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The Young Communist League - Britain - September Bulletin
Government colludes with the EU to destroy what remains of industrial apprenticeships
WFDY - World Federation of Democratic Youth Fédération Mondiale de la Jeunesse Démocratique Federación Mundial de la Juventud Democrática
Regarding the riots in London and other parts of Britain WFDY condemns the reckless violence and widespread criminality of recent nights, however we understand it as a direct product of the capitalist system and of the resulting dangerous lack of stability and rights for the youth of today, accompanied by disenfranchisement and exacerbated by unprecedented levels of alienation.
S E P T E M B E R
B U L L E T I N
CAPITALISM AT HEART OF THE RIOTS
It is clear that the anger of the youth is derived from a number of factors including police brutality, the massive reduction in public spending on youth and other services, and a general frustration at a future with little prospects. Furthermore, WFDY notes that the cuts in public spending have had a disproportionate impact on both the youth and ethnic minority groups. The first and main responsible for the wave of violence that now is taking place is the system under which the British people live, responsible for massive unemployment, huge rates of precarity, extremely expensive access to the higher levels of education and almost impossible access to proper housing, mainly for the young generations. It is also important to remind that it is this system that engages the British youth in wars just to satisfy the greed for profit of the big national and international monopolies. We admit these concerns along with our member organizations in Britain, especially with comrades of YCL Britain, demanding to address the root causes of unrest and violence and by supporting the genuine concerns of young people in the street and their frustration while outright rejecting their way of vandalizing, looting and creating chaos without certain goal of socio-economic transformation. In this extremely sensitive moment, WFDY calls upon all the young people in Britain to organize themselves and find the best ways to revolutionarily transform their country, which will surely be through the overthrown of this dominant order and not through the destruction of public or private goods, for a Britain and a world of peace, solidarity and social transformation. The CC/HQ of WFDY Budapest – August 9, 2011
IN SERVICE OF YOUTH AND THEIR RIGHTS SINCE 1945
Woman in Hackney rejects violence public spending on youth and other Youth activists put the blame services, and a general frustration at a for riots and social unrest future with little prospects,” it said. WFDY called on Britain’s youth sweeping Britain firmly at to direct their anger in a positive the feet of capitalism and constructive way and for them to war today. “organise themselves and find the best ways to revolutionarily transform their country, which will surely be through the The World Federation of overthrow of this dominant order and Democratic Youth (WFDY), which has not through the destruction of public or been monitoring events in Britain closely, private goods.” joined working-class communities in The Young Communist League condemning the “widespread criminality in Britain, a WFDY affiliate, acting general of recent nights.” secretary Mick Carty said: “The choice But the federation stressed that it for Britain’s youth remains clear was as a “direct product” of the capitalist Socialism or barbarism?” economic system and the “alienation” of Stop the War organiser Robin young people in general. Beste said: “It’s hard to imagine that “The anger of the youth is deDavid Cameron would condemn the rived from a number of factors including police brutality, the massive reduction in continued on page 2
More than 1,400 jobs, including the majority of apprenticeships, at Britain’s last train making company, Bombardier are to go after the government awarded a lucrative order for the Thameslink project to Siemens of Germany rather than to Derby-based Bombardier. Train building is one of the biggest growth areas in world manufacturing yet it is being destroyed in this country thanks to EU procurement rules, and the promotion of a service industry as opposed to genuine production. It is clear that this could never have happened without a deliberate policy of de-industrialising the British engineering sector and transferring the skills and work to Germany and France. The move will mean that one of the few areas of the British economy in which young people can pursue quality apprenticeships and learn globally valued, practical skills will be destroyed. From the 1983 Serpell report to rail privatisation in 1993, successive governments in Britain have fatally undermined the rail engineering sector by farming out contracts to the lowest bidder and ignoring both the economic and the social value of having a strong industrial base to the economy. A consortium led by Bombardier had been competing with one led by Siemens of Germany for a contract for 1,200 new carriages as part of a £6 billion upgrade of the Thameslink route, which runs from Bedford to Brighton through London. Last month the government announced that Siemens would be the preferred bidder for the contract. Announcing the winner, Rail Minister Theresa Villiers said the bid by Siemens, which will build the new carriages in Germany, represented the “best value for money for taxpayers”, neglecting social value, the prospects for youth, or the cost of mass unemployment and benefit dependency. But Bombardier had to win the Thameslink contract as most of its other continued on page 2
Young Communist League, Ruskin House, 23 Coombe Rd, London CR0 1BD or email gensec@ycl.org.uk
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The Young Communist League - Britain - September Bulletin
Riots - page 1 devastation and mass slaughter visited on Afghanistan and Iraq over the past decade or the bombing of Libya as ‘sickening violence.’ “Many of the same MPs who voted along with the majority in Parliament for the war that reduced much of Iraq to ruins and killed a million Iraqis, take to the moral high ground when alienated youths from our ghettos of deprivation commit their mini-version of ‘shock and awe’.” And PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said that the authorities must “step back” and recognise these disturbances did not happen in a vacuum. “There will be those who will call for tougher sentencing and more police powers, but these will not solve the very deep problems facing our country,” he said. “We should resist attempts to demonise young people in general. “They have been the biggest victims of this recession. The lawlessness of the financial and political elites is a much larger problem that our society must address.”
