Unity! LGBT Conference 2012

Unity!

Communists at the 2012 TUC lgbt conference

Stop the EU, we want to get off

by Anita Halpin As the economic capitalist crisis deepens the myth of the ‘social’ chapter, the reason so many trades unionists have loyally supported the EU, is well and truly shattered.

It is time for workers to call for Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. This is the way to recover democratic control over our economy, save manufacturing, restore employment rights and rescue our welfare state.

The EU serves the interests of big business and the banks. No wonder Cameron, Clegg and Cable support the Single Market as it enables the City of London to continue to dominate EU finance and banking. Only last week, after another all-night summit to discuss the ‘eurozone’ crisis, Cameron was boasting of the part he played in saving the City’s access to the Single Market and that’s why there was no immediate need for a referendum.

The anti-democratic and pro-big business character of the EU is fully exposed as it replaces elected governments and the European Central Bank - with its partners in crime the International Monetary Fund and the World Central Bank - impose deflationary policies on one country after another.

In the USA, Obama’s economic stimulus package created new jobs but such investment programmes are outlawed in the EU. Quite clearly the ECB is not prepared to replicate this for France or any other member state as shown by the latest offer to make funds available to bankers and financial institutions while austerity policies are still enforced for the rest of us.

The French and Greek people expressed their clear opposition to the EU’s privatisation policies in their votes for socialist, Communist and left candidates. Throughout Europe, we have seen the electorates’ reaction to the debt

crisis with 11 out of the 17 members of the Eurozone have collapsed or been voted out.

And they still don’t get it. For instance, both Hollande in France and the Euro-leftist Syrzia coalition in Greece remain committed to EU membership and the single currency. But it is impossible to separate rejection of the austerity programme from the institutions that crafted it or to discard policies created solely to sustain those same institutions.

The CPB believes that a commitment by left and progressive forces in this country to withdraw from the EU will strengthen the position of all those in Europe fighting to preserve and defend their democracies and halt a race to the bottom. That is why trades unionists have a duty to say enough is enough: we want to get out.

The message is getting across. In March the ETUC unequivocally condemned the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance, which imposes even more deflationary budget controls and directly abrogates the democracy of debtor states.

In April the STUC annual conference condemned the anti-democratic and deflationary character of the EU and called to negotiate a new relationship with the EU based on a most favoured nation trade agreement on the same basis as Norway but outside the provisions of the Single Market.

While the STUC executive did not endorse the call for withdrawal it stressed the threat the EU poses to democracy and union rights.

A threat that is all too evident. At the end of last month the EU Commission report on the UK economy called for reinforced austerity. A week later, and following the ECB’s line, the Bank of England monetary policy committee played it safe (in banker’s terms) and kept interest rates at 0.5 per cent.

Anita Halpin is the Communist Party’s trade union coordinator

Pride is a protest World Pride will be celebrated in London this weekend with tens of thousands of Lesbians, gays, Bis and trans people out on the streets, wearing what they want and holding hands with their partners and friends.

This is good news but unfortunately in many other countries being LGBT is still illegal and the possibility of holding an LGBT event a distant one or one where you will be arrested, assaulted or killed and we note the murder of David Kato. And if you escape persecution by travelling to the UK your sexuality can be ignored and you can be deported back to your oppressors.

Declaring yourself LGBT in 2012 is easier in the UK and many western countries and some other countries but it is not always simple. We know that young LGBT people are bullied and harassed by their peers and many rejected by their parents. We know that LGBT who married ‘to sort themselves out’ are still having to come out and facing rejection by families and communities.

We know that LGBT groups and charities are facing cuts because of the Con-Dem imposed cuts at UK, national and local authority level and that cuts to all public services and services such as the police make LGBT people more vulnerable. We know that LGBT young people are losing support at school and colleges due to these cuts. We know that any cut to housing benefit for under 26s as proposed by Cameron last week will see LGBT youth among the ones who suffer as they leave home for freedom in the cities.

