of the EU?, p6; Steel – the challenge, p8; Agencies for capital, p11;Work longer… for longer, p14; Academies – brute force and ingorance, p16; Into battle for the BBC, p18; Directive threatens investigatory journalism, p20

End Notes 22Book Reviews: Their profit, our loss, p21; Historic Notes: The American

origins of the EU, p22

WORKERS is published by the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

78 Seymour Avenue, London N17 9EB. www.cpbml.org.uk @cpbmlISSN 0266-8580 Issue 194, May/June 2016”

A vote for a futureWE HAVE SAID that the fight to ditch the EU is the“decisive confrontation” facing the working classthis year, and for the near future. As the referendumcampaign has progressed, the battle lines havebeen drawn ever more sharply.

On one side stand all those who wish to seeBritain as an independent country, able to create itsown laws, shape its own destiny and decide whichcitizens of other countries should live here.

We cannot rebuild Britain, re-industrialise, stopwar – let alone start to create a socialist society –with the dead hand of the EU upon us. We candecide to rebuild Britain and construct a new indus-trial economy – and prosper – outside the EU. A newworld is waiting.

On the other side stand all the institutions thathave loyally defended capitalism down the years.The Conservative Party, the Labour Party, theLiberals, the Greens, the City of London. That theyhave been joined in their support for the EU by theTUC and many unions is a sign of our backward-ness, a measure of how far we still need to go –whether the vote is to leave or remain.

Never has the distance between the workingclass and the organisations it built to defend itselfbeen so great. Despite membership in the millions,many unions are being hollowed out from the insideas ordinary workers shun involvement outside of theworkplace. One shining exception is the RMT:active, engaged, growing – and against the EU.

Many other unions are run by a motley crew ofself-styled activists, mostly elected either withoutopposition or on ballots with laughably low turnouts.Retired members now run too many union branches,their inquorate meetings testament to their impo-tence. Their presence is a powerful deterrent to theinvolvement of young members.

And it is in these fortresses of futility that supportfor the EU is alive and well, even if nothing else is.Having given up the fight for workplace organisationand representation, having abandoned the truth thatprogress starts through struggle at the workplace ornot at all, they are left only with a daft defence of“rights” enshrined, they think, in EU law.

They talk about the right to equal pay. But wehave had that “right” in Britain since 1970, and we’renowhere near equal pay nearly half a century on. Wehave the minimum wage, but millions earn less. Wehave a Working Hours Directive, yet working hoursare lengthening month by month.

The referendum campaign has shown more clar-ity among the people of Britain than some expected.As a recent survey by the Fabian Society hasrevealed, when the arguments for and against areclearly put, Leave pulls ahead of Remain.

There will be more twists and turns as 23 Juneapproaches. But already one major victory has beenchalked up: at long last, there is a national debateabout the future of Britain as an industrial nation. Wemust ensure that debate never stops. ■C

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age Gustavo Frazao/shutterstock.com

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PAY STRATEGIES in local government are now in disarray, fragmented and directionless.Unison, with some 413,000 members the largest union in local government, has come to astandstill as the members reject the union’s direction of travel.

After two consultations on pay produced minuscule member involvement, Unison’sIndustrial Action Committee has refused to initiate an industrial action ballot for two days ofso-called all-out industrial action in September, followed by further days of action.

It is unprecedented for the Industrial Action Committee to refer back a request from thelocal government National Joint Council and Local Government Service Group Executive.What is a reality check in Unison terms? It must surely be to have had a 10.9 per cent returnon the consultation ballot, with only 7 per cent of the membership actually voting to reject theoffer and take industrial action!

The government’s Trade Union Bill will require ballot thresholds of 50 per cent forindustrial action, which Unison knows it won’t achieve. So a further round of consultation withmembers will take place because no one has the courage to recognise that 10.9 per centparticipation means that your army has either deserted and gone home or is in hiding.

The GMB’s 100,000 members in local government voted by 9 to 1 to accept theemployers’ two-year deal, which is heavily weighted towards the lower paid. Unite, with30,000 members, has voted for selective action but only if linked to Unison’s all-out action.

The employers’ offer is a complex attempt to get out of the trap they will be in with thenew national minimum wage – some pay grades are now lower than the minimum wage. Thegovernment wants to drive wages down – and the trade unions are in a state of paralysis.

The strategy of tying the pay claim to the various “living wages” has effectively set aceiling on wage claims. Local government pay is now the lowest within the public sector.Continuing wage freezes, reduction in local government funding, and the subsequent cuts inservices and jobs, have left both employers and trade unions in a state of limbo.

On top of this, the proposed academisation of all schools will remove tens of thousandsof workers from local government pay negotiations. National pay bargaining for teaching andnon-teaching staff will then be threatened (see page 16).

Will the National Joint Council agreement survive? Will the “Green Book” (covering thesingle status agreement) see more and more employers split away, either individually or on adevolved basis, not only in Scotland and Wales but in the English regions and cities?

Workers has continually stressed that the strategy and tactics must change – because theindustrial landscape has changed. With unprecedented outsourcing of services and privatesector penetration of the public sector, we cannot pretend we are in the same era.

With fragmentation of employment, with greater churn around contract provision and withengineered uncertainty over jobs, we need to think through new strategies. A first step wouldbe to recognise the shattered employment scene and start organising accordingly. ■

LOCAL GOVTECONOMYAMBULANCESPOVERTYDOCTORSBANKERSHEALTHSOCIAL CAREON THE WEBWHAT’S ON

MAY/JUNE 2016 NEWS DIGEST WORKERS 3

RebuildingBritain

Disarray over pay EU-driven decline Privatised chaos Food banks on the rise Walkouts continue Voting with their snouts Bursaries scrapped Children’s report hidden More news online Coming soon

If you have news from your industry, trade or profession we want to hear from you.Call us on 020 8801 9543 or email [email protected]

EU-driven declineECONOMYDisarray over local govt pay

THE UK’S overall balance of payments –now known as the current account deficit –deteriorated sharply last year. The figures,detailed in the Office for National Statistics’latest statistical bulletin, released on 31March, show an overall deficit for 2015 of£96.2 billion, up from £92.5 billion in 2014.

Once you dig into the figures (thebulletin hides these in its data charts), it’snot hard to see why: the deficit with EUcountries is phenomenal. The 2015 total is£106.4 billion, up from £103.5 billion in2014. Only trade and investment with therest of the world is keeping Britain afloat.

These numbers put into perspective the“predictions” that the EU would not bebothered with trading with us after a Brexit.The EU would be slashing its own throat if itmade trade with Britain more difficult.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s thebalance of payments was taken as the mostimportant economic indicator. Governmentsteetered depending on the latest figures.But the deficit now dwarfs that of 50 yearsago. Equivalent to 5.3 per cent of GDP, theannual deficit is now at its highest sinceannual records began in 1948.

And it’s getting worse. The overall deficitin the last three months of 2015 was astaggering £32.7 billion, up from £20.1billion in the third quarter. This equates to 7per cent of GDP, the largest proportionsince quarterly records began in 1955. ■

JMiks/shutterstock.com

ON THE WEBA selection of additionalnews at cpbml.org.uk…

Network Rail: sleight of handThe government is revaluing NetworkRail’s balance sheet in an attempt toshore up its own crumbling accounts.

EU: no answer tounemploymentUnemployment is endemic to capitalismand to all capitalist states. It remainshigh within the EU – and remaining inwill not change that.

Junior doctors carry on asgovernment cracks appearStriking doctors manned picket linesand engaged with the public in theirfight against new contracts.

Government U-turn overbaseline tests for four-year-oldsMinisters have abandoned controversialplans to judge primary schools basedon new tests for four-year-olds.

Migration statistics in turmoilOne set of official statistics suggeststhat around 1.6 million EU citizens cameto Britain between 2006 and 2014 – butanother set suggests the figure could bea million higher.

ENO chorus successMembers of the English National Operachorus have settled their dispute aboutwage cuts. They had overwhelminglyvoted to strike and not sing during thefirst act of the opera Akhnaten on thelast night of this acclaimed production.

Plus: the e-newsletterVisit cpbml.org.uk to sign up to your freeregular copy of the CPBML’s newsletter,delivered to your email inbox.

PATIENT TRANSPORT has been thrown into chaos in Sussex. The Clinical CommissioningGroups for the county decided to take patient transport away from the ambulance trust,South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb), and give the £63.5 million contract toprivate company Coperforma. This contract is for the non-emergency transport services thattake patients to and from appointments.

Coperforma’s website proclaims that it is “transforming hospital transport”. Its chairman,John Porter, boasts that he also chairs a company called Sinocare, “which owns andoperates hospitals in the People’s Republic of China and aims to raise the standard of healthcare for the Chinese middle class”. John Porter is the son of Dame Shirley Porter, fined £12.3million for using Westminster council’s housing policies to rig votes.

The transformation has been thorough. SECAmb used to handle 25,000 patient journeysa month, but in the first two weeks of the contract Coperforma managed only 6,100. Patientsand staff have been at their wits’ end. Booked transport failed to arrive, patients were leftstranded at hospitals and staff had to arrange taxis to transport them home. Calls toCoperforma’s call centre from desperate patients and NHS staff went unanswered.

Non-emergency patient transport is an important undertaking. It includes taking renalpatients to dialysis and cancer patients for radiotherapy appointments. If patients miss theirappointments or are delayed, the consequences can be serious, and sometimes fatal.

Coperforma had the nerve to try to put the blame for the chaos onto SECAmb, sayingthat the ambulance trust had not transferred data on appointments, a claim SECAmb waseasily able to refute. The chaos continues. It is rumoured that large numbers of staff have leftCoperforma’s call centre. And now GMB members transferred from SECAmb to Coperformaare balloting on strike action since Coperforma has derecognised their union. ■

4 WORKERS

Food banks on the risePOVERTY

THE TRUSSELL TRUST announced in Aprilthat 1.1 million people in Britain are nowusing food banks to obtain emergency foodsupplies. The figures include 415,866children. Numbers are growing year byyear.

