Tyne & Wear May Day 2024

TYNE AND WEAR MAY DAY MARCH, RALLY AND SOCIAL

Saturday 4 May 2024

For peace and working-class solidarity!

Saturday 4 May

FOR PEACE AND WORKING-CLASS SOLIDARITY CONTENTS

MARCH & RALLY

Print: Whittle Print, 36 Hutton Close, Crowther Industrial Estate, Washington, Tyne & Wear NE38 0AH:

http://www.whittle-print.co.uk

Design: CatwitchCreative

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Mick Bowman

‘Mick’s Walk to Palestine’

Ben Sellers

National Secretary, People’s Assembly Against Austerity

Mohaned Elnour Sudanese Communist Party

Martin Dent

Unite for Energy for All campaign

Plus supporting local speakers

MAY DAY SOCIAL

immediately after the rally

Tyneside Irish Centre, 43 Gallowgate, Newcastle NE1 4SG

Music from St Buryan FREE FOOD AVAILABLE

UPPERMOST in the minds of many at our 2024 march and rally will be the appalling slaughter that has taken place in Gaza, and the need for a permanent ceasefire and an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

The scale of the slaughter has rightly been condemned world-wide as a genocide. The International Criminal Court has adopted “provisional measures”, or binding orders, requiring Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance, and prevent and punish incitement to commit genocide. Israel has not complied.

Should the Court eventually find that Israel has committed genocide, then our own government, which has continued to provide military assistance to Israel, and manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin who have supplied Israel with military equipment may be legally liable as complicit in that genocide.

But with hostilities already widening to the Yemen and Iran, following Israel’s rocket attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria, the dangers of a wider war into which Britain could be drawn are all too acute. And the same applies to the ongoing war in Ukraine. We have a major responsibility to prevent that wider war.

Quite apart from all the human suffering so far, that is why we make Peace the first demand of our 2024

May Day. It’s a call which extends not only to Europe and the Middle East, but worldwide, including in Sudan where the fighting between the Army and the Rapid Response Forces has led to terrible atrocities, displacement of people and famine.

We also call for Working-Class Solidarity. The recent strike wave may have abated, but some unions are still in dispute, and the whole labour and progressive movement is threatened by the Tory government’s attacks on the right to strike and to protest. Public services remain under attack while inflation still outstrips pay.

Our invited speakers this year will deal with key issues of the day –Liz Blackshaw and Sarah Woolley giving the trade union perspective, Ben Sellers on the fight against austerity and Martin Dent on the Unite Community campaign against fuel poverty, together with Mick Bowman talking about Palestine and Mohaned Elnour reporting on Sudan. We’ll have local speakers too, and music throughout the event, including the social at the Tyneside Irish Centre, where Palestinian food will be on offer, for a donation.

FOR PEACE AND WORKING-CLASS SOLIDARITY!

Martin Levy and Vin Wynne

May Day Committee co-chairs

THINGS ARE CHANGING FOR UNIONS

2023 WAS AN UNPRECEDENTED year for unions. Groups of workers took strike action for the first time, saying, “We just can’t afford another year of real-terms pay cuts.” It was a year that put the trade union movement in the public eye in a way that it hasn’t been for a long time.

The Government thought they could drive a wedge between unions and the public, forgetting the fact that our members are the public. And public support has stayed steadfast behind workers taking industrial action, even when those disputes have been quite long and protracted.

Millions of workers in the public sector were told, “There will be no more money.” And in every single one of those industries, the government and employers ultimately had to move in favour of workers after they voted for or took industrial action. In the private sector, lots of unions have won double-digit pay rises.

And that’s just one type of win. There’s still work to be done, but the strike action by GMB members at Amazon was really important. From a few dozen, the number of workers

in the union rose to 1,000. Things are changing.

The government’s attempts to legislate industrial disputes out of existence will fail. Our unions are absolutely committed to finding ways for members to take industrial action if that’s what they want to do. The TUC has also lodged a complaint with the ILO, and we’ll explore legal challenges.

In an election year, we want a Labour government that’s going to deliver on the things that matter to unions and their members. Top will be the jointly agreed New Deal for Working People. That means Day 1-employment rights, bans on zero-hours contracts and ‘fire and rehire’, union rights to access the workplace, a real living wage, and new fair pay agreements in sectors like social care. Labour has said they will bring forward an employment bill within the first 100 days of government. We’ll be holding them to that.

