COALITION OF RESISTANCE
National Organising Conference Saturday 27 November, London www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk
Inside Why we need a movement that is wide and militant
Anne Koerber
Stop the ConDem vandals As the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression deepens and battle lines are drawn, a mass anti-cuts movement must force the ConDems to reverse their savage cuts. This is a defining crisis for a generation. What happens in the next few years will determine the course of decades to come. It is a battle over values. On one side are those who stand for the rule of markets and the rich. On the other are those who stand for solidarity and justice. It is happening because capitalism is changing. The leading capitalist nation, the US, is in steady decline. New powers are emerging. The first shots in this battle were fired over Afghanistan and Iraq. A gamble by George Bush to shore up US power ran into a global opposition movement. Millions protested. We did not stop the Iraq war. But, as Bush’s autobiography now reveals, we prevented further attacks on Iran and elsewhere. His gamble played badly. Iraq was a disaster. The US and its lackeys are locked into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 opened the second stage of the crisis. The bankruptcy of the world’s third largest bank opened up a global recession—the worst since the 1930s. The US and its allies are still trapped by it. They cannot break the cycle of decline because they cannot break the grip of finance. Two strategies have emerged instead. For the US, “quantitative easing”—printing money—is preferred. This is driving down the value of the dollar. Cheaper dollars should mean more US exports. But competitors like Brazil and China will lose markets. They warn of “currency wars”. Quantitative easing is another gamble for US power
abroad. It is stoking up tensions. The logic of the market is destroying international co-operation. For lesser powers, austerity is demanded. As in the 1930s, governments locked in recession are expected to cut their own spending still further, to reduce deficits. This is delusional. Government spending sustains demand in the economy. Private businesses depend on spending by government. Pull it away, and the recession will deepen. As the recession deepens the deficit worsens, provoking more cuts. This is the demand death-spiral that helped prolong the Great Depression. It is emerging already in Ireland. As the cuts bite the economy contracts, driving further cuts. Portugal and Greece are also threatened, with the markets smelling blood. Speculation is pushing up the costs of their borrowing. Britain’s Coalition government is locking us into the same spiral downwards. They aim to wrench £87 billion out of public spending over the next five years. This is sufficient to destroy the welfare state. The government claims these cuts are necessary because spending is too high. This is a lie. Under New Labour before 2008, government spending averaged 39 per cent of GDP. Under Thatcher, it was 43 per cent. But the bank bailout cost £1.3 trillion. And the recession reduced tax receipts, while pushing up spending on unemployment benefits. The deficit grew because the banks failed. The financial system that failed so spectacularly is unreformed. Hedge funds, unregulated gambling dens for
the super-rich, are on the rise. The feeble “Basel III” reforms won’t be introduced fully until 2019. Another crash is likely—as Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, warned in a recent speech. And the banks will come squealing for another bailout. But the last bailout crippled economies across the globe. The Bank of International Settlements says the UK is too “fragile” to withstand another one. It could not raise the public funds needed. This is the deranged logic driving the cuts: cut spending today so we can pay for the banking crisis tomorrow. The real weakness of British capitalism is revealed. It can afford a welfare state, or it can afford the City. Both require public spending. But it cannot afford both. We face a choice. Eighteen of 23 Cabinet ministers are millionaires. They have chosen as their class demands and their ideology decrees. We must force the opposite answer. The Coalition’s strategy is divide-and-rule. They would rather fight hundreds of small, local campaigns than one big battle. A united, national campaign can shatter that logic. The Coalition of Resistance conference in London on 27 November is the place where such a campaign can start to form. It will be a chance to draw together all strands of opposition to this government. Mass movements stopped the Poll Tax and helped force Blair out of office. Hundreds of thousands of people on the streets would transform British politics. It is time for all those who value people’s lives ahead of markets to unite.