Other charities also run food banks, butTrussell is the largest. It began as a charityworking with street children in Bulgaria, butspread to Britain when a mother contactedit saying she was struggling to feed herchildren. In 2004 it had two food bankshere. Now it runs 400. In just one period of2014-15, Trussell found, usage had risen by

38 per cent over the previous year.Co-op supermarkets now label some

cheap range tinned foods as “ideal items forthe food bank” (with collections on the wayout). Asda displays the Trussell logo onshelves of tins of Spam, saying “This is afood bank item”. So supermarkets cash inas food banks become a permanent featureof poverty Britain in the 21st century.

The growth of food banks has takenplace during a period when ChancellorGeorge Osborne has reported that oureconomy is strong and growing. For a tinyminority, those who have made vastfortunes out of “austerity”, this is true.Trussell’s latest figures on food bank useare one demonstration of what is happeningin the real economy. ■

Private ambulance chaos

Junior doctors demonstrating in Walthamstow, northeast London, on 6 April. AsWorkers went to press, they were due to walk out again on 26 and 27 April.

Workers

MAYThe CPBML will be holding May Daymeetings and rallies in Edinburgh,Leeds and London. For details, seewww.cpbml.org.uk/events

JUNEThursday 2 June 7.30 pm

“Vote to Leave the EU”

Brockway Room, Conway Hall, RedLion Square, London WC1R 4RL

CPBML Public Meeting

With the referendum rapidlyapproaching, the people of Britain aremaking up their minds? Will wesuccumb to the lies of the Remaincrowd, the forecasts of doom fromthose with a track record of gettingforecast wrong? Or will we affirm ourfuture as a sovereign nation by voting toleave the crumbling EU?

Come and discuss. All welcome.

MAY/JUNE 2016 NEWS DIGEST WORKERS 5

WHAT’S ONComing soon

THE GOVERNMENT has confirmed it will definitely be pushing student nurses and otherhealth care students into debts of at least £50,000 each by scrapping the NHS bursary.From August 2017 students will have to take out loans for £9,000 in tuition fees and furtherloans for subsistence. They will be paying the entire bill for their training, even though nursesspend 50 per cent of their training time working for the NHS on clinical placements, andtheir starting salary is £22,799.

The Department of Health is currently conducting a “consultation”. But this is noconsultation on the substance, rather a piffling discussion about how it intends toimplement this change. It is a classic example of government taking a decision by-passingparliament altogether. No debate in parliament, no parliamentary vote – just a minoradjustment to a statutory instrument. This is how something is enacted which coulddevastate the NHS workforce, and therefore the entire NHS.

Those most affected are yet to join the profession. So the onus has fallen on currentstudents and their teaching staff to somehow bring the matter to the attention of the countryand expose the government plan to make this change. Led by Unison and with supportfrom the National Union of Students and other organisations, there is to be a joint lobby ofParliament on 25 May.

Unison head of health Christina McAnea said: “Replacing the bursary system with loanswill put off many potential students, not encourage more people into our caringprofessions…

“The UK already has to import staff from overseas just to keep the NHS going, andnothing in this consultation will change that. Worryingly, it looks like ministers don’t plan tostop at health professionals. The consultation suggests that bursaries for social workerscould be next in line.” ■

The DfE intends to publish it when it fitswith government schedules, which probablymeans after the EU referendum. If the reportis, as suspected, a privatisation blueprint,the aim could be to delay more badpublicity for the government.

Meanwhile the attack on children’ssocial care continues. Ofsted inspectionsare resulting in “inadequate” status reports,followed by the DfE appointing externalcommissioners with a remit to findalternatives to local authority control. At thesame time, central government cuts areforcing local authorities to slash budgets.

Twenty-four local authorities have hadtheir children’s social care services put intocommissioners’ hands since 2013. Themore such services are removed from localgovernment control, the louder thegovernment will clamour that privatisation isthe only solution.

The return of Dickensian conditions forchildren is on the horizon. ■

Health bursaries scrapped

STAY INFORMED• Keep up-to-date in between issues ofWorkers by subscribing to our freeelectronic newsletter. Just enter youremail address at the foot of any pageon our website, cpbml.org.uk

SOCIAL CARE

IN MARCH 2014 the Department forEducation (DfE) commissioned a report intochildren’s social care services. Seen at thetime of its commissioning as a likelyblueprint for privatising local authoritychildren’s services, the report was actuallycompleted in September 2014.

The charity and publication Childrenand Young People Now requested a copyin November 2015. Five months later,despite a significant Freedom of Informationbattle, the DfE still refuses to publish it.

Intervention by the InformationCommissioner’s Office to try to forcepublication of the report in the publicinterest had an odd response: yes thereport is in the public interest, but no, itcannot be released because the DfEintends publishing it at a future date.

Children’s report hidden

Brussels) identify over 3,000 Londonbankers earning more than 1 million euros(£790,000) in 2014 – three times as many inLondon as across the entire rest of the EU.

The EU had supposedly cappedbonuses in 2014 to 100 per cent of salary or200 per cent if approved by shareholders.To circumvent the bonus cap, bankers havejust raised their salaries. No 1 per cent paylimit in the banking industry! ■

BANKERS

NO WONDER the City of London and thebanking mafia in Canary Wharf in theirmultitude of banking skyscrapers shriek soloudly about the “dangers” of Britain leavingthe EU. Figures published by the EuropeanBanking Association (based in London not

Voting with their snouts

THE PEOPLES of the countries that makeup the EU are showing what they think ofthis wannabe superstate. Referendums aresprouting up all over the place, all of themmotivated by hostility to the EU. Across thecontinent the borders are going up.Schengen? What Schengen? Is the EU start-ing to collapse?

You may think the British referendum onin or out of the EU is the only referendum intown. But you would be wrong. Denmarkhad a referendum in December 2015, on theissue of cross-EU border policing.

This is the same cross-border policingthat, we are told, could put Britain at greaterrisk of terrorism if we voted to leave the EU.For Denmark it would have meant Europolmembership, European Arrest Warrants andbringing the national criminal justice systemin line with EU criminal law.

The Danes, who also voted against theMaastricht Treaty in 1992 in a similar refer-endum, saw this as a straightforward issueof national sovereignty and voted No,despite both the government and the oppo-sition urging a Yes vote.

So Denmark retains its own criminal jus-tice system. If you bear in mind that this ref-erendum took place just weeks after theParis terrorist attacks, it takes on more sig-nificance. Yet we are told doing the samewould be a disaster for Britain.

The Netherlands has just had its ownreferendum. The issue here was ratificationof the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement.

The result was overwhelming rejection, by61 per cent to 38 per cent, of the RatificationAct agreed by the Dutch Parliament.

Rejection of the association agreement“would open the doors to a continental crisisin the EU”, bemoaned unelected EUCommission President Jean-ClaudeJuncker, adding that only Russia stood tobenefit from a No vote. The Dutch wereunmoved.

After the No vote, Juncker said that the“vote would change nothing”, while a Dutchopposition leader claimed it was the begin-ning of the end for the Dutch governmentand the EU. The President of the EUParliament argued, “We can’t allow nationalreferenda to veto EU foreign policy”.

ContemptThis contempt for democracy should comeas no surprise. Every time the EU elite hasnot liked a member state’s referendum onan EU issue, they simply told that country torun the referendum again until they got theright result.

Meanwhile, the European Commissionhas started a legal process that ends withBrussels determining whether the rule of lawoperates in Poland, creating outrage in thatcountry. “Perhaps for the first time we’redealing with a situation when, because of[Polish] opposition politicians’ denunciations,the European Parliament has passed a legalact aimed against Poles, our nation,” thePolish government's spokesman, Rafal

Bochenek, told state news agency PAP.If Britain votes to leave, don’t be sur-

prised if they try to do the same to us. Butthis contempt for the people only strength-ens the case for leaving the EU and reassert-ing our own national sovereignty.

Last year’s migrant fiasco began whenGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel, who

6 WORKERS MAY/JUNE 2016

Kaonos/shutterstock.com

Are we witnessing the slo

Those in favour of staying in the European Union claim it i truth – the EU is falling apart before our eyes…

CPBML/Workers

Public Meeting, LondonThursday 2 June, 7.30 pm“Vote to Leave the EU”

Brockway Room, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square,London WC1R 4RL. Nearest tube Holborn.

With the referendum only weeks away, the people of Britain are makingup their minds. At stake is our future as a sovereign industrial nation.Come and discuss. All welcome.

MAY/JUNE 2016 WORKERS 7

called for a million migrants to come toGermany. Then the EU – at Merkel’s insis-tence – outvoted Hungary and other EastEuropean countries, forcing them to takethousands of migrants.

MistakeIt was a big mistake. The outvoted countriesresorted to building fences and taking othermeasures, including use of the military, tosecure their borders. First Hungary, thenSlovenia, Austria, then non-EU Macedoniaand other Balkan countries, followed byDenmark, Sweden and now even Belgium!

Schengen is effectively dead, and themigrant season is under way. But fencesdidn’t solve the migrant flow. They simplyturned Greece into a giant concentrationcamp. So Merkel and her allies decided tobribe Turkey to become the solution.

Turkey’s despotic leader Erdogan hadthe EU and Merkel over a barrel. Hedemanded 3 billion euros and a fast track toEU membership for Turkey, in exchange forthe return of migrants from Greece toTurkey, with Syrian refugees going the otherway on a one-for-one basis.

After a German TV comedian broadcasta satirical poem about Erdogan the Turkishpresident claimed he had been insulted anddemanded that Germany prosecute thecomedian. Merkel agreed, setting the wheelsin motion. So we now have Turkey dictatingto the EU, receiving 3 billion euros from theEU – and still no solution to the migrantissue.

Hungary is also having a referendum.The question on the Hungarian ballot, to beheld in the autumn, is an interesting one.“Are you in favour of the EU being allowed tomake the settlement of non-Hungariansobligatory in Hungary, even if the parliamentdoes not agree?”