We know that the journey to Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans Liberation is not finished.

That’s why we say PRIDE IS A PROTEST. The Communist Party’s lgbt commission can be contacted at lgbt@communist-party.org.uk

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A future that works

by Carolyn Jones It goes without saying that activists should be working for a massive turnout for the TUC’s 20 October demonstration.

However, it is going to take more than demonstrations to defeat the ConDem’s agenda of public service cuts.

We need a strategy that will create the conditions to bring about a change of government. Central to this is unity with public and private sector unions developing joint action and building alliances with working class communities. The sustained attack on pensions, the introduction of regional pay, the privatisation of public services and the latest attacks on trade union rights are all part of the ruling class strategy.

Workers in Britain are being denied a collective voice at work and losing their ability to seek redress through the justice system and all at a time when they most need protection. So how exactly do those in power (including Murdoch) expect workers and their unions to respond when failed austerity measures are eating away at jobs, pensions, standards of living and workplace rights?

Winning the pensions dispute is vital in the battle to defeat attempts to crush our movement and at the heart of our campaigning must be a political campaign which goes beyond the usual industrial relations rhetoric.

The politics of resistance has to be taken into every workplace and community where we have organisation.

In previous pension strikes and demonstrations workers were won to take action by making the argument that it’s not just about pensions; it’s about pay freezes and pay cuts; extending working life, and cuts to jobs and service when the demand for these services are going through the roof and fewer workers are left to deliver them. Through these arguments it became political action.

It’s about more than resistance to Tory-led policy. Our movement has policies which, if implemented, would begin to eat into the power and wealth of the ruling class and lay the basis for further advance for our class, including the six demands of the People's Charter and the commitment to developing an alternative economic strategy.

The need of the hour is to broaden out the pensions dispute and build for the October demo by politicising the fight and making the political case for getting rid of the ConDems and replacing them with a government that will be held to account by the organised working class and their communities. H Carolyn Jones is a member of the Communist Party executive committee

It’s time for the People’s Charter The People’s Charter for Change is supported by the TUC, Unite and 15 other trade unions and many trades unions councils up and down the country and it is included in the TUC’s plan of work for the trades councils.

It promotes a progressive alternative set of policies not only as an antidote to ConDem cuts, but also for the expansion of the economy through a programme of directed investment, control over the export of capital, public ownership, the development of sustainable industries, a reduction in working hours, and a programme of skills training and retraining.

The Charter’s 6-point programme demands H A fairer economy for a fairer Britain.

H More and better jobs.

H Decent homes for all.

H Protect and improve our public services – no cuts.

H Fairness and justice.

H Equal pay for women.

H A secure and sustainable future for all.

Impossible? Far from it! The Charter shows how these could be brought about through the implementation of an alternative economic strategy to bring about a fundamental shift in wealth and power in favour of the working class. The People’s Charter deals with the whole of society and aims to promote a positive alternative instead of just saying Stop the Cuts.

The Charter six points are aspirations which any political party purporting to represent working people should be proud to put forward and demands that the Labour Party must adopt it as a winning alternative political strategy. H www.thepeoplescharter.org for more information and affiliation details or write to The Peoples Charter, PO Box 53091, London E12 9DA or call 07931 562702 (answerphone).

Palestine’s right to statehood

by John Foster Israel’s aggression towards the Palestinian people is unabated. It continues to occupy and extend occupation, repress, demolish homes, wound, arrest, torture and kill relentlessly.

Our key priority is to see the implementation of UN Resolution 194 calling for the creation of a sovereign, viable and independent Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel with the borders of 4 June 1967, Jerusalem as its capital and the right of return of refugees.

To achieve this and to highlight the injustices perpetuated by the state of Israel, we call for a boycott, covering all things academic, cultural, economic, military and political.

We support the demands of the Palestinian people and their organisations for the restoration of all that has been taken from them, for rights and freedoms, the cessation of abuse and the release of all political detainees, including child prisoners. Our party sees it as its particular duty to campaign for the release of the political prisoners including PLO leader, Marwan Barghouti, who some have described as Palestine’s ‘Nelson Mandela’.