TUC Betrays the Most Vulnerable Workers The YCL Executive Committee condemns the Trade Union Congress’ call for a below inflation increase in the National Minimum Wage which is reviewed annually. The Committee noted that “the cost of living has increased by at least 5% since this time last year and for the TUC to call for the wages of the lowest earners in society to be increased by less than that is either an act of cowardice or class collaboration, or both. It is certainly not in the interest of young people, who disproportionately earn just the minimum wage. Effectively, the TUC are calling for a pay cut for some of the most vulnerable workers in society”. The TUC has attempted to justify its’ position by referencing economic growth and average earnings in a move which serves only to defend the profits of monopolies.
Apprenticeships - page 1 contracts are due to finish in September this year and only has a Tube train contract until 2014 which will only support a few hundred jobs at Derby. The Executive Committee of the Young Communist League called on the government to put the interests of the British people above the interests of the monopolies in order to save Britain’s last train manufacturer, and to give young people the option of “developing real skills in work that will be genuinely useful to society, and which will provide an alternative to the alienating process of selling their labour to parasitic commercial and financial service institutions”. While British governments remain enthralled with EU rules designed to benefit Europe’s monopolies at the expense of member states and their citizens no industry is safe, and as such quality apprenticeships in engineering and other industrial jobs will be almost impossible to find.
International relations and the prospects for Britain’s youthThe YCL on the EU India Free Trade Agreement You could be forgiven for not knowing about the free trade deal currently being thrashed out by the EU and India. Hardly a word has been raised in opposition - mainly because the talks are going on behind closed doors. Yet if passed into law it will have devastating consequences for workers in Britain and India, especially young people. The deal will represent a huge coup for Britain’s coalition government on behalf of monopoly finance capital.
It is central to the government’s project to remould the British economy as a cheap labour platform for outside investors, especially for financial services. Tellingly, one of David Cameron’s first acts as PM was to lead a high-profile business delegation to India, once the crown jewel of the British empire and today a rapidly developing mass market with an English-speaking middle class. This EU-India deal is tailormade to pursue the British government’s agenda. It aims to secure big business access to the Indian economy and the employment of India’s highly skilled IT, technical and financial personnel in Britain at minimum rates of pay and without collective bargaining protection. Key EU demands are the liberalisation of the Indian financial services sector and the enforcement of intellectual property rights - in particular in its pharmaceutical industry which produces the great bulk of generic medicines for the Third World. The EU also wants to see procurement rules that channel Indian public spending into transnational corporations as well as what is called “investor protection,” which would allow transnationals to sue the Indian government if it makes a decision that is not in their interests. The Indian government’s single key demand is Mode 4 access to the EU. Mode 4 is a World Trade Organisation provision which allows transnationals registered within one trading partner to transfer labour at existing rates of pay and terms of employment to work temporarily within the company in the other trading partner. To put it crudely, if the deal is agreed the City of London will get its hands on India’s vast, localised and protected banking sector. Its thousands of relatively small state-based banks will be quickly swallowed by big British and London-based US banks. British, German and French pharmaceutical monopolies will see their global position secured and the big EU-based utility companies will get