Jean-Marc Bourquin / photothèque rouge
French trade unionists and students took to the streets to oppose the reform on pensions
The movement we need movement that goes way beyond the usual activists and even the trade unions. This may seem obvious in theory, but there are Build it wide practical conclusions. We need First, it must be broad and reach organisation that is as inclusive far beyond the left. Every section as possible, that actively brings of society is going to be affected in new groups, networks and Millions are up in arms Anti-cuts campaigns have by a programme of cuts aimed campaigns into co-ordinated over the ConDem’s cuts. sprung up in towns and at re-engineering society, taking action. Cameron’s “we are all in this cities across the country and us back to a nineteenth century It is no good sections of the together” rhetoric is widely the TUC have called what world before welfare. left going around arguing they regarded as a joke at a time we all hope to be a monster Protests by artists, by should have exclusive leadership when the bankers and the demonstration on 26 March of the movement, or voting down rich are partying through the next year. scientists, by the disabled and initiatives because they didn’t crisis they have created. The questions are: how can pensioners, angry complaints think of them first. Such antics The brilliant student demo we turn these first initiatives from women’s groups and black organizations—let alone students are completely missing the point and occupation of the Tory into a campaign that can break and trade unionists—testify to and they put people off. Party HQ expressed the rage so the government and their the almost unthinkable impact of We need dynamic, outwardmany people feel towards the programme of cuts? How can the ConDem’s plans on society. looking, creative ways of politicians and their friends in we create a movement that addresses the widespread sense And it all shows we could have a organising, not activist cliques. In finance and big business.
The students have shown what an anti-cuts movement could look like. With millions more affected by savage cuts, there are four principles a mass campaign will need if it is to win.
Bonfires, broken glass and burning effigies of David Cameron scattered the courtyard of 30 Millbank—Conservative Party HQ—as over 50,000 students, lecturers, support staff and graduates marched through central London on the biggest anti-cuts protest of the decade. Both the police and the NUS bureaucracy were powerless to contain the demonstrators, who poured into Millbank. Windows were smashed to allow the protestors to occupy the building, with banners flying from the roof and chants of “Tory scum” reverberating around the courtyard. A simultaneous sit-in occurred at Parliament Square and protestors also directed
anger at the Treasury buildings, Liberal Democrat HQ and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. The NUS leadership predictably distanced themselves from the day’s actions, condemning them as ‘despicable’. The demonstration chimed with anti-cuts alliances, occupations and protests erupting up and down the country: Goldsmith’s University took over their management buildings in a flash occupation last week and thousands protested on the day of the Comprehensive Spending Review— all an inspiring start to a mass anti-cuts movement. As protesters promised from the roof of Tory HQ: “This is just the beginning!”
every area there should be public events big and diverse enough to convince people we have the power to get somewhere. We need open, democratic and wellpromoted planning meetings between the big set pieces that involve as many new people as possible. Trade unionists need to be at the centre of this campaign. The unions are by far the biggest networks in society and they can organise strike action—the most
“We need dynamic, outward-looking, creative ways of organising, not activist cliques.” michael-marsden.com
Students storm Tory HQ over massive fee hikes
that the politicians’ priorities are all wrong? To be successful, such a movement needs to be based on four principles.
effective tactic of resistance. But we must not rely exclusively on the unions. And we must not wait for them to act. Most working people in Britain are not unionised. Unions in Britain are still recovering from the defeats they suffered in the 1980s and a good deal of the leadership is still hesitant and sectional. The only way the fight can really take off is if it involves a much wider alliance. There has to be a political challenge to the government which encompasses large sections of society and which generalises the struggle. It needs to move more quickly and more decisively than most of the trade union leaders. This kind of movement can give people the confidence to take serious strike action. Ideas matter Second, like any great struggle, the fight against this government will have to confront the ConDems at an ideological as well as an agitational level. The ConDem alliance is united around one or two arguments. It argues that cuts are unavoidable because of the scale of the deficit, and that the deficit is caused by excessive state spending by Labour, hoping we will forget the colossal bailout of the banks. These ideas are not hard to take apart. Scrapping Trident, increasing taxes on the rich and ending our foreign wars would easily deal with the deficit. But because the government’s arguments are repeated over and again by politicians, commentators and journalists, and because so few in the mainstream challenge them, they do effect people. This makes resistance much harder. What we need is a movement that has the reach and influence to be an alternative source of explanations and solutions to the crisis. Through mass rallies at demonstrations, public meetings and online networking, the Stop the War Coalition has helped popularise arguments against the US-led wars that give people the confidence to campaign.