But beyond that, we need a government that has an industrial strategy worthy of the name: a clear plan for creating good quality, sustainable jobs and for getting to ‘net zero’ in a way that will support those jobs; a plan that helps people cope with the wave of technical transformation. There is just so much at stake.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ORGANISING OUR MOVEMENT

SARAH WOOLLEY became a member of BFAWU when she started working as a weekend assistant at Bakers Oven, which later became Greggs. Though Sarah was not initially active within the union, she became a shop steward shortly after Greggs took over, and became more active not only in the BFAWU but in the wider union movement.

She was elected to the union’s national executive as women’s representative; in 2016 she became a full-time officer; and by the end of 2019 she was elected as general secretary of the union, the first woman to hold that post.

At the May Day rally Sarah will be taking about:

• the issues that BFAWU members are facing through the continued cost-of-living crisis;

• the Right to Food campaign and the struggles of working people to afford to decent nutritious food;

• how we make sure our government’s own house is in order when it comes to sexual harassment and some of the work of MeTU; and lastly,

• the importance of organising our movement, utilising projects like Organise Now, and working with community organisations.

Sarah Woolley General Secretary Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU)

BRING AN END TO GENOCIDE, OCCUPATION AND APARTHEID

THE HORRIFIC EVENTS in the Occupied Palestine Territories - the Israeli genocide in Gaza and Israel’s brutal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem - originate way before 7 October 2023, and need to be seen in the framework of a centurylong settler colonial project based on the racial supremacist ideology of Zionism.

The terrible genocide in Gaza is obscuring what has been happening in the West Bank. Having recently spent over 4 months there, from late September 2023 till early February, with the International Solidarity Movement, I have seen first-hand how 57 years of brutal occupation - of apartheid, violent ethnic cleansing and land theft - have resulted in a slow genocide.

Even before 7 October, the year 2023 was the bloodiest on record for West Bank Palestinians, with 200 killed by the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) and illegal settlers. Since then, the situation has got even worse, with a further 450 Palestinians killed and over 5,000 seriously injured.

The violent ethnic cleansing and land theft by terrorist gangs of heavily armed illegal Israeli settlers, backed by the IOF, has intensified, with 15 villages being forcibly displaced. And the brutal attacks by the IOF on the densely populated refugee camps in West Bank cities, such as Jenin, Nablus

and Bethlehem, have become more frequent and violent. These attacks result in huge levels of destruction, death and injury – in Jenin camp alone, over 100 residents have been killed in such raids.

There is also the reign of terror resulting from the wave of mass arrests and detention. Since 7 October, 7,700 West Bank Palestinians have been brutally arrested, the majority being held in appalling conditions under ‘administrative detention’, essentially indefinite imprisonment without trial. This is hostage-taking on a mass scale.

As trade unionists we have a duty to stand in solidarity with the oppressed and so to support the campaigning to bring an end to the genocide and decades of occupation and apartheid endured by the Palestinian people.

Mick Bowman ‘Mick’s Walk to Palestine’

THE FORGOTTEN WAR IN SUDAN

I WANT TO THANK YOU on behalf of the Sudanese people, and the Sudanese Communist Party, for giving us a voice at the May Day rally.

The war between the leaders of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is a forgotten war. But from April 2023 to January 2024 more than 13,000 people have been killed, more than 7.6 million have been displaced, and more than 80% of hospitals have been put out of service. People are dying from hunger, polluted water and lack of treatment.

The December 2018 Revolution, when people took to the streets demanding “Freedom, Peace and Justice”, put an end to the 30-year dictatorship of the Muslim Brotherhood under Omar al-Bashir. But these aspirations have been continually frustrated by groups linked to the ex-regime.

The RSF, formally known as the Janjaweed Militia, was responsible for atrocities in Darfur; it controls the gold-mining industry and participated in the war against Yemen. The Army and Security Services own and run about 30 companies operating in vital industries. The Transitional PowerSharing Government, formed in August 2019 as a result of a negotiated deal between some civilian groups and the military, was overthrown in a coup in October 2021. Since April 2023 the victors have been fighting over the spoils.

The intervention by regional powers - on the one hand Egypt, on the other the United Arab Emirates - is a significant factor in the escalation of the war. Their interest is in controlling Sudan’s resources.