Hungary is supported by Poland, the

Czech Republic and Slovakia, with whichHungary is jointly pursuing a legal challengein the European Court of Justice over quo-tas. Meanwhile, Brussels is threatening tosue Hungary in the same court if the result ofthe referendum “violates EU law”.

SanctionsAnother divisive issue for EU members is thequestion of sanctions against Russia. Thesanctions were introduced at the insistenceof the US, with Britain its biggest cheer-leader. But they are deeply resented bymany EU countries, including Hungary,Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy,Spain and Portugal.

Meanwhile, the focus of migrant activityhas shifted to Libya, with people smugglerscircumventing the EU–Turkey deal. Italy istheir target. As a consequence, Austria isclosing its border with Italy and building yetmore fencing to keep the migrants out.

This raises the possibility that Italy mayfind itself in the same situation as Greece.Not surprisingly, Italian Prime MinisterMatteo Renzi has asked for the same dealas Turkey. Merkel has turned him downpoint blank and Renzi is said to be furious.

And right on cue, here comes anotherGreek repayment crisis, with creditorsdemanding changes in Greek law to providenew contingency measures, on top of a 5billion euro package of additional taxincreases, spending cuts and privatisations.

The euro has been a disaster forEurozone countries – except for Germany.Youth unemployment is nearly 50 per cent inSpain and Greece, nearly 40 per cent in Italy,over 25 per cent in France, and averages 22per cent across the Eurozone.

Since the start of the euro, far from “con-verging” (the stated aim of monetary union),eurozone economies have been growingever more unequal. The continual weaknessof the euro leaves it vulnerable to specula-tion. In April another slump in its value coin-cided with a report from the OECD whichsaid it is doomed to remain a weak currencyindefinitely.

Are we witnessing the slow disintegra-tion of the EU? We can only hope. A vote toleave the EU would be an act of solidaritywith the workers across the EU who are suf-fering from this would-be superstate. ■

‘Now Turkey isdictating to the EU –and still no solutionto the migrant issue.’

ow death of the EU?

s a force for stability. Nothing could be further from the

All steel-producing countries are cutting back on production crude steel production entirely – though it is essential to any

The challenge of steel


STEEL IS as much part of how we live aselectricity. It’s essential for buildings, allforms of transport, energy and machinery.Without it there can be no production ormanufacturing. Yet our ruling class isattempting to end steelmaking in Britain.Like it or not, that’s a challenge.

The past few months have seen the clo-sure of key parts of the steel industry inBritain and threats to much of the rest.

Redcar is no more, steel and engineeringgroup Caparo’s is in administration, and nowTata’s withdrawal from Britain puts the futureof Port Talbot and Scunthorpe in question.

All steel-producing countries are cuttingback on production. But only in Britain is itregarded as feasible to eradicate the pro-duction of crude steel in its entirety. Yet incountries where there is still a sense ofstrategic importance of industry, state sup-port and intervention are adopted.

Current international economic condi-tions were the trigger for the crisis, but theproblem is deeper. The long-term cause isthe decline in British capitalism, and itsattempt to destroy manufacturing here andall that depends on it. Embracing the EU andwelcoming overseas ownership of key

assets have systematically eaten away at theindustrial base. Steel is one of the primeexamples. And now we are told that theindustry in its current ownership and formcannot continue.

Excess capacity and falling demand forsteel in China is driving down world steelprices. Dumping – subsidised export sales –is a problem. But in Britain we’ve so far seenmore imports from other EU countries thanChina. EU competition and state aid rulesprevent Britain from protecting our industry.Imports from EU countries cannot be sub-ject to import tariffs. Other nations are find-ing a way, Britain must do so too.

Germany, Italy and France have sup-ported their own steel industries even in theface of EU regulations and fines.

Robert C

ook (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

Redcar steelworks: almost all of it closed in 2015 when Thai owners SSI put their British subsidiary into liquidation, shutting down the blast furnace. On

‘We’ve seen moreimports from the EUthan from China.’


Commenting on the lack of governmentintervention to help save Redcar, TonyBurke of the Unite union said, “...the Italiansdo it by intervening directly in their steelindustry, making a mockery of ministers’claims that EU rules forbid it.”

DishonestyLess honest and more worrying for our classis the TUC’s position. General SecretaryFrances O’Grady said to the EU TradeCommissioner, Cecilia Malmström, “It isimportant in the context of the EU referen-dum debate in the UK, where the EU isbeing wrongly blamed by Brexit campaign-ers for the crisis in the steel industry, that theCommission demonstrate that it is acting toprotect the sector by opposing China beinggranted Market Economy Status. I look for-ward to hearing from you about how theEuropean Commission plans to developstronger protections against dumping ofChinese exports.” That’s either playing to thecrowd or naive.

It’s not a question of matching high-vol-ume low-quality steel production elsewhere,or trying to recreate the former industry. Thepicture is more complex. British industry hasassets and capacity not found elsewhere.We must start with maintaining that andimporting only what we can’t make here.

Basic raw material steel rebar is used to

. But only in Britain is it considered feasible to eradicate modern economy…

Continued on page 10 nce cooled, a furnace cannot be brought back.

CPBM-L online editorial on 8 April 2016after Tata Steel’s announcement of thesale of its British business.

WE MUST maintain steelmaking inBritain. The whole of our class and nationmust bring strong immediate pressure tobear on our negligent, quisling govern-ment.

The steel industry is strategicallyimportant to the British economy and thefoundation of many of our most impor-tant manufacturing supply chains includ-

ing aerospace, automotive, defence, andconstruction. Every part of modern lifeuses steel. If we can’t produce sufficientsteel locally, then it will have a devastat-ing effect on aspects of our manufactur-ing supply chains.

In the present crisis produced by TataSteel’s attempt to sell our nationalassets, pressure must be maintained toachieve and ensure a proper sale. If onecan’t be arranged, then government mustset aside its prejudices, reject the EU’sproscriptions on nationalisation moves

and provide direct financial support andcontrol to preserve our steelmakingcapacity.

Also the British government must cur-tail even stop Chinese dumping of under-priced steel in our economy while deter-mining that all major procurement pro-jects (such as at rail and airports) useBritish steel.

We must be serious about our abilityto survive as a nation and provide afuture for our people. Maintain Britishsteel, leave the EU. ■

Maintain steelmaking in Britain

THE MAIN steel-making sites in Britainand the numbers directly employed are atPort Talbot (4,100), Rotherham (1,200),and Scunthorpe (3,300). In Wales a further2,700 work at Trostre, Llanwern, Newportand Shotton. There are rolling mills andcoating lines at Hartlepool, Skinningroveand Redcar in he northeast (1,300). Thereare also sites at Wednesbury and Walsallin the West Midlands (100).

Speciality steel products from Britainare highly regarded. As well as the exper-tise at Port Talbot, our industry offers:• Stocksbridge: specialist steels for air-craft landing gear, aircraft engine tur-bines, oil and gas production.• Rotherham: engineering steels.• Clydebridge and Dalzell, Lanarkshire,now bought by Liberty House metalsgroup: will recycle scrap steel for use inengineering steels.• Caparo, also selling to Liberty House:tube and advanced engineering steel forthe automotive and aerospace industries.• The Newport hot rolling mill, re-opened when the Liberty House groupbought it late last year: now makes coilsteel for fencing and similar products.• Carbon and alloy steels made in Tataplants: used by Alstom and Siemens intheir power plants. ■

The figures

reinforce buildings and as a precursor tomore highly specialised products. Globalproduction was around 2.4 billion tonnes in2014, nearly 25 per cent above projecteddemand. Demand is expected to fall, leadingto a projected excess of close to a billiontonnes in 2017. There is also a glut of ironore – and because these industries are capi-tal intensive with high fixed costs, short-termreductions in output have little effect. Hencethe need for a strategic, long-term approach.

Port Talbot has advanced steel-makingequipment and an experienced workforcecapable of making world-class high-qualitysteels for most applications. It relies onimported iron ore and coal. Converting blastfurnaces to electric arc technology couldallow raw materials to be reprocessed andoffer a step-change in carbon emissions asthe site moves from production to recycling.

Britain, as things stand, is the fourthlargest exporter of scrap steel in the world –and it could exploit this to commercialadvantage. It was the ingenuity and skill ofBritish working people that transformed theailing car industry into a world-class manu-facturing operation. If we take responsibility,we can convert Tata’s decision to pull outinto a lasting opportunity.

The new Sir Henry Royce ResearchCentre at Manchester University is set tobecome a world leader in developing newsteels and related products. Two-thirds ofthe types of steel used today were not evenin existence 15 years ago. Automotive, aero-space, defence, nuclear and rail all demandconsistent application of new steel technolo-gies. And Britain is a world leader in theirdevelopment.

InfrastructureBritain will need a lot of steel as part of £300billion in infrastructure spending due over thenext five years. And beyond that lie HS2,HS3, Crossrail2, Heathrow and Gatwickexpansions, nuclear power generation, gaspower generation, among others.

Ministers are claimed to be encouraging,for the first time, councils and hospitals tobuy British steel. New medical facilities,schools and roads are among the publicprojects that will be obliged to considerusing British steel before importing fromabroad, under rules that value social impactsof production such as the quality of work-force training and the carbon footprint of thesteel as well as the cost of the materials.

But “being obliged to consider” is notenough to help UK steel-makers competewith foreign imports and to maintain a

national strategic industry. The recent batchof navy frigates and Ajax military vehicleswere built with steel sourced from Sweden.Modernisation of the Forth Crossing usedsteel from Poland, Spain and China. Thecontract for the Mersey Toll Bridge was wonby the South Koreans.

Specialist steels produced here are cru-cial to development. For example,Scunthorpe produces the highest-quality railsteel in the world. Good-quality crude basesteel is essential to the making of specialiststeels. Chinese steel exports aren’t yet of thehighest quality, but Osborne saw fit to invitethem to supply rails for HS2.