Within the wider context of the Greater Middle East, the state of Israel sides squarely with US imperialism and its NATO allies in their determination to control the neighbouring areas from North Africa to Pakistan and from the Sahara, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean to the borders of Europe, Russia and China. This vast region – with its

wealth of energy and mineral resources, its ‘life-line’ supply routes by land and sea (including the Mediterranean, Suez Canal and the Red Sea) and its strategic proximity to major developing economies that rival US interests (Russia, China and India) and other markets in central Africa and Asia – is vital to imperialism’s future and will be held by any and every means.

And Israel is the last country in the UN to continue to defend the US blockade of Cuba, an illegal and inhumane blockade now in its 50th year. H John Foster is the Communist Party’s international secretary

We need an alternative economic strategy

by Andy Chaffer The public sector cuts being imposed by George Osborne are doing irreparable damage economically as well as socially, and it’s just the beginning.The ConDem chancellor intends them to continue at a real rate of 3.7 per cent annually for five more years. which would mean the longest sustained cut in public spending since the Second World War. The City is the only winner because it puts the money in the wrong pockets - those of the fat bankers who want the state to have the spare cash to bail them out.

Quantitative Easing simply gives the bankers even more money speculation – and there is no way that Osborne’s latest gimmick of ‘cheap loans’ to the banks is going to stimulate the real economy if there is no demand.

The only way to reflate the economy is to stop cutting public sector jobs; invest in job creation and skills training to increase high street spending power ,and renewing the call for a shorter working life as an important element of tackling long-term, crippling unemployment.

Britain’s economy is now over 4 per cent smaller than it was in 2007 – the only major economy to have contracted to such an extent apart from Spain. It is still contracting.

This is why alternative economic policies, based on active state intervention, are so desperately needed, as Unite argued strongly in its motion to last year’s TUC. We need specific demands that can unite trade unions and communities to campaign politically – demands which also add up to a coherent strategy that can rescue our economy.

The first demand is obvious: stop the cuts. This is the quickest way of restoring consumer demand: end the insecurity of imminent job loss, halt the new pensions levy, reverse the benefit cuts and end a wage freeze that is currently cutting real incomes by up to 3 per cent a year.

The second is for the government to create real, well-paid jobs and hence boost tax income as well as demand for goods. Council housing is one obvious area. There is desperate need and the private sector has failed – house building has collapsed from 180,000 in 2006 to 120,000 last year, the lowest since the 1920s.

Building houses under local democratic control also makes it possible to introduce comprehensive energy saving with green technology – another key area for investment.

Equally essential on this front is the demand to take water, energy and transport back into public ownership, end extortionate pricing and stop

21st Century Marxism Festival 21-22 July 2012

the state subsidies to monopolist owners.

There must also be government action to stop closures in the productive economy, to take over failing manufacturing enterprises and to penalise companies that shift production overseas – even if this means defying the neo-liberal directives laid down by the EU. Key to rebuilding manufacturing would be the introduction of controls on the export of capital and limits and/or taxes on the import of manufactured goods, both ready-made products and components.

Can this be paid for? Yes, easily - by imposing a tax on the City’s financial transactions; reclaiming the £100 billion lost through tax evasion; closing down Britain’s many tax havens, and reversing Osborne’s tax cuts for the rich and on company profits.

Achieving this requires a mass movement that can remove this government of financial speculators and ensure the Labour Party adopts the alternative policies needed to save our productive economy – in the interests of the vast majority of the population.

Andy Chaffer is secretary of the Bimingham Communist Party and an lgbt activist

The EU and alternatives to austerity by John Foster £2 Pensions: Broadening the battle lines by Bill Greenshields £1.50 from www.communist-party.org.uk Useful websites n www.manifesto press.org.uk Britain’s progressive publishers H www.solidnet.org the world’s communist and workers parties n www.21centurymanifesto. wordpress.org left wing blog

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Wanted! a political voice for workers

by Robert Griffiths In May, millions of people voted against the austerity and privatisation policies of Britain’s unelected, illegitimate government.