Page 3 access to all Indian public expenditure. At the same time, Mode 4 will be used by the British companies moving into the Indian market to secure temporary transfers of highly skilled Indian workers to Britain. This means social dumping, job cuts and an ever diminishing skill set in Britain. No wonder Indian trade unionists are demanding opposition on an international scale. On May 1 CH Venkatachalam, the general secretary of India’s largest bank workers’ union AIBEA, stated that “allowing full voting rights for foreign direct investors in banks, increased FDI/ Foreign Institutional Investors investment limit in banking sector, higher FDI limit in insurance sector are some of the major challenges which the bank employees cannot afford to ignore.” He went on to appeal to trade unionists to unite to oppose any move towards privatisation by the government. While one side of the deal is affecting workers in India, Mode 4 will be used by British companies moving into the Indian market to secure temporary transfers of highly skilled Indians to Britain as a low-cost alternative to local workers. The impact of the EU-India Free Trade Agreement on Britain’s youth will be especially pronounced, in particular with regard to graduate employment and apprenticeship schemes. Research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research found that about 40 per cent of last year’s graduates were employed below their skill level six months after graduation - up from about 30 per cent four years earlier. It predicted that this figure would rise to 55 per cent by the time the current batch of final-year students graduate. Future generations in Britain face growing barriers to becoming a graduate at all - fewer courses and a massive rise in tuition fees. And all this comes following decades of planned destruction of British industry and the subsequent steady decline in the opportunities for young people to undertake an apprenticeship. The issue of immigration poses a major challenge for interna-
The Young Communist League - Britain - September Bulletin
tionalists and the labour movement. Internationalism rests on the free co-operation of independent sovereign nation states.The response of the British progressive and labour movement must be based upon the same principle, which is directly undermined by this free trade deal. Britain’s working class cannot view this agreement solely in terms of the domestic labour market. This would be to ignore the role of British imperialism. Nor can it be limited to consulting with other European trade unions. This would be to ignore EU imperialism. Rather, our national institutions - the trade unions - must look to their counterparts in India and establish a common front against a deal which is detrimental to workers as a whole. The coalition government is supposedly committed to reducing net migration on an annual basis, which is the overarching agenda of the UK Border Agency (UKBA). But this pledge has clearly been silently scrapped in order to appease the British financial monopolies and provide cheap skilled labour to monopolies in other sectors. UKBA targets are designed to stoke ethnic division, while Mode 4 is designed to import cheap labour. It is not clear whether Parliament will even be asked to discuss the issue before it becomes binding. This free trade deal presents a clear opportunity to the labour movement to expose the coalition, as well as highlighting and exploiting the tensions between the domestic ruling class and the EU commission. And the stakes are high. The deal as it stands contains no mechanism by which it could be revised. Even if one was included it would need the agreement of all parties to amend or dissolve it. This means that the outcome of the current discussions will effectively become permanent. It won’t just mean a temporary distortion of the British labour market. After all, why train young workers in Britain when a reserve army of skilled graduates, bonded to their employer and without enforceable rights, is readily available?
“The Young Communist League was formed in 1921 as the youth wing of the Communist Party. This year is our 90th anniversary. The YCL has a long and proud history in the struggle for Socialism amongst young people in Britain and most of the broad based progressive youth organisations that exist today owe their existence to the initiatives and work of the YCL. The YCL has always and continues to play a vital role in the struggles for peace, against racism and fascism, for gender equality, and all other popular struggles that involve young people across Britain. All our struggles are fought in the context of class struggle, recognising that these issues can only be fully resolved once socialism has been establised. We work to abolish capitalism and establish a socialist society based on common ownership and democratic control, drawing on the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and others, as well as on the experience of socialist countries since 1917. In the context of this struggle we seek to defend and strengthen public services, the welfare state and the NHS. We believe that everyone has the right to free and inclusive secular education including access to nursery care, schools, universities, community colleges and adult education centres. The struggle for socialism must go hand in hand with the struggle to protect the environment, which is wilfully damaged by trans-national corporations and capitalist governments in the drive for short-term profits.
Contact / Join the YCL write to: Young Communist League Ruskin House, 23 Coombe Rd, London CR0 1BD or email: gensec@ycl.org.uk