Britain imported 5.4 million tonnes ofsteel last year. 3.9 million tonnes came fromother EU countries, principally Germany, and1.5 million from the rest of the world.Germany, France, Italy and Spain subsidisetheir own industries. In 2014, British steelexports were worth £6 billion. Imports were£5.9 billion.

Steel production in Britain fell by 38 percent. Other EU countries, apart from France,saw production fall, but by far less – Italy 2.1per cent, Germany 4.3 per cent, Sweden 5.6per cent and Spain 8.9 per cent. So steelthat according to EU rules is illegally sub-sidised is undermining British steel that isproduced according to the EU rules! ■

Continued from page 9

Andy Roberts (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

TATA WAS NOT able to take a long-termview on steel production in the UK. Thewhole Tata group has serious problemsbecause of the way in which it has built updebt and hit snags and delays in its devel-opments in India. This illustrates the folly ofleaving strategic industry in the hands ofowners based outside Britain. In the end,their own interests prevail.

Greybull Capital has agreed to buyTata’s Long Products Division; Scunthorpeis the main plant. It is reported to want to

use the name “British Steel”, currentlyowned by Tata. Talk of £400 million invest-ment is more promising, but that can’t beeffective without government support andintervention. We can’t rely on a governmentpromise of a 25 per cent stake “if neces-sary” as a guarantee for security. The gov-ernment must be held to that and more.

The Community, Unite and GMBunions completed a consultative ballot on19 April about temporary changes to termsand conditions, as part of the deal. All

unions voted to accept.Unite assistant general secretary Tony

Burke said: “The UK government still has alot to do too in ensuring that steelmakingcan thrive and that British steelworkers cancompete with their global competitors onan even playing field. This means going fur-ther on procurement for defence and infra-structure projects by compelling the use ofBritish steel, as well as going further intackling the dumping of cheap imports andhigh energy costs.” ■

Tata: the folly of foreign control

The Forth Road Bridge, built in 1964 with Scottish steel. No Scottish or British steel will be used in the new Queensferry Crossing.


MORE AND MORE workers find they canonly get work through agencies. Over thepast few years agencies have evolved fromshort-term suppliers of casual labour into asystematic tool to undermine wages andunion organisation. The EU has made it eas-ier for employers to make that step.

Agency work, or forced self-employ-ment, had long been endemic in a fewindustries, including construction. Fightsagainst the employment of people on thoseterms have been sporadic. Occasionallywidespread disputes have broken out – suchas that in 1972 which resulted in the infa-mous convictions of the “Shrewsbury 24”

(see Box, page 12).Now these practices have spread to all

sectors and many types of work – rangingfrom warehouse workers to lorry drivers andnurses. Employers now see it as their duty toshareholders to escape from employmentlaw and to evade tax and national insurancepayments. Worse, they bully workers intotaking part in these schemes, often toimpose low wages.

The Agency Workers Regulations cameinto force on 1 October 2011, implementingthe EU Temporary Agency Work Directive of19 November 2008. It defines a “temporarywork agency” as an organisation that sup-

plies workers to work temporarily for hirers.The EU directive and the UK regulations

are supposed to give agency workers theright to equal treatment with regard to basicterms and conditions of employment. So itseems agency workers should be treated noworse than if they had been employeddirectly. That does not happen.

The only way to enforce that parity isthrough workplace organisation and notthrough the courts. Unions need to organiseto ensure that people working in the sameroles, alongside one another, are given the

Continued on page 12

Agencies for capital

The EU’s Agency Workers Directive hasn’t protected us –just encouraged the massive growth of casualisation…

London, January 2013. RMT protest outside London Underground head office demanding that 33 Trainpeople agency staff, employedfor five years on the Wembley Central group and then sacked, be given staff jobs with London Underground.

Andrew Wiard/andrew-wiard.info


same rewards for doing the same work. Thatmeans ensuring agency workers areemployed on the same basis as directlyemployed workers. Clearly, this means stop-ping employers from using employmentagencies as a cheap alternative to employ-ing workers on permanent contracts.

The government enacted the regulationsto give the lowest level of protection itthought it could get away with. For examplethere is a qualifying period of 12 continuousweeks before an agency worker has a rightto the same “basic working and employment

conditions” that apply to comparable directemployees. The regulations also adopt anarrow definition of what counts as pay forthe purpose of equal treatment.

The EU directive does not give agencyworkers a general right to equal treatment inrelation to statutory rights, such as protec-tion from unfair dismissal. Agency workers’rights even where they are enforced are stillminimal.

The courts have upheld that view overmany years. In a recent decision, Smith vCarillion, Mr Smith was held not to be aworker or employee of the company forwhich he worked, and so was not protected

against acts of anti-union victimisation.It might look helpful, so social democrats

laud the directive as progressive. But it hassimply enabled employers to increase theirexploitation of workers, leaving tens of thou-sands of temporary workers out of pocket.

The overall impact of the directiveacross Europe has been to legitimise andindeed encourage the casualisation of work-ing conditions. It has led to a huge increasein the number of workers employed throughagencies and hence without the full rights ofdirectly employed workers.

Under the EU rules, temporary workersare entitled to the same pay and conditionsas permanent staff after 12 weeks of contin-uous employment. As a result, agency work-ers who have a permanent contract ofemployment with an agency and are paidbetween assignments will not have a right toequal pay with directly employed workers.

This is so even where the agency workerhas worked for 12 weeks in the same rolewith the same hirer. Many agency workerssign so-called “pay between assignment”(PBA) contracts without realising that resultsin lower pay, costing workers around £500 amonth in lost wages in some areas.

LoopholeThis loophole is known as the “Swedishderogation”. It exempts an employmentagency from having to pay the worker thesame rate of pay, as long as the agencydirectly employs the individual and guaran-tees to pay them for at least four weeks dur-ing the times they cannot find them work.Agency workers can then be contracted outto other employers.

More and more recruitment agenciesoperating in Britain, both large and small, areusing this EU-legitimised scam. Thousandsof temporary staff working for supermarkets,manufacturers and services firms nationwidehave been urged to waive their rights to thenew rules, or risk losing their job.

As Katja Hall, former CBI chief policy

Continued from page 11 ‘The directive has enable has led to a huge increas agencies and hence with

ONE OF THE many pay disputes in 1972was in the construction industry, the firstnational strike by building workers. Unionscalled for an overall national minimum rateand an end to the Lump – the widespreadpractice of employing casual labour andundercutting wages agreed on organisedsites.

Pickets visited unorganised sites dur-ing the dispute. Many of the pay claimswere met, but the Lump continued. Fivemonths after the dispute ended, the gov-ernment instigated a series of politically

motivated prosecutions for alleged picket-ing offences at sites around Shrewsbury.24 workers were convicted.

The longest sentences were for twoworkers found guilty of conspiracy to intim-idate under a law not used for nearly 100years. Des Warren died of Parkinson’s in2004 probably due to the “chemical cosh”tranquillisers administered in prison. Theother was Ricky Tomlinson, who went onto be an actor and who is still energeticallybacking the campaign for justice for thepickets. ■

The Shrewsbury 24


director, said, “Many firms prefer to pay anagency to provide temps using the Swedishderogation rather than face the bureaucracyinvolved in complying with the directive. Thisis perfectly understandable and entirelywithin EU law.”

In many British workplaces agency staffare paid up to £135 a week less than perma-nent staff, despite working in the same placeand doing the same job. Swedish derogationcontracts are used regularly in call centres,food production and logistics firms.

The number of agency workers withthese contracts has grown by 15 per centsince the recession, with as many as one insix agency workers on them. Industry bodiessay that between 17 per cent and 30 percent of all agency workers are now affectedby these contracts.

Tesco used the loophole with its supplychain, allowing agencies to ignore the rules.Tesco said that the Swedish derogationapproach had been “recognised” by theBritish Retail Consortium, the CBI and thegovernment. Other supermarkets and manu-facturers followed suit with the PBA model.

The Communication Workers Union hasstaged a series of protests at call centres,involving temps working for recruitmentagency Manpower, who are then supplied tocommunications giant BT.

Former CWU general secretary BillyHayes said, “These contracts are legal, butin the same way that the legal tax arrange-ments of Starbucks, Amazon and manycelebrities are morally wrong, we believethese contracts fly in the face of fairness.Both agencies and hirers [employers] are atfault for choosing to use these contracts…”

There are other bad effects for workers.In the health and care sectors, for example,agency work is offered above regular payrates. But on closer examination this is justanother scam. Apparently higher pay ratesrely on those staff having to stay out of theNHS Pension Scheme. Employer pensioncontributions are used to top up the salary

scales. But not to the full amount, of course. Frequently these workers must also

enter into “umbrella company” schemes, adodge to reduce tax paid by the individual.So the state effectively subsidises wagespaid by these agencies. And as a bonus thearrangement also reduces the amount ofemployer national insurance contributions.

In-houseSome local authorities and NHS trusts haveset up in-house employment agencies. Thedirective may make these more common.Last year the government put a cap on theamount that can be spent on agency staff.This has not diminished the pressure fornurses and other health staff to workthrough umbrella companies and other abu-sive arrangements. Instead it has institution-alised existing staff shortages.

A survey found that 65 per cent of sup-ply teachers believe they are not paid at thecorrect level. It also found that 11 per cent ofsupply teachers working through agenciessay they have been asked to waive their

legal rights. 68 per cent of supply teachers“said they had not been made aware of the12 week rule under the directive. Teachingunions need to act to regulate all supplyagencies and to insist on national standardsfor the employment of supply teachers.

The short-term solution of agency workhas been turned into a permanent conditionfor many workers. Many agency workers areemployed by an agency for years, all whileworking for minimum wages, on long, unso-cial hours, and with no promotion or trainingopportunities offered to them. The govern-ment keeps no record of the number ofagency workers, and has no plan to do so.

Some employers don’t even bother withthe pretence of agencies and declare theirworkers to be self-employed contractors.That means no guaranteed earnings, nopension, no holiday pay and no security. It’salways been around in some areas, but likeother abuses, it is growing. And it does notend up much different from zero hoursemployment. Workers can only fight thesedodges by organising in workplaces to chal-lenge them.