The anti-cuts movement needs to do a similar job. Third, although the cuts impact locally they are implemented nationally. They are part of a concerted, national (and international) ruling class offensive. Local resistance is essential to defend particular services and draw people into action. The local anti-cuts committees need to be broad, vibrant and permanent. But every serious anti-government campaign—from the Anti-Apartheid movement to the Poll Tax campaign and the anti-war movement—has had national organisation. In order to unite people in a campaign that can break the austerity plan and get rid of the government, we will need national co-ordination, strategy and action. We will need to get all the local anti-cuts campaigns and as many other organisations as possible working and planning together. For all these reasons the Coalition of Resistance conference in London on 27 November is a crucial step in developing a movement that can win.
The family is supposed to be a bastion of love, support and protection from a world of uncertainty and risk; but for many this ideal is destroyed by debt, a crashing economy and a ruthless free market ideology that offers no lifeline for those at the losing end.
Last summer, a family of four was found dead in their house in Hampshire. The woman, a 31-year-old nursery manager and mother of two young girls, had been murdered alongside her children, apparently by the father who was later found to have hanged himself. This horrendous incident took place only days after a nurse died having had her throat cut outside the hospital where she worked. The police are now questioning a colleague, her ex-boyfriend, with whom she had recently had a baby. In 2008, Christopher Foster killed his wife Jillian and their 15-year-old daughter, Kirstie. He then burnt down the house and committed suicide. Watching the news you could be forgiven for thinking that these heartbreaking acts of violence were not only random and unpredictable but also unrelated, forming no pattern worthy of cultural or political analysis. In fact, we have in the past almost been cajoled by the British media into believing, however horrid these incidents are, that there is nothing sociBeating the blues ety can do to stop the violence within families that Finally, we must challenge leads to the deaths of over 100 women, 52 children pessimism. It comes in many and 12 families each year. Understandably, author forms. Some say demonstrating Sophie Hannah asked, ‘why weren’t whole editions makes no difference, others that of Newsnight being devoted to discussing how we, the politicians will ignore us as a society, could ensure such crimes were never whatever we do, and still others committed again?’ that the far right will be the main Naming and defining this type of murder helps beneficiaries of the crisis. begin the process of understanding why it occurs These arguments paralyse with such regularity in western societies. Profesus. They are the things the sionals and academics in Britain have described government wants us to believe. the act committed by men (as it usually is men) And they are untrue. Popular who kill their entire family and then themselves, struggles have shaped the world as “murder-suicide� or “familicide�. we live in. Although this is rarely referred to by name in Popular struggle won the vote the UK, in the United States, it is commonly and and we wouldn’t have the welfare somewhat sensationally known as “family annihistate itself if it hadn’t been for lation�. Valuable research and debates there have demands for change at the end of helped to shed light on this unusual but increasthe Second World War. We beat ingly common form of crime. Firstly, evidence the Poll Tax in the 1990s and the highlights that perpetrators on both sides of the anti-war demonstrations finished Atlantic are primarily white middle class males, off Blair. seemingly successful “family men�, with properties There are no guarantees, and businesses that give them high status within but we live in an age of mass the community and the opportunity to create a movements. If we can build “normal� functioning family. These goals often one broad enough and militant disintegoalsgrate on the rocks of debt, bankruptcy enough then we can see off this and unemployment; leading to a financial, social government of millionaires. and emotional rupture which in turn leads to a psychological breakdown. Jack Levin, an American criminologist, suggests family killers are usually men who have ‘a profound need for control that drives them to destroy their family, when they can no longer provide for them financially or when the family been divided by dichild migrants as adults— vorce’. Since the recession began in America, famremoving the minor protection ily murder-suicide rates have jumped 9 per cent. they receive under the law. In Britain, the rate over the past decade jumped Her work, and that of the from one every eight weeks to one in six weeks to campaign, has also earned official one per month. recognition by the Scottish There are those who argue that poverty isn’t the Parliament who moved a motion main trigger for murder