The imperialist countries - principally the US, EU and Britain - are not interested in supporting the Sudanese people but rather want to have a weak regime that is willing to normalise relations with Israel, block migrants from coming to Europe, and obey the diktats of the IMF and the World Bank.

The position of the Sudanese Communist Party has always been clear; we are against the war, against the involvement of the military in politics, against the existence of militias, particularly the RSF, and they must be dissolved. Most importantly, we call for accountability for all the perpetrators.

Mohaned Elnour

Sudanese Communist Party

AUSTERITY NEVER WENT AWAY

THE PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY Against Austerity was launched over a decade ago, in 2013, pulling together a broad coalition of trade unions, campaign groups and activists in a national campaign against austerity, cuts and privatisation in our workplaces, public services and communities. In the wake of the 2008 crash and the Coalition government’s attempts to make ordinary people pay for the crisis, the People’s Assembly organised countless demonstrations, rallies and mass meetings against austerity-driven cuts, the steady privatisation of our public services, and attacks on disabled people and the welfare state.

The People’s Assembly has never been linked to any political party and is focussed on opposing the decimation of our services and communities - wherever it comes from. We are committed to open, non-sectarian practice, supplementing, rather than surplanting, trade union, antiracist and climate activism in our workplaces and communities.

The latest round of cuts will see many cities, towns and smaller communities without libraries, funded arts projects, music

We will see vastly reduced care services, provision for special education needs and disabilities, homeless shelters, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, domestic violence refuges – to name just a handful of the services impacted.

The People’s Assembly will be at the forefront of the campaign against continuing austerity, irrespective of who is in power in Westminster. We will be active on the streets, in our capital and in the cities and towns right across our respective nations. And we’ll be in communities, as People’s Assembly Local Groups, building our power and winning campaigns against cuts at a local level too. Please join us.

Ben Sellers

National Secretary

People’s Assembly Against Austerity services, leisure centres and youth clubs.

COLD HOMES KILL

High bills - low incomes

UNITE Community Branches

throughout the UK are actively campaigning on the “Unite for Energy for All” campaign.

Over 5 million people live in homes in energy poverty and more than 3 million people have been disconnected in the last twelve months because they could not afford to top up their prepayment meter.

Privatisation and Profiteering

Rampant profiteering has delivered nothing for ordinary people. The ‘Big 4’ energy providers (Centrica, E.ON, EDF, and Scottish Power) made a combined £9.5 billion profit in 2021. The Treasury currently forecasts that UK gas producers and electricity generators could make “excess” profits of £170 billion in the next two years.

Unite for Energy for All demands

• “Energy for All” - a free allowance of energy for every household to meet basic needs.

• Fair energy prices and energy justice.

• An end to forced imposition of pre-payment meters.

• The renationalisation of the energy sector - an end to profiteering, and energy back under democratic public control.

Join Unite Community:

www.unitetheunion.org/join-unite

Martin Dent Unite CommunityTyne & Wear and Northumberland Branch

MUSIC – ON THE MARCH ...

To lead our march this year, we are very pleased to welcome back the Fishburn Band (www.fishburnband.com). Founded in the early 1950s, through weekly contributions from local miners, the band was originally known as the Fishburn Colliery Welfare Band. For a number of years it has been associated with the RMT, fulfilling many events on behalf of the union, including the Durham Miners’ Gala, the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival and the Jim O’Connell Festival in Ireland.

The band is regarded as one of the premier bands in the North East, and has qualified several times from this region for the national contests at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It has issued 3 CDs, all of which can be ordered through the website given above. ‘One Voice’, the most recent, was produced in conjunction with the RMT in 2018. The inspiration for the title came from the RMT’s late general secretary Bob Crow, who had requested that, if the band ever issued a CD around its links to the RMT, then it should be called ‘One Voice’ as a great and fitting representation for the coming together of all people in the Union.

... AT THE RALLY ...

Once again, we shall begin with the Fishburn Band, and end with a short session from Bethany Elen Coyle and Ron Brown, who performed in 2022 and 2023 as The Workietickets.