All this raises questions about the EUdirective. Why was the “Swedish deroga-tion” loophole built into the law in the firstplace? If its effect is to increase exploitation,and we have seen that it is, what use wereits allegedly good intentions? ■


ed employers to increase their exploitation…it se in the number of workers employed through

hout the full rights of directly employed workers.’

MM

eet the PartyThe Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist’s series ofLondon public meetings in Conway Hall, Red Lion Square,WC1R 4RL, continues on 2 June with the title “Vote to Leavethe EU. Other meetings are held around Britain. Meetingdetails will be published on What’s On, page 5, and onwww.cpbml.org.uk/events.

The Party’s annual London May Day rally is always held onMay Day itself, regardless of state bank holidays. There are

also CPBML May Day meetings in Edinburgh and Leeds. As well as our regular public meetings we hold informaldiscussions with interested workers and study sessions for

those who want to take the discussion further. If you areinterested we want to hear from you. Call us on 020 8801 9543or send an email to [email protected]

MM

MM

MM


A TUC INITIATIVE, Work Your Proper HoursDay came and went on 26 February thisyear without attracting much attentioneither from the media or from constituentunions and their members.

The day, designed to draw attention tothe increase in working hours for Britishworkers, may not have been a priority forCongress House. It has other fish to fry as itcolludes with Cameron and Osborne in theRemain campaign.

The TUC estimated that if all the unpaidovertime worked by the average employeewere put together at the start of the year, itwould be mid-February before they startedto be paid. Work Your Proper Hours Daywas devised to mark this.

The very idea of having one day a yearwhen you work your contracted hoursshows the scale of the problem. The fact isthat in almost every workplace around thecountry we have lost control of the hours

that we work. We will pay dearly for thisthrough stress-related illness and prema-ture death.

In hourly-paid occupations, the over-time is effectively compulsory, but is at leastpaid. In other work – including mostmonthly paid jobs – unpaid overtime is thenew normal (see Box).

British workers put in unpaid overtimehours worth £31.5 billion in 2015, thoughour class once led the world in the fight tolimit the working day. Now we work longhours, take shorter and shorter lunchbreaks and enjoy few public holidays.Sunday working, driven through againstfierce opposition, particularly from USDAW,the shop workers’ union, has become thenorm for many, not just shop workers.

No hope from the EULet us dispose quickly of the notion thatworkers can hope for anything from the EU

on working hours. The Working TimeDirective is sometimes cited, incorrectly, ashaving some bearing on the junior doctors’contract. In fact, the BMA and their juniordoctor members negotiated a far betteragreement on working hours, which thenew contract would dispose of. Britishworkers fought to put limits on the day longbefore the EU, EEC or Common Market.

Left to its own devices, capitalismwould have us take the absolute minimumof time to prepare ourselves for the nextday’s work – time to eat a meal and sleep. Itwas against this that trade unions made thelimit on the working day central to our earlystruggles.

As Marx observed, a 10-hour workingday had been normal in the 18th century ,but in the years of the wars against revolu-tionary France, aided by the CombinationActs and fierce repression of trade unions,capitalists increased the length of the work-

Workers commuting at Canary Wharf, London.

Work longer hours, retire

The fight for lower hours didn’t begin with the EU. It certai number of hours we are working is climbing steadily…

alice-photos/shutterstock.com

ing day to 10, 12, 14, even 18 hours. Marxwrote that even as hard-nosed an apologistfor capitalism as Thomas Malthus fearedthat workers would become extinct if this continued. The legislative limits set on theworking day were the product of a protracted civil war between workers andcapitalists.

Fifty years ago, pundits held forth aboutleisure societies. In the 1930s the bourgeoiseconomist J.M. Keynes predicted that hisgrandchildren would work three-hour days.He would be puzzled to find British workers,who led the fight for the eight-hour day,increasing their hours.

Longer weeksA growing number of us, now 3.4 million –and that’s just the official tally – work over48 hours a week, a figure that has been ris-ing by 15 per cent year on year since 2010.We have zero hours contracts and intern-ships. A growing number of workers, maderedundant, find themselves driven into self-employment. Some may earn much thesame as they did before, but with all theoverhead costs met from their own pocket,not that of the employer they work for.

A study by LSE economists of what

they call extreme working hours shows atrend of gradual deregulation along with anincreasing ratio of long working weeks.

They predict a world in which there area few full-time workers working increasinglylong hours, and a reserve army of casuals,on short to zero hours and few if any bene-fits. In truth, in large parts of the economy,we are already there.

Many see nothing wrong with workingevery hour they wake, connected to theworkplace by electronic devices. Toadiesvie with one another to reply to the boss’semails at more and more antisocial hours,and this becomes the norm. Who wouldhave thought workers would gladly spendtheir own money on devices the employercould use to invade their spare time?

Neither is there any respite at the end ofa worker’s working life. Increases in statepension age have wrecked the plans ofmany, not least women. If there were to bea single age for men and women at whichthey could start to draw the state pension,the logical solution would have been tomake it 60 for everyone. Instead, succes-sive governments conspired to hike it. Sowomen born from March 1950 onwards,who had expected to be able to draw their

pension at the age of 60 find the agepushed upwards. Men and women bornafter 1953 will now not draw the state pen-sion until the age of 66; those born afterMarch 1960 not until the age of 67; andthose born in 1978 or later only when theyreach 68.

A study by the Royal London pensionsfirm found that a worker aged 22 in 2016would have to work until 77 to enjoy thesame standard of living as his parents didwhen they retired. In some parts of Britain,


e later

inly hasn’t ended with the Working Time Directive – the

LAST AUTUMN the London Magazinebranch of the National Union of Journalistscarried out a survey of working hours.More than 10 per cent of the branchanswered, a high response rate for a web-based survey. And the results show a dis-turbing pattern of excess and unremuner-ated working, along with a lack of aware-ness among employers and membersabout the law on working hours.

By and large, the problem does not liein the number of hours laid down in con-tracts of employment. Fewer than 3.5 percent of respondents had contractual hoursof more than 40. It lies in a working life thatfor many effectively starts when they getup in the morning and finishes only whenthey go to bed.

Only a third said they “tend to leave

around the end of [their] working hours”.The rest work longer, sometimes muchlonger. More than a third tend to work atleast an hour a day, regularly. Another thirdtend to work between half an hour and 45minutes extra, every day.

Breaks are an issue. Fewer than a thirdconsistently take an hour for lunch – andeven more say they eat while carrying onworking at their desk. So much for “rights”:the law specifies a “minimum 20 minuterest break” in a 6-hour shift, but rightswithout union organisation are worth little.

A fifth of respondents based at anemployer’s workplace said they “normally”work on the way to work. Slightly fewer,one in six, work on the way back home.

Most report working when they gethome in the evening, with 30 per cent of

respondents saying they regularly work athome on weekends and bank holidays.

According to the Working TimeRegulations time spent travelling betweenhome and the workplace is not counted asworking time, but time spent travelling onother duties is. Yet more than a third ofthose who answered the section on foreigntravel said time spent travelling was nottreated as working time. Many routinelycome straight into work after an overnightflight.

Remuneration for excess workingseems to be a thing of the past. Only 5 outof 168 respondents reported getting paidovertime. More than 60 per cent get nei-ther overtime pay nor time off in lieu. Andonly around one in seven “generally” taketime off in lieu. ■

When the working never stops

‘Researchers predicta world in whichthere are a few full-time workersworking increasinglylong hours, and areserve army ofcasuals.’

16 WORKER MAY/JUNE 2016

CHANCELLOR GEORGE Osborne’sannouncement in the March Budget that thegovernment plans to force all schools inEngland to become academies by 2022 hasbeen met with anger and bemusementacross the education world. This extrememeasure was not in the 2015 Tory electionmanifesto – and what on earth was the gov-ernment up to? Surely there had to be moreto it than an obvious distraction from theabysmal Budget news about the economy.

There was. The rationale began toemerge the next day when the moredetailed White Paper, “Education ExcellenceEverywhere”, was published, now frontedby Education Secretary Nicky Morgan.Academisation will mean staff pay, termsand conditions will cease entirely to bedetermined at national or local authoritylevel. Instead, chief executives of trusts andtheir boards will decide.

Added to this was the plan to end uni-versity-based teacher training and do awaywith qualified teacher status (QTS), to bereplaced by four years of on-the-job trainingaccredited by individual head teachers.

And in case parents don’t like the waythings are going, they will no longer get toelect governors for school governing bodies– called “governing boards” in the business-model academies. These will be replaced byappointed “advisory” governors with little orno decision-making powers, selected fortheir “correct skills mix”.

Labour firstThe academy programme was introduced inEngland by the Labour government in 2000.The rationale was to help “failing schools”identified by the Ofsted inspection regime tobe “turned around”. The idea was that LocalEducation Authorities (the “Education” partof the title disappeared under Labour) couldnot be trusted to support schools, so private

sponsors from industry would be brought into run academies instead.

Among the early sponsors were HarrisCarpets and Christian evangelist car dealerSir Peter Vardy’s Emmanuel SchoolsFoundation (which became associated withthe teaching of creationism in sciencelessons). Sponsors were supposed to con-tribute up to £2 million capital costs to theprocess, although it later turned out that thisrequirement was quietly dropped as theybecame totally publicly funded. These singleacademy schools became grouped intowhat are now called Multi-Academy Trusts(MATs), under single chief executives.

The Harris Federation now runs 37schools (with four more planned), all inLondon, although other MATs have schoolsdotted around the country. One of the cen-tral aspects of academy schools, apart frombeing much more generously funded thanstate schools, was that they would be freeof the obligations of local authority schools.

So in terms of curriculum, staffing (littlerequirement to employ qualified teachers),pay and conditions, and so on, academieswere “free to innovate”.