suicide, or murder at all, condemning the barbarity of but Levin importantly points out that family andetention centres, in particular nihilation is likely to become more common in the notorious Yarl’s Wood where tough economic times, with murders in the home female detainees led a hunger and in the workplace increasing. For this reason, strike last year in protest against Dr. Richard Gelles, the Child Welfare and Family their appalling living conditions. Violence chair for the University of Pennsylvania, In her acceptance speech, suggests that family annihilations, though unusuClare thanked all the al, should be seen ‘as the canaries in the violence organisations that had supported mineshaft’. and contributed to her work, He stresses the point that there is a lag facincluding the Joint Council for tor with violence in communities hit hard by job the Welfare of Immigrants losses and public service cuts. Police, teachers and and Counterfire. social workers will start to see the horrific effects
wins campaign award Clare Sambrook, prominent journalist and Counterfire supporter, was recently awarded the Paul Foot Award for campaigning journalism in recognition of her work with migrant rights group End Child Detention Now. The group—which emerged in 2009 in response to the treatment of a single family in detention— now campaigns against the horrific conditions faced by children in detention centres across the UK. Clare’s work has revealed countless examples of shocking conduct by government officials, including the deliberate classification of unaccompanied
of the recession in six to nine months time. It’s not the case, he says, that on Monday a man loses his job then on Wednesday he becomes a wife beater. Therefore, his argument that services should be focused on communities hardest hit by job losses is not only a preventative initiative, it is a humane strategy. In Britain that would mean investing resources in Yorkshire, for instance, where private sector jobs have been worst hit in the country since the recession began. Furthermore, Yorkshire suffered over the last 30 years as a consequence of the Tory pit closure plan. For these two reasons, it has frighteningly high statistics for violence and abuse already. The problem academics have with understanding family annihilations is that they tend to look just at the problem of economics and male power, ignoring the glaring fact that women still suffer from sexism. And it is this that underpins such gender specific violence. Full-time working women earn on average 17 per cent less than men, and part-timers can see a difference in wages of up to 30 per cent. This is a huge ideological effect on the standing of women within the family and society as a whole. It perpetuates the myth that women’s work is inferior and secondary to their role in the home. However, this is far from true. Women’s work has been an essential part of the economy and their wages are very much needed by the family in order to fulfill its role as a unit of consumption. Therefore, economics can’t fully explain why it is that women and children suffer the most from abuse and violence in the family. Even during the so-called ‘good years’ of the Blair administration, two women and one child a week died at the hands of someone they knew. Author Lindsey German highlights the problem with the family in a capitalist society: there are ‘contradictions inside the family, which means it cannot fulfill the expectations of its individual members for much of the time. The household is seen as the repository of love, calm and respite from a cruel world. The reality is rather different. The family contains within it personal and sexual tensions, some of which spill over into violence. The majority of murders take place in and around the family. Children are more at risk of abuse within the family than they are from strangers’. So, for the man who sees himself as the “head of the family�, with other members in a subservient role, his inability to maintain the family and solve its problem is compounded by his huge fall in status. This pressure leads directly to the act of murder-suicide. For men like Foster, who aspire to the fragile family dream, they are unaware that it doesn’t matter how hard they work, they are still part of a machine; a rotten system that allows families and individuals within it to go to the wall mercilessly. Looking at families trying to survive in mining communities after the closures, it was plain to see that the family worked only while the government supported it. People, whether in families or not, need to be valued and given the opportunity to live without fear of poverty, loneliness and failure. For a long time I hated the men who committed these crimes. Now I realise they are victims too. There is no warmth or comfort in a society like ours from institutions that people try to rely on in times of need. We receive little support from the benefits system, the job market, the banks or politicians. Now, more than ever, we have to fight for jobs and services nationally and support those internationally. This is the only way to protect our communities and the ones we love.