Photographs © Martin Levy

For our post-rally social, in the Tyneside Irish Centre, we welcome local band St Buryan (https:// www.facebook.com/stburyan), who “effortlessly weave emotional, infectious vocal melodies with introspective and relatable lyricism, complete with a perfect blend of soaring pop/pop punk and inventive British Indie styles that breathes new life into an already booming Newcastle scene”.

Formed as a passion project between close mates, drummer Rhys Melhuish, lead guitarist Callum Palmer and lead singer Ben Mackett, St Buryan have proved time and

again that the bar can always be raised. Joined by Nathan Gooch on rhythm guitar and backing vocals and adept bassist Jacob Mallon, “This five-piece have become veterans of the North East music scene”, according to music website https:// whenthehornblows.com/.

Their impressive performance roster continues to grow as in recent years they have shared stages around the country with the likes of Flyte, The Lottery Winners, Only The Poets and Llovers as well as playing a spot at Newcastle’s Pride 2022. They’ve also recently headlined the Young Communist League’s local gig to celebrate the Durham Miners’ Gala and have stormed into 2024 with a bang playing the sold-out Mouth Culture show at Bobiks.

Recent releases ‘Wait for Me’ and ‘Illogic’ have travelled radio stations the world over, whilst receiving raving accolades from several blogs, magazines and websites.

Ben Mackett and Nathan Gooch met at college, where Nathan was added to the roster. Since then the duo have taken the catchy melodies and soaring harmonies that make St Buryan’s signature sound and brought them right to the forefront of their more stripped back and intimate gigs.

Images © St Buryan

May Day Greetings

North East Labour History Society

Creating a People’s History of the North East

www.nelh.net

May Day Greetings from CatwitchCreative

www.CatwitchCreative.co.uk

Tyne & Wear

Tyne & Wear

Tyne & Wear

County Association of Trades Union Councils

County Association of Trade Union Councils

County Association of Trade Union Councils

Fraternal Greetings on May Day

Fraternal Greetings on May Day

Welcomes the return of

Welcomes the return of

welcomes all participants in Tyne & Wear May Day 2023 and sends solidarity greetings to all workers in struggle

Tyne & Wear May Day 2024

Tyne & Wear May Day on the streets

Tyne & Wear May Day on the streets

President: Dave Allan

President: Dave Allan

Jim Simpkin

Secretary: Martin Levy

Secretary: Martin Levy

e: twcatuc@aol.co.uk

e: twcatuc@aol.co.uk

Chair: A Hansen • Secretary: A Feeney

all for May Day

Greetings to all for May Day 2016 Greetings to all for May Day 2017

Greetings to all for May Day 2018 Greetings

President: Mar tin Levy Secretary: Jim Simpkin Treasurer: Alan Lubbeck

Greetings to all for May Day 2018 Greetings to all for May Day 2022

Greetings to all for May Day 2016 Greetings to all for May Day 2017

TYNE & WEAR MAY DAY 2023 SUPPORT STRIKING WORKERS!

DEFEND THE RIGHT TO STRIKE! WAGES NOT WAR!

The Belta Reivers

Graham Kirkwood

Fran Heathcote

Dave King

Suzanne Reid

Tony Dowling

Alex Snowdon

Lindsey German

AFRICA: LIBERATING OUR OWN

AS ALREADY NOTED elsewhere in this brochure, a deadly conflict has been raging in Sudan for nearly a year. This, according to the United Nations, has put the African nation on course to become the world’s worst hunger crisis – worse even than Gaza.

In March, Eden Wosomu, the United Nations director of humanitarian operations, told the Security Council that already one-third of Sudan’s population –18 million people – face acute food insecurity. She said that recent estimates showed that one child was dying every two hours in North Darfur from starvation and around 220,000 children could die from malnutrition.

This is tragic, and yet most people will not be aware of it. It’s simply not important enough for most media outlets to spend time reporting. They might do if they can get disturbing pictures of starving African children with distended stomachs, like they did during the mid-1980s. Who knows? Some pop stars might even be moved to organise another record or concert for their benefit.

The global spotlight is now understandably on the IsraeliHamas war in Gaza and to a lesser extent on the war in Ukraine, but it’s rarely on Africa. The harsh reality is that, for our ruling elites, some places are far more important than others. Africa is one of those others, essentially an extraction zone for the West, with massive mineral resources such as cobalt – which the West relies upon for just about every rechargeable battery – the uranium that powers nuclear power stations and the weapons that help the West enforce their might, and the large quantities of gold, silver and other rare metals that help to make the global elite richer but the wealth of which never goes back to support the people of the Mother continent.