They were also free from local authorityoversight, allowing a number of financialscandals quickly to follow and continuenow. In the most recent case, in March2016, Perry Beeches MAT was found tohave deleted records for £2.5 million of freeschool meals funding, and the chief execu-tive was being by sub-contractors employedby the school – on top of his trust salary. SirDaniel Moynahan, chief executive of theHarris academy chain, earns almost£400,000 a year.

Nearly two-thirds of secondary schoolsare now academies, but primary schoolshave proved a harder nut to crack, valuingtheir relationships with local communityschools and councils. To date, only 2,440 of16,766 primary schools in England havebecome academies. Intense persuasion has

NUT banner on the 16 April People’s Assembly march in London.

Academies: brute force a

Thanks to George Osborne, ably supported by Education S currency – “academisation”, the forcible conversion of sch


‘There is noevidence thatacademies are moresuccessful.’


failed. Now coercion is to be used.The government appears to have united

against the move just about everyoneinvolved in school education: unions, acade-

mics, parents, and Tory and Labour localauthorities. Local authorities see the moveas cutting their links with local schools cre-ated over a century ago and accountable tothe electorate.

Teacher unions see it for what it is, a fullfrontal attack on teacher organisation. Unionrecognition, common pay scales, commonstandards of professional qualification,decent working conditions – all wouldbecome much harder to achieve.

Even now, with is a crisis in teacherrecruitment, local authority schools are find-ing that job adverts attract applications fromsignificantly higher numbers of teachersfleeing from academies.

Not surprisingly, even some academyprincipals are worried. The immediate goal is4,000 academy chains, with every schoolpart of a chain. David Carter, the NationalSchools Commissioner in charge of acade-mies, has talked about the creation of 1,000new trusts. That would presumably requireanother 1,000 highly paid chief executives.

Once all schools and their valuable landhave been handed over to the MATs, it islikely that the “edubusinesses” will becomefewer and larger. Schools will lose theirautonomy, governance will lose its indepen-dence and accountability, and the MATs willbe free to top slice millions in public fundsfrom school budgets.

Academic experts are questioning theeducational rationale, as there is no research

evidence that academies are more success-ful than local authority schools. The NationalGovernors Association, usually a quietlyneutral body, is angry about the emascula-tion of the role of school governors in gen-eral and of the input of parents in particular.

Even the head of Ofsted MichaelWilshaw, formerly head of MossbourneAcademy in Hackney, north London,recently wrote to Nicky Morgan to criticiseseven large academy chains for paying theirchief executives huge salaries and failing toimprove educational standards.

How to fight?It is unclear whether the changes can beintroduced without the need for scrutiny byparliament, or new legislation. Teacherunions are already discussing together whatto do, with the National Union of Teachersplanning to ballot members for possibleindustrial action. Unions rightly see thismove as an all-out attack on teacher organi-sation in the workplace.

As academies, without union rights andindependent governors and with profes-sional standards undermined, schools willbe difficult places in which to organise. Asalways, the strength to fight this unethicalonslaught against teachers and theircharges will need to come from organisationat school and local authority level. Teachershave done it before. They now need to do itagain. ■

THE CRISIS in school places is already ahuge problem, especially in primaries, duemainly to local large spikes in population (itwill hit the secondaries very soon).

Last year oversubscribed schoolsturned many children away, parents wereallocated places in different schools for dif-ferent children (sometimes miles apart), andchildren of non-religious parents were allo-cated places in undersubscribed religiousfree schools against their wishes.

These problems are particularly acute inareas of high population such as London.

On this year’s national offer day, 18 April,one in six London families learned that theyhad failed to get a place for their child intheir first choice school.

Splitting siblings between differentschools is unsettling for children and anightmare to manage for working parentsneeding to drop off and collect young chil-dren, especially if they have no car.

Local authorities have a legal duty toprovide a school place for every child whoneeds one, and this is to continue, but theyare not allowed to build new schools to

enable them to do this. Until now, localauthorities have tried to manage byexpanding existing community schools. Butthey have no powers to do this with acade-mies. Academies and free schools can setup willy nilly at huge cost if approved by theDepartment for Education, regardless ofwhere they are and whether their places areneeded locally.

This chaos will get far worse if everyschool is an academy, as local authoritieswill have no power to plan for the placesthey are expected to guarantee. ■

Oversubscribed – and no way of coping

and ignorance

Secretary Nicky Morgan, a new word is gaining hools into unaccountable academies…


AS MEMBERS of the National Union ofJournalists gathered in Southport for theirbiennial conference on 14 April, one of thekey topics of debate was already clear: thefuture of the BBC.

Ten days earlier, the four media unionsorganising at the BBC had issued a state-ment calling on BBC Director General TonyHall to ditch the secret agreement with thegovernment last year.

In what the unions call a “shoddy deal” –made without any consultation with anyone,parliament least of all – the BBC last yearagreed to shoulder the £650 million cost offree TV licences for the over-75s. Effectively,the BBC announced itself as an agent of theDepartment for Work and Pensions, whichhad previously funded the free licences.

In return the BBC has been graciouslyallowed to raise the licence fee by the rate ofinflation, and lower its commitment to helpfund rural broadband. But the free licencecommitment equates to 20 per cent of theBBC’s budget. “Entire services will have tobe cut, programmes dumped, free speechundermined and thousands of jobs lost,”said broadcasting union BECTU.

Charter renewalThese attacks will come on top of a decadeof cuts, and against the looming back-ground of the 10-yearly renewal of theBBC’s Royal Charter, due in 2017.Meanwhile a White Paper on funding andthe future of the BBC is due out during May2016, or more likely after the EU referen-dum. Issues were flagged up in a 2015 “rootand branch” Green Paper review to whichthere was an unprecedented publicresponse (192,000 submissions).

Throughout the debate about what sortof BBC we want, entertainment unions theWriters’ Guild, the NUJ, BECTU and othershave run a campaign called “Love it or Loseit”. On 5 April, under the banner “Keep theBBC independent, ditch the deal!” theydemonstrated outside the BAFTA awardsceremony in Piccadilly, culminating in a“thunderclap” of simultaneous tweeting and posting on social media (#future of TV#back the BBC). The public loves the BBC,but without a fight it will not survive as weknow it.

At stake is the destruction of no less

Into batt

The upcoming renew ‘austerity’ and dema

4 October 2015: Part of the TUC demonstration against cuts to the BBC at last year’sConservative Party Conference, Manchester.



than the cultural equivalent of the NHS. Iteven saves lives: during the floods inCumbria local radio gave life-saving infor-mation and advice.

AssetOutgoing chair of the Arts Council Sir PeterBazalgette described it as Britain’s greatestasset after the English language andShakespeare. For many viewers and listen-ers overseas the BBC is simply Britain. It isthe country’s biggest commissioner of newmusic and young talent, and Europe’sbiggest provider of media and creative skillstraining (technical staff). It is the greatestinvestor in news production in the world,reaching 210 million people. Its investigativestandards are second to none.

Whether in times of crisis, or on a dailyworking basis, it is a national point of refer-ence, capable of uniting the country andinterpreting world affairs.

Expect a wide-ranging review, withwide-ranging attacks. Select Committeerecommendations asked Culture SecretaryJohn Whittingdale to look at such matters asthe purpose and content of the BBC, its reg-ulation and accountability, size, indepen-dence from government and commercialinterests, financing and standards.

The licence fee, subscription top-ups,the security of future funding, expenditure,expansion or reduction of services, the payand perks of top executives, the failure of adigital media initiative (cost: £98.4 million),and the apparent cover up by Newsnight ofabuses committed by Jimmy Savile andothers – flaws highlighted by the resignationof Jeremy Paxman – have all been reviewed.

MissionArgument has raged around the fine detail ofgovernance and structure of theCorporation, virtually to the exclusion of itsmission to “inform, educate, entertain”.Controversial proposals include a unitaryboard largely appointed by the governmentto replace the BBC Trust. This would beregulated by media regulator Ofcom, andhave powers to set the editorial direction ofthe whole of the BBC, which the Trust wasnot empowered to do.

The fear is that government placemenwould edge the BBC closer to being a state

broadcaster rather than a national democra-tic voice. There is likely to be a duty placedon the board to consult with the public as amatter of course. But if the BBC’s recenttrack record is anything to go by, don’t holdyour breath.

Public debate has also pitted popularculture, such as The Great British Bake Offand Top Gear, against serious programmemaking. The 2016 BBC Proms willunashamedly feature Strictly Come Dancingin an attempt to capture a new audience.

But what really matters to most peopleis that their subscription should support a“universal public service” (that is, for every-body) and retain an independent nationalvoice, as it has for over 90 years. Ordinary

licence fee payers could hardly care lesswhat goes on in the higher echelons of theBBC. But perhaps they should: cuts of £80million are planned by 2021.

A licence fee may not be the ideal wayto fund the BBC – proposals for a universallevy on households have been mooted – butcalls for wholesale government funding aresimply fanciful. On the contrary, the govern-ment wants to introduce competition andprivatise the BBC, but so long as a licencefee equips the public with a sense of propri-etorship and scrutiny, they can't get awaywith it.

Whittingdale has opposed the licencefee and wants to decriminalise non-pay-ment. Meanwhile, the Treasury has refusedan increase in direct government subsidy.

The picture is dire. Thirty per cent ofmanagement jobs, including back office andsupport roles, are to be slashed in anattempt to save core costs. Radio is said tobe facing a “death sentence” as plans tohand it over to “the market” go ahead. And

all the while the EU claims the right to moni-tor the activities of national broadcasters,waiting for any opportunity to increase itspowers to encourage privatisation.

Pensions and legitimate expenses suchas travel for reporters are under attack. Lowwages, especially in the World Service,mean it is difficult to attract and retain staff.A new management regime at BBC News isbusy dismantling longstanding agreementsand policies – staff voted to strike, and theBBC stepped back.

An unworkable redeployment policywithin BBC Nations and Regions has leftsome members of the NUJ facing possibleredundancy for three years and necessi-tated a trawl for voluntary redundancies.Restructuring at BBC News Gathering in2015 led to a 24-hour strike in Birminghamin protest at the loss of editor roles, withopposition also in Bristol and the southwest.

