The state and local government

Yet, as Gregor Gall notes:
The problem with most of today's charters is they are too distant from the concrete realities of workers' lives and the sites of workers' willingness to struggle. In other words, they do not connect. Sometimes, this is because the demands or issues are too general, such as "no to all redundancies," "no to racism" or "build more council houses." While workers can agree with these demands, they are fairly meaningless as they do not provide a target against which workers can organise in their workplace or locality. Neither do they suggest a way of going about doing these things. Sometimes, they are just too radical, like calling for workers' control when the conditions workers live under do not organically give rise to these demands in their consciousness.²⁶⁵
For example, A World to Win’s ‘A People’s Charter for Democracy’ published in October 2008 is in the latter category.²⁶⁶ Conversely, as Gall also emphasises, few of these criticisms can be levelled at the People's Charter – which has emerged from left-led unions such as RMT, FBU, POA and PCS and left groups like the Labour Representation Committee, Respect and the Communist Party of Britain – because:
First, it has come from the left unions in the main and they are going to be putting resources into the campaign to get the signatures. Second, different parts of the left are working together on this in a non-sectarian way…[Third it] seems to have sufficient forces behind it to become something significant. With more than just the usual left suspects doing the groundwork to get the signatures, it is possible that it will get a widespread hearing among people in their workplaces and communities. If this happens, it will stimulate interest and consciousness about a left-wing solution to the crisis because it is pitched at the right level.²⁶⁷
Nevertheless:
Signing the charter must be the beginning and not the end of the signatories' activity. Activists need to work on the commitment of signatories to it and how to take this forward. And those behind initiating it need to shortly turn their minds to what to do next, if and when the government ignores it. If the response to government rejection is just verbal condemnation, we could be set further back than where we started off. But if on the other hand, we take a leaf out of our continental cousins' book, we could put hundreds of thousands on the streets to say: ‘We won't take your rejection of our demands lying down.’ That could begin to pave the way for building up the forces that could be capable of enforcing the demands no matter what the government says.²⁶⁸

By April 2010, 35 MPs (27 Labour, three Liberal Democrats, two SNP, two Independents and one Respect) had signed John McDonnell’s Early Day Motion supporting the Charter.²⁶⁹ Moreover, the 2009 TUC Congress with member unions representing over six and a half million working people agreed to support the People's Charter²⁷⁰: which, as John Haylett emphasises, is ‘a distillation of policies already overwhelmingly backed by the trade union movement’; and ‘a United public campaign to raise a million signatures in its support would have a potentially transformatory effect on politics in Britain.’²⁷¹

In October 2009 the Charter was launched in Scotland by MSPs from the Labour Party and SNP, leading trade unionists and members of parties to the left of Labour.²⁷² The Welsh People's Charter was also launched at a meeting in Newport on 4 November 2009 followed by a march to the Westgate where over 22 of the original Chartists were killed and 50 seriously wounded by troops 170 years ago during the uprising.²⁷³ Welsh Assembly Plaid Cymru Member Leanne Wood warned of the dangers of failing to endorse such a radical programme for working people in Britain. She argued that, to drive fascists out of working-class communities, politicians must act on the policies outlined in the Charter - investment in council housing and jobs, an end to fat-cat bailouts and protecting public services. The Charter's Welsh co-ordinator Rick Newnham highlighted that Wales has the highest levels of family poverty and indebtedness in Europe and called for a "radical overhaul" of the tax system to bring real benefits to working people. UNISON Wales head of local government Dominic MacAskill added that greater public control of key sectors within society was now even more relevant given the recent extension to the bail-out of the banks announced by Alistair Darling.²⁷⁴
The unifying role of trades union councils

Trades union councils, in particular, can play an important unifying role within the labour movement and act as a bridge between the unions and local communities. As Jackson Culliane, Deputy Scottish Secretary of Unite, emphasised at a Morning Star-sponsored meeting of Aberdeen Trades Council in November 2008, there needs to be a common agenda between communities and the trade union movement.²⁷⁵ For, in Scotland, as Secretary of Clydebank Trades Union Council Tom Morrison reminds us:

Community trade unionism was a key factor in sustaining major conflicts such as the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders – a dispute which politicised a whole generation. The trade union movement was seen as fighting for the interests of the whole community, not just a section.²⁷⁶
Trade union councils in Scotland also have a bigger role than in England and Wales: for example, like all other Scottish TUC (STUC) affiliates, they can submit up to three motions to the STUC annual conference.²⁷⁷ For instance, Clydebank TUC’s successful motion passed at the STUC in 2008 calling on it to examine the operation of “regeneration” projects across Scotland. The motion expressed concern at the degree to which community planning was taking decision-making away from democratically accountable local authorities and investing them in unelected quangos; argued for trade unions and communities – service providers and users – to come together to fight the promotion of big business interests; and pointed out that trades union councils could be the vehicle for giving leadership to a divided community from a class perspective. A nationwide conference was then organised followed by lobbying of the Scottish Parliament by the STUC and Scottish Tenants’ Association with similar initiatives at local level.²⁷⁸

Democracy4Stoke – established in February 2002 as a broad coalition to campaign against the idea of a US-style executive mayor by local councillors from all four political groups on the Council and several trade unions (including North Staffs TUC, which played the leading role in achieving a No vote in the Newcastle-under-Lyme 2002 mayoral referendum [see Appendix 5]) – at the end of 2006 collected 10,000 signatures in eight weeks calling for a referendum to abolish Stoke-on-Trent’s US-style directly-elected mayor: which, as shown in Chapter 7, has now been achieved).

Save Our Schools – the campaign to defend state education in Croydon (SOS) was established in October 2008 by Croydon Trades Union Council to oppose the Tory Council’s proposals to eliminate all local authority community comprehensive schools in the borough and replace them with academies. SOS is an alliance of trades unions, parents, school governors and progressive Labour councillors, which has: lobbied council meetings to coincide with strike action by the NUT in the schools affected; posted a Number 10 Downing Street e-petition; and used the Freedom of Information legislation and council complaints procedure to expose the sham consultation process. A representative of SOS was interviewed on BBC1 TV News at Ten – giving the campaign national prime time television coverage – after the resignation of the Tory cabinet member responsible for the proposals following a question from the public gallery in the Council Chamber by SOS.²⁷⁹ Moreover, following the 2010 general and local elections – as the Croydon Advertiser noted:

While government of any kind comes and goes, Croydon Trade Union Council...has remained pretty much intact for the past 120 years....and there are many who believe its radical future lies in realigning itself again to be at the forefront of championing local communities on behalf of the 30,000 or so affiliated members in Croydon....And the growing argument is that a worker-leaning organisation can play an important part in defending public services not just by throwing its weight behind workers but being truly representative of community feeling...something Croydon could well be grateful for as the new government swings its axe.²⁸⁰
And SOS recently widened its role to fight the present government's plans for more academies; the scrapping of the Building Schools for the Future programme; the creation of free schools run by parent, teacher or charity groups; and the cuts in further education funding.²⁸¹
The need for left unity

The left-wing electoral alliance No2EU-Yes to Democracy was launched on 19 March 2009 to fight the 4 June 2009 European elections. Rail union RMT general secretary Bob Crow, convener of the new platform, said millions of working people "feel abandoned by the main political parties"; and warned of a grave danger that, in the midst of the economic crisis, too many voters will be duped into voting for far-right parties such as the BNP. He denounced the EU as "basically an arm of global capital designed to extend privatisation and make bigger gains for big business”; and said that No2EU was “an electoral platform, not a party”, and that its candidates would “not sit in the European Parliament in the event of winning any seats."²⁸² The No2EU website showed that a host of political activists and trade unionists signed up to support this broad alliance. The latter included the Socialist Party, the Indian Workers Association, councillors (one of whom is a member of the Liberal Party), academics, the Communist Party of Britain and The Morning Star.²⁸³

A temporary political alliance was thus able to contest in 66 seats on the following platform:

• 
  Reject the Lisbon Treaty
  
• 
  No to EU directives that privatise our public services
  
• 
  Defend and develop manufacturing, agriculture and fishing industries in Britain  
  
• 
  Repeal anti-trade union ECJ rulings and EU rules promoting social dumping
  
• 
  No to racism and fascism, Yes to international solidarity of working people
  
• 
  No to EU militarisation
  
• 
  Repatriate democratic powers to EU member states
  
• 
  Replace unequal EU trade deals with fair trade that benefits developing nations
  
• 
  Scrap EU rules designed to stop member states from implementing independent economic policies
  
• 
  Keep Britain out of the eurozone²⁸⁴
  

Moreover, as Brian Denny and Phil Katz emphasise:

Candidates covered every constituency in England, with Scotland and Wales strongly represented. They were men and women, young and older, black, white and from the heart of the Asian British communities. They were all workers. They were all either trades unionists, community or environment activists….Attempts were made to broaden the platform still further, in particular, to bring in small farmers and the fishing communities….But time was not on our side.²⁸⁵
In the 2004 European elections Respect received 252,216 votes (1.5 of the vote) and the Scottish Socialist Party 61,356 votes (0.4 of the vote): that is, a total of 313,572 votes (1.9 per cent of the vote). In 2009 Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party received 173,115 (22,135 of which were in Scotland and 12,402 in Wales) and 1.1 per cent of the vote; No2EU received 153,236 votes (9,693 of which were in Scotland and 8,600 in Wales) and one per cent of the vote; the Scottish Socialist Party received 10,404 votes, which was 57,306 less than in 2004 (0.1 of the vote and 0.3 per cent less than in 2004); and the Socialist Party of Great Britain 4,050 (0.01 per cent of the vote). Hence the total socialist vote was 340,805 (2.21 per cent of the vote).²⁸⁶

The regional distribution of the socialist vote shows that in 2004 Respect got 4.8 per cent of the London vote, which was only 1.92 per cent in 2009 with three different socialist organisations standing. Similarly, in 2004 the SSP got 5.2 per cent of the vote in Scotland whereas in 2009 with three socialist organisations standing the share of the vote was only 3.8 per cent.²⁸⁷ That is, the Respect split in England and the SSP/Solidarity split in Scotland – both of which occurred in 2007 – demonstrate the disastrous consequences of sectarianism, which No2EU for the first time successfully transcended. For, as Robert Griffiths stated:
[T]he No2EU initiative represented an historic development in our labour movement. A major militant trade union decided to forge an alliance with left and progressive forces to mount a challenge to big business and the New Labour clique across the whole of Britain, in circumstances which did not cut across the labour movement’s opposition to the return of a Tory government.²⁸⁸
The 2009 results also show that the total socialist vote in the regions ranked from highest to lowest was: Scotland 3.8 per cent, North East 3.1 per cent, Wales 3.1 per cent, North West 3 per cent, Yorkshire and Humber 2.9 per cent, East Midlands 2 per cent, London 1.92 per cent, West Midlands 1.9 per cent, East of England 1.7 per cent, South East 1.6 per cent and South West 1.2 per cent.²⁸⁹ However, despite the modest vote, as Gregor Gall has emphasised: ‘The significance of No2EU lies not so much in the number of votes it garnered but that it signalled that the RMT was prepared to begin, in conjunction with others, to establish new forms of political representation for workers’.²⁹⁰ Though, as John Haylett subsequently observed:
Although the experience of working together had been preferable to the British left's history of reserving its sharpest barbs for other socialist groups, problems were also self-evident. There was criticism of the name and of the agreed political programme. The establishment of a new electoral vehicle just four months before the polls also caused problems over recognition of its policies. The top-down nature of decision making drew fire too....But the major problem was the involvement of just one trade union which created problems relating to finance and election worker numbers. This was probably the decisive factor for RMT non-participation in a general election coalition.²⁹¹
The combined Left of Labour vote in the European elections – that is Green, Plaid Cymru plus socialist vote – was 12 per cent, which excludes the beleaguered socialist minority still in the Labour Party. Conversely, the combined Left and Green vote in Germany was 19 per cent (the Left Party got 7 per cent of the vote and 8 seats; and the Greens got 12 per cent of the vote and 14 seats). In France the combined Left and Green vote was 27 per cent (the Left got 11 per cent of the vote and 4 seats; and the Greens got 16 per cent of the vote and 14 seats).²⁹² Moreover, in the September 2009 German elections, around 5 million voted for the Left Party – the only party opposing the Afghan war, tax cuts for the wealthy, increases in VAT and raising the retirement age from 65 to 67.²⁹³ For in Germany, as in Britain, the policies of the main parties are disturbingly similar: and only the Left Party – which won 21 per cent of the vote in the western state of Zaarland at the end August 2009 – has a critical anti-capitalist stance.²⁹⁴ The Left Party’s total national vote increased from 8.7 per in 2005 to 11.9 per cent in September 2009; and from 54 to 76 MPs in the Bundestag. The combined Left and Green vote was 22.6 per cent; and the Left Party’s share of the vote and representation is now higher than that of the Greens who received 10.7 per cent of the vote and 68 seats.²⁹⁵