They rejected the idea that high public expenditure was the main cause of the economic and financial crisis. They refused to accept that massive public spending cuts and a savage assault on wages and pensions of public sector workers are necessary to reduce the financial deficit.

Every time it aligns itself with these policies, Labour leaders betray the millions who should be able to look to them for support and solidarity. Speaking in favour of savage cuts in public sector wages and pension entitlements, welfare benefits and local social services represents a shameful capitulation to the banks, the Con-Dem regime and the rightwing mass media.

The support of the Labour movement, contrasts sharply with the refusal of the Labour Party leadership to advocate policies that would generate economic growth such as defending public services, jobs, wages and pensions. This further highlights the extent to which the interests of the labour movement and ordinary working people across Britain continue to be largely unrepresented in the House of Commons.

The trouncing of the Tories and Lib Dems in the local elections is very welcome, and illustrates a growing spirit of resistance. The danger is though that the current Labour leadership will interpret this support as an endorsement of their current policies – to be used against those in and outside the Labour Party demanding change.

Working people, in both affiliated and non-

affiliated unions, need a Labour Party that defends their interests. The duty of affiliated unions to fight for progressive, left and socialist values in the Labour Party could not be clearer. They must campaign in a more determined, planned and coordinated way to change the policies and, if necessary, the Labour leadership This is an important part of an even bigger question: how can the labour movement best ensure that its collective views and interests are represented in the Westminster parliament?

This challenge must be faced by the whole movement. The trade union movement, and its members locally, have a duty to intervene to reclaim the party as political representatives of the interests of working people.

Affiliated unions should respond immediately to demands from their members and cease paying financial donations to the Labour Party centrally until such time as its leaders and MPs oppose cuts in public sector wages and pledge solidarity with all those fighting to defend their pensions.

Affiliation fees should be maintained in

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The local election results confirmed that the majority of voters have had enough of job losses and cuts to public services.

However, the low turnout indicated that many people have already given up voting in the belief that all politicians are the same.

That is why it is crucial that Labour councillors act as champions of their communities, working alongside local trade unionists and community groups.

order to step up the challenge to the Labour leadership's current policies from inside the party as well as from outside.

Affiliated unions should convene an allBritain conference at the earliest opportunity to discuss the current crisis of political representation for workers and their families.

Should the Labour Party continue on a rightwing course, its future will be at risk and the trade union movement will have a duty to reestablish a mass party of labour capable of winning elections, forming a government and enacting policies in the interests of the people not the bankers.

Affiliated unions should consider demanding that a special emergency conference of the Labour Party be held to decide a fundamental change in its economic and financial policy and its response to the capitalist crisis.

At some point, either at the initiative of the TUC or some other body, a special conference of all labour movement organisations should be convened to discuss the political representation of the labour movement in the House of Commons.

In the face of the current ruling class offensive, the labour movement needs to develop the maximum clarity and unity.

Communists believe these actions are the most realistic and effective way of ensuring that the interests of working people are represented in the Westminster parliament.

Unions need to engage not only their own conferences in debate about the way forward as the Bakers Union, the GMB and most notably Unite have done but also need to mobilise the widest possible alliances in building a consensus for a fundamental shift in policy for Labour.

For its part, the Communist Party will continue to develop its Marxist analysis, project an alternative economic and political strategy for the working class and its allies and strengthen non-sectarian left unity.

Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party To read the Open Letter on political representation in full go to http://tinyurl.com/d93myn If Ed Miliband is serious about fighting for the rights of ordinary working class families and winning back trust he must act quickly and imaginatively to ensure that all of the Labour controlled councils get the support they need and act in the interests of those that elected them It is important that Labour councillors and Labour authorities maintain a dialogue with their local trade union movement, no matter how tough the conversation.