White City in London has been sold off,and the 93-year old Meteorological Officecontract put out to tender. BBC3 TV cannow be found online only. News is alsomoving online.

CompetitionIn a digital age, there is fierce competitionfrom cheaper, faster, bigger American rivals.The BBC’s £3.7 billion annual budget isdwarfed by the likes of Amazon, Google,Netflix. Many prefer to listen or watch oncatch-up, a loophole which deprives theBBC of £150 million a year, as a licence iscurrently required for live programming only.

From 2016, however, iPlayer TV willbegin to feature live streaming with starssuch as Paxman, Cumberbatch, JudiDench, to draw in new licence payers. Eventhose watching on smartphones and tabletswill need a licence. Journalism and the arts have to be paid forlike everything else.

Charter renewal is still several monthsaway. At its conference in Southport, theNUJ committed itself to the “strongest pos-sible” campaign during the CharterRenewal. We must make it an opportunity toreassert our working class values of free-dom from shareholder and governmentpressure, advertiser influence and the chasefor ratings. ■

tle for the BBC

wal of the BBC’s charter is an opportunity to expose and the funding to make a great institution even greater…

‘The licence feeequips the publicwith a sense ofproprietorship andscrutiny.’

Barry White, outgoing NUJ member onthe European Federation of Journalists(EFJ) steering committee, outlines the lat-est threat to press freedom.

ON 14 APRIL, just 11 days after the PanamaPapers confirmed the central role of journal-ists and whistleblowers in revealing illegal orunethical business practices, the EuropeanParliament approved rules to protect corpo-rate trade secrets that could seriously hinderfuture revelations.

Although the stated aim of the TradeSecrets Directive is to protect firms withinthe EU from corporate espionage by foreignrivals, on closer examination many feel thatbusiness could use the law to prosecutejournalists and whistleblowers for exposingcorporate bad behaviour.

The European Federation of Journalists,along with other media associations andpress freedom organisations, believed that ithad achieved a clear exception for journal-ists after extensive lobbying of Europeaninstitutions. What was not clear was the pro-tection given to whistleblowers, who areusually critical in providing information aboutcorruption and other wrongdoing.

Shortly after the Directive was passedthe EFJ said that journalists and media asso-ciations were concerned that it could, afterall, put journalists at risk, limiting their abilityto investigate and report about business. Itsconcerns are shared by Reporters WithoutBorders and the European organisationsrepresenting magazine, newspaper andbroadcasting companies.

“Despite valuable improvements of theoriginal draft, the newly adopted Directive

still raises doubts as to whether journalistsand in particular their sources – whistleblow-ers – are appropriately protected,” the state-ment read.

“Exceptions foreseen under Article 5 forthe exercise of freedom of expression andinformation are not clear enough, whichmeans that safeguards for freedom of themedia will largely depend on how nationalgovernments implement the Directive.

“In addition, whistleblowers are poten-tially left exposed insofar as they will be heldto prove that the disclosure of information ismade ‘for the purpose of protecting the gen-eral public interest’.

“This could lead to significant legaluncertainty and chilling effects on journalistsas they would be required to prove that thewhistleblower’s intention was in line with therequirements of the Directive before evenbeing able to use disclosed public interestinformation.”

At the same time the Socialists andDemocrats group in the EuropeanParliament, which voted for the measure, putout a statement justifying, with a late reser-vation, their support for the Directive andclaiming that both whistleblowers and jour-nalists are “expressly exempted” from thescope of the new law.

But in the face of opposition from unionsand publishers, and with the excuse thatother national and EU legislation might

undermine the Directive, they called on theEuropean Commission to put forward newproposals…“to protect whistleblowers in theEU exposing illegal or unethical activities”!

In the meantime what are journalists andwhistleblowers to do? We face conflictinglegislation, good for some lawyers, bad forjournalists and whistleblowers. While weawait these new proposals, attention willshift to the 28 member states who will overthe next two years decide how to incorpo-rate the new Directive into national law.

This will be an interesting exercise inseeing just how much national parliamentsactually act as the peoples’ watchdogs inmatters such as these. Journalists will needto start campaigning through the NationalUnion of Journalists and other press free-dom organisations to stop the incorporationof this dodgy directive into our laws.

The UK record is not good. We arealready in a battle to stop the worstexcesses of the government’s InvestigatoryPowers Bill (often called the “Snooper’sCharter”) now before parliament. This weak-ens existing safeguards for journalists andrisks their data being accessed by lawenforcement agencies, while giving the statewidespread powers to intercept Internet andtelephone communications – which also putsources at risk.

Through the Bar Council, lawyers haveexpressed serious concerns about the Bill,which they believe will threaten “legalProfessional Privilege”, the right of clients tohave their conversations with their legal rep-resentatives kept confidential. “Failure toprotect that privilege would amount to a sig-nificant derogation of a fundamental consti-tutional right which is part of the foundationof the rule of law,” the Bar Council told aparliamentary committee in March.

So in the UK we need to step up thecampaign against the Snooper’s Charter,which has already received its second read-ing, and prepare to campaign against thenew Trade Secrets Directive. Unless, that is,there is a vote to leave the EU on 23 June,which could derail it. ■


Olaf Speier/shutterstock.com

EU Directive threatensinvestigatory journalism

Another directive, another threat. This time it’sjournalists at the receiving end…

‘Journalists willneed to startcampaigningthrough the NUJ.’

Havens for evasion

The Hidden Wealth of Nations: TheScourge of Tax Havens, by GabrielZucman, translated by Teresa LavenderFagan, with a foreword by Thomas Piketty,hardback, 200 pages, ISBN 978-0226245423, University of Chicago Press,2015, £14, Kindle and e-book editionsavailable, paperback available late 2016.

THIS TIMELY book exposes the world’s taxhavens. These all offer the same service,“the possibility of not paying any taxes ondividends, interest, capital gains, wealth, orinheritances”. Gabriel Zucman, assistantprofessor of economics at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, explores the history oftax havens, evaluates their size and proffersan action plan.

This hidden wealth now amounts to atleast $7.6 trillion, a record high. Switzerlandis the top offshore wealth management cen-tre, managing an estimated $2.3 trillion.Investment funds are mainly headquarteredin Luxembourg, Ireland and the CaymanIslands. Trusts and shell companies arelargely based in the British Virgin Islands.

After 15 years of discussion, the EU pro-duced its savings tax directive in 2005. Thishas been a fiasco, for four reasons. It did notinclude any sanctions against the non-com-pliant; it excluded Luxembourg and Austria,the EU’s two internal tax havens; it appliesonly to interest and not company dividends;and crucially it excludes interest paymentsto “legal entities”. These legal entitiesinclude companies in the British VirginIslands, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas,Panama, Liechtenstein and so on.

Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister ofLuxembourg for the 15 years when itbecame the premier tax haven, and nowPresident of the European Commission,boasted, “the lights are not going to go outin the banks” in Luxembourg.

Between them, the EU and the City ofLondon account for most of the world’s taxhavens. As long as the EU exists, it will pro-tect its tax havens. As long as we are in theEU, the City of London will ensure that taxhavens flourish. Outside the EU, we wouldbe in a far stronger position to end thisabuse, as so many others. ■

In the shadows

Shadow Sovereigns: How GlobalCorporations Are Seizing Power, by SusanGeorge, paperback, 208 pages, ISBN 978-0745697826, Polity Books, 2015, £12.99,Kindle edition available.

SUSAN GEORGE’S excellent book explainshow the EU’s scheme to give giant corpora-tions extraordinary new powers came about.

The US and the EU have been pushingfor TTIP since 1995. That year, theunelected European Commission and theUS Department of Commerce founded theTransatlantic Business Dialogue, made up ofthe CEOs of 70 major US and Europeancompanies.

In 2007 President Bush, Angela Merkeland European Commission President JoséManuel Barroso founded the TransatlanticEconomic Council, which says its aim is to“[advance] economic integration betweenthe European Union and the United Statesof America”. It describes its role as gettingrid of regulations in order to “empower theprivate sector”.

The EU’s Directorate General for Tradehas been pushing hard for TTIP. In 2013 itsaid, “The European Commission, the EUMember States and the EuropeanParliament all believe that Investor to State

Dispute Settlement (ISDS) is an importanttool for protecting EU investors abroad.”ISDS has no separation of powers: compa-nies would have legislative, executive andjudicial powers. Corporate diktat replacesthe rule of law and overthrows national sov-ereignty. All the EU member governmentssigned up to ISDS.

Juan Fernández-Armesto, an arbitratorfrom Spain, said of ISDS, “… it never ceasesto amaze me that sovereign states haveagreed to investment arbitration at all...Three private individuals are entrusted withthe power to review, without any restrictionor appeal procedure, all actions of the government, all decisions of the courts, andall laws and regulations emanating from parliament.”

In December 2013 the EuropeanCommission announced that a RegulatoryCooperation Council would be established.This unelected body would take over thelegislative functions of defining the regula-tions governing consumer protection, publichealth, the environment, labour law and soon.

Susan George sums up: “In the EU, afully developed offensive against the welfarestate and the European social model isunder way, with the goal of clawing back allthe gains won by working people over thepast six or seven decades.” ■

MAY/JUNE 2016 BOOK REVIEWS WORKERS 21

PhotographyByM

K/shutterstock.com

Their profit, our loss

This issue we review two books which show clearlywhere the wealth that workers create is going…

for the OEEC to have an executive councilwith supranational rather than intergovern-mental powers. And the newly formed CIAset the an American Committee on UnitedEurope as a conduit to provide covert fund-ing to promote federalism and integration.

Monnet’s scheme was to build a UnitedStates of Europe, beginning with the integra-tion of the coal and steel industries and asupranational authority to run them. The planproposed that Franco-German production ofcoal and steel be placed under a commonHigh Authority within the framework of anorganisation that was open to the participa-tion of other European countries.

This pooling of coal and steel productionwas intended to set up the common founda-tions for enlarged economic developmentand pave the way for the political eclipse ofnation states.

In effect today’s European Union beganin 1950 with the creation of the EuropeanCoal and Steel Community (ECSC), whichplaced all French and German production ofcoal and steel under one central authority.The British government was not even told ofthese plans. Italy and the three Beneluxcountries (Belgium, the Netherlands andLuxembourg) joined soon after.

Jean Monnet said, “Over and above coaland steel, it is laying the foundations of aEuropean federation.” Some governments ofthe six countries were worried about theunlimited powers of the High Authority. Anintergovernmental Council of Ministers wascreated with qualified majority voting. Butalthough this council could take part in deci-sion-making, it could not instruct the HighAuthority, which was to remain supreme.Britain, which would not at that time submitto a supranational authority, remained out-side.

Treaty of ParisThe Treaty of Paris in April 1951 created theECSC, requiring the governmental powers ofthe six states to be abandoned to a statelessand uncontrolled autocracy. Monnet wasappointed as the High Authority’s first presi-dent. “Our Community is not a coal andsteel producers association. It is the begin-ning of Europe,” he said.

It is speciously argued that after the warthere was a need to form some pan-

22 WORKERS HISTORIC NOTES MAY/JUNE 2016

European entity to subdue the rivalries of thenation states in Europe and particularlyFrance and Germany, binding them withinstrong institutions. In fact in the postwarworld, these old problems were not appar-ent. European integration was encouraged,particularly by the US, to oppose the social-ism in the Soviet Union and in EasternEurope. And a European Community offeredGermany “respectability” and a greater roleafter the twelve years of Nazi rule.

After the French National Assemblydefeated a move to establish a treaty for aEuropean Defence Community in 1954, thesix founder states proceeded again on thepath of further economic integration.

For a few years all public statementsabout European government disappearedand the strategy pursued was of buildingEurope through the progressive integrationof other economic sectors. The first targetswere the nuclear industry, all forms ofenergy, and transport. Building Europe waspresented as merely a matter of trade andjobs, though political integration proceeded

THE SUPRA-EUROPEAN approach took itsfirst steps following the Second World War,at the eager prompting of the United States.In March 1947 a resolution passed throughboth houses of the US legislature declaring,“Congress favours the creation of a UnitedStates of Europe”.

This US support for pan-European initia-tives was prompted by its fear during theeconomic dislocation of 1946-47 of the sig-nificant membership growth in the commu-nist parties of Italy and France. It was symp-tomatic of the rabid “resist the spread ofcommunism” contagion that was the hall-mark of postwar America.

In June 1947, the US State Departmentproposed a European RecoveryProgramme, known as the Marshall Plan.Sixteen European nations formed theCommittee for European Economic Co-operation, making a case for $19.1 billion aidfrom the USA. They received $13 billionshipments of food, staple goods, fuel,machinery and vehicles produced in theUnited States and, later, investment inindustrial capacity in Europe.

Marshall Plan funding, which ended in1951, was not an act of altruism. Europewas an enormous market for American com-mercial interests. Aid came with two condi-tions. Firstly, pressure was placed onEuropean governments to adopt tradingrules that eased the path for Americanexports. Secondly, recipient countries had topromote a federal Europe.

The Organisation of European EconomicCo-operation (OEEC) was created to admin-ister the distribution of Marshall Plan fund-ing. Jean Monnet, a French politician largelyrecognised as the founder of the EU, pushed

“Our Community isnot a coal andsteel producersassociation. It isthe beginning ofEurope.”

Where did the EU begin? In the Oval Office of the Truman (left) with (left to right) George Marshall president Paul Hoffman and Commerce Secretar

The American origins of

In its early years European integration proceeded without political, purpose. Now we know better…

MAY/JUNE 2016

under the guise of economic integration.The European Economic Community

(EEC) was set up by the Treaty of Rome in1957 by France, Germany, Italy, Belgium,the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The treatyopened the way to an integrated economy,as the common market was extended to thewhole of the mutual trade in goods of thefounding countries.

Though the early ambitions appearedeconomic, the preamble to the foundingtreaty agreed by the six heads of statedeclared that they were “determined to laythe foundations of an ever closer unionamong the peoples of Europe”.

From its very inception, joining integra-tionist Europe always meant much morethan accepting a certain set of conditions inthe here and now. It was also participation ina process that would lead onwards to a finaldestination. This is still the case today. ■

• A full history of the origin and develop-ment of the EU is available on the web atwww.cpbml.org.uk.

e White House. Photo shows President Harry l, author of the Marshall Plan, Studebaker ry Averell Harriman, who traded with the Nazis.

the EU

revealing its real,

Our country is under attack. Every single institution is in decline. Theonly growth is in unemployment, poverty and war. There is a crisis – ofthought, and of deed. The Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninistheld its 16th Congress in November 2012, a coming together of the Partyto consider the state of Britain and what needs to happen in the future.Here we set out briefly six Calls to Action for the British working class –for a deeper explanation, see www.cpbml.org.uk.

1: Out of the European Union, enemy to our survivalThe European Union represents the dictatorship of finance capital, foreigndomination. The British working class must declare our intention to leave the EU.

2: No to the breakup of Britain, defend our nationalsovereigntyDevolution, and now the threats of separation and regionalism, are all products ofonly one thing: de-industrialisation.

3: Rebuild workplace trade union organisationUnions exist as working members in real workplaces or they become something elseentirely – something wholly negative. Take responsibility for your own unions.

4: Fight for pay, vital class battlegroundThe fight for pay is central to our survival as a class, and must be central to theagenda of our trade unions.

5: Regenerate industry, key to an independent futureThe regeneration of industry in Britain is essential to the future of our nation. Ourgrand-parents, and theirs, knew this. We must now reassert it at the centre of classthinking.

6: Build the PartyThe task of the Party is singular: to change the ideology of the British working class inorder that they make revolution here.

Interested in these ideas?• Go along to meetings in your part of the country, or join in study to help pushforward the thinking of our class. Get in touch to find out how to take part.• Send an A5 sae to the address below for a list of publications, or email us.

• Subscribe to Workers, our bimonthly magazine, either online at workers.org.uk or bysending £12 for a year’s issues (cheques payable to Workers) to the address below.• Sign up for our free email newsletter – see the form at www.cpbml.org.uk• Follow us on Twitter.

Worried about the future ofBritain? Join the CPBML.66 SIX CALLS

TO ACTION

CPBML78 Seymour Avenue, London N17 9EB

email [email protected] @cpbml

www.cpbml.org.ukphone 020 8801 9543

Leave the EUand we won’tget TTIP, saysObama. Anothergood reason toquit…

Britain and the worldBARACK OBAMA is not the first US presidentto lecture Britain about its place in the world.But he certainly chose a bizarre way tothreaten the people of this country. Read hiswords carefully:

“I think it’s fair to say that maybe at somepoint down the line there might be a UK-UStrade agreement, but it’s not going to happenany time soon because our focus is innegotiating with a big bloc, the EuropeanUnion, to get a trade agreement done. Andthe UK is going to be in the back of thequeue,” he said at 10 Downing Street, withDavid Cameron at his shoulder.

So if we leave the EU, no TTIP for us. NoTiSA either. Millions of us will have heard that“threat” and wondered whether he might beprepared to put the promise in writing.

In fact, leaving the EU might be the onlyway we can ditch these odious free tradeagreements.

In Obama’s statement we see another uglytruth for the Remain crowd: the US loves theEU. It was there at the start (see page 22) andit enables the US to bully and dictate to 28countries in one fell swoop. A single market,neatly parcelled up and handed over to theUS and the transnational corporations. Thefree movement of vulture capitalists.

The people of Britain will take note. Theentire establishment has lined up to instructus (see page 2). Now they are backed up bythe biggest international bully of all – the USgovernment. But we don't have to followinstructions on this one. We still have achoice.

That choice is straightforward: Do we wanta country that is recognisable as Britain, onethat can take its own decisions about itsfuture, that can hold its politicians to account,that can keep what is precious to us?

Membership of the EU has already cost us

a great deal of our identity and our ability toact on our own behalf. Continued membershipwill finish it off.

We are told that independence willdiminish Britain’s influence in the world. That’sa breathtaking lie, even by the miserablestandards of the Remain arguments.

Here’s the truth: With the EU’s “exclusivecompetence” over trade the UK has lost itsvoice at the World Trade Organization, whereit is represented by the EuropeanCommission. At the WTO we have at best1/28 of a voice, dwindling with each newmember state. Note: the UK is still a member,but it neither attends the WTO nor speaksthere.

If we left the EU, we could take up ourseat and the UK would have a full voice. Callthat diminished influence? With an economyless than a seventh the size of the UK, non-EUNorway has its own seat on the WTO – and itcurrently chairs the body!

Even more crucially, the EU is angling forBritain – and France – to give up their seats onthe UN Security Council so that Brussels cantake their places. If you want evidence, seethe resolution on the role of the EU within theUN passed by the European Parliament on 24November last year, by 488 votes to 137.Then, if you wish, look at who voted for it: thelist includes the whole rotten cohort ofBritain’s Labour and Green MEPs.

That’s the topsy-turvy world of theeurophiles: boost Britain’s influence in theworld by surrendering it to Brussels, which willthen surrender the whole lot to TTIP, TiSA andthe US.

On 23 June we have the opportunity toassert the independence of the UK. It’s aprospect that terrifies the battered bastions ofcapitalism. We welcome that prospect withopen arms. ■

BADGES OF PRIDEGet your full-colour badges celebrating MayDay (2 cm wide, enamelled in black, red,gold and blue) and the Red Flag (1.2 cmwide, enamelled in Red and Gold).The badges are available now. Buy themonline at cpbml.org.uk/shop or by post fromBellman Books, 78 Seymour Avenue,London N17 9EB, price £2 for the May Daybadge and £1 for the Red Flag badge.Postage free up to 5 badges. For orders over5 please add £1 for postage (make chequespayable to “WORKERS”).

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