These developments also raise the question as to why the left has not benefited more, in Europe in particular, from the greatest crisis of capitalism for 80 years. Yet, as Seamus Milne points out, slumps have rarely generated immediate shifts to the left; and in the 1930s the French and Spanish Popular Front governments only came to power nearly seven years after the Wall Street crash.²⁹⁶ And they also have major implications for maximising the progressive vote in future British elections: viz. the need at national, regional, borough, constituency and ward levels to identify and support candidates who best express opposition to war, racism and privatisation, who support the NHS and welfare state and who challenge the many inequalities that mark 21^st century imperial Britain. In some places, as emphasised in Chapter 11, they will be principled Labour candidates, in other places Greens, Respect, Plaid people, socialists or communists. Hence contesting elections has to be combined with extra-parliamentary/direct action/trade union militancy: since the two are dialectically interrelated – not mutually exclusive. For, as Janine Booth – in her recent study of Poplar’s rebel councillors and guardians 1919-25 – concludes:
Many Labour councils today choose to cut and privatise services. They may feel uncomfortable at first but soon move from apologetically justifying these policies on the basis of ‘no choice’ to positively advocating them….In Poplar’s labour movement, the same experience produced…a determination to fight back. They had decades’ campaigning experience before the rates crisis, which had taught them that you only win through struggle.²⁹⁷
The precise form for the rebirth of a genuinely working class political movement cannot at this stage be specified. It will only emerge through the active involvement of the democratic institutions of organised labour, trade unions and trades union councils, in wider mass campaigning, and resistance in local communities both within and outside the structures of local government. Now the draconian cuts across the public sector and the freeze on recruitment and pay are cutting real wages, jobs and services on a massive scale with damaging consequences for the local economy. This provides huge opportunities for bringing together local community groups defending public and social services against the Con-Lib Dems cuts and privatisation on the one hand, and, on the other hand trade unions, to ensure that the campaigns required to combat these cuts are genuinely broad-based. For example, on 23 January 2010 at a meeting organised by Glasgow UNISON Branch the Campaign to Defend Glasgow Services was launched to fight council cuts expected to total around £30 million, which none of the four mainstream parties in Scotland have said that they will oppose. Cuts are likely to include the closing of swimming pools and libraries and attacks on home care and services to the disabled, including the closure of three learning disability centres. Community and voluntary sector grants are expected to be cut by 20 per cent with the loss of 600 jobs. Glasgow activist Tommy Morrison warned that there had been £40 million cuts in the last 15 years, with a further £24 million planned for the next three; and that if money could be found for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and renewing Trident, it could be found for social care. What was lacking was the political will. He also said that there would need to be a Scotland-wide response to the cuts: because councils would lose 15 per cent of their income until 2013 and up to 20,000 jobs would go across Scotland.²⁹⁸ Moreover, in February 2010 Scottish councils warned that they will be forced to cut budgets by £270 million from April and axe around 3,000 jobs.²⁹⁹ And on 3 February 2010 – following Scottish MSPs passing the SNP’s 2010-11 budget, which was supported by the Conservatives and Greens with Labour voting against and the Liberal Democrats abstaining – unions warned that socially progressive policies introduced by the SNP, such as free personal care, the abolition of prescription charges and free school meals were under threat. The NHS could be further privatised; and Scottish Water could also be privatised or mutualised to free up the £150 million subsidy it receives as a public body.³⁰⁰
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Yet even in a slump strikes and occupations can get results. For example, 647 Lincolnshire engineering construction workers at the Lindsey oil refinery – who had been on unofficial strike for over two weeks – were reinstated at the end of June 2009 with jobs for the 51 redundant staff who were at the heart of the original dispute following solidarity strikes at power stations, refineries and gas terminals across Britain.³⁰¹ Occupations of Ford parts Visteon factories at Enfield, Basildon and Belfast, of Waterford Crystal in Ireland and Prisme Packaging in Dundee all saved jobs or won better pay offs; and in early June 2009 a threatened strike at the Linamar car parts plant in Swansea won the reinstatement of sacked Unite convenor Rob Williams who was also a No2EU candidate in the European elections.³⁰²

Council workers in Leeds who work in refuse collection, street cleansing and waste management went on all-out indefinite strike from 7 September to 25 November 2009. The action was a result of the Council’s proposal to cut their wages in order to privatise the service. The Tory/Liberal administration that runs Leeds