If the West can extract the people for enslavement to help boost profits then so much the better. I am not talking here about the brutal Transatlantic Slave Trade, but about modern slavery which helps keep large parts of the Western world in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

MINDS TOO

Refugees in Chad from the Sudan fighting, 2023. Image by Henry Wilkins/ VOA – https://www.voanews.com/a/number-of-refugeees-who-flad-sudanfor-chad-double-in-week-/7095241.html, Public Domain, https://commons. wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=123239457

The proxy rulers put in place across Africa by the United States and its posse get rich but the working class and peasant communities get poorer by the day and just struggle to survive as the climate emergency caused by the major industrial powers endangers the Global South.

There are many initiatives across the African continent

aimed at developing more self-sufficiency and at dealing with the undoubted challenges facing its working people. Not least of these are the efforts to build campaigning and political networks to help tackle those despots who have continued to amass great wealth whilst the people of their nations struggle to survive.

Gold bar from Sudan. Image© Sudanese CP

As we celebration International Workers’ Day we must remember that not all workers are starting from the same economic or political starting points. Also, we must admit that many do not begin from the same starting blocks as workers in much of the Global North. But the worsening scale of the hardship facing large swathes of Africa and the rest of the Global South is on a different scale.

This means that we must liberate our own minds in a way that does not merely treat Africans as victims to be pitied but as people who have something to offer to build a new world. This also means a shift in the colonial mindset that allows

far too many in this country to feel more comfortable about showing solidarity with Africans and others thousands of miles away than we often do to tackle the racism under our very noses.

Expressions of international solidarity or even marching against racism are absolutely vital but so is the need to put in place concrete measures to fight racism in the workplace. It is not an either/or situation. But it is a time for stepping up our decolonisation of both our movement and our minds.

Roger McKenzie

Newcastle

Stop the War Coalition

Greetings to all for May Day 2018

Greetings to all for May Day 2023

Greetings to all for May Day 2022

Greetings to all for May Day 2017

Greetings to all for May Day 2016

Communist Party

NORTHERN DISTRICT

Wanted: communities fit for working-class people

Kill the Tories’ Strikes (Minimum Service Levels)

Bill with mass action

Find us on facebook and twitter

email: office@northeaststopwar.org.uk

TYNE & WEAR MAY DAY 2022 | 29

May Day Greetings

Communist NORTHERN Wanted: communities working-class e. info@ncrthemcommunists.org.uk

e. info@ncrthemcommunists.org.uk

e.info@northerncommunists.org.uk

Email: nepeoplesassembly@gmail.com

t. 07799 040 570

t. 07799 040

www.northerncommunists.org.uk

www.northerncommunists.org.uk

Tyne & Wear May Day 2024 Committee:

Day Greetings

AUSTERITY

North East Labour History Society

Creating a People’s History of the North East

NEWCASTLE SOLIDARI Campaign Solidarity from the Palestine

North East Labour History Society

SOLIDARI Campaign Solidarity from the

Fraternal Greetings on May Day

Mollie Brown • Ron Brown • Bethany Elen Coyle • Tony Dowling • David Hamet • Peter Hill • Martin Levy • Jim Simpkin • Vin Wynne

Stop the War Coalition

www.nelh.net

The Committee thanks all those individuals and organisations who have made this year’s event possible. If you would like to get involved with planning and organising next year’s May Day celebrations, then please:

www.nelh.net

If you are against the cuts you are with us

Greetings to all for May Day 2017 Newcastle

Creating a People’s History of the North East

May Day Greetings from CatwitchCreative

Day 2019

Greetings to all for May Day 2022

Greetings to all for May Day 2016

Greetings to all for May Day 2018

Contact the May Day Committee

c/o Martin Levy, 13 Shoreham Court, Newcastle upon Tyne NE3 2XG

May Day Greeting

May Day greetings from

CatwitchCreative

CatwitchCreative

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Email: nepeoplesassembly@gmail.com

Join at https://thepeoplesassembly.org.uk

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email maydaycommittee@newcastle-tuc.org.uk

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Stop the War

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Greetings to all for May Greetings to all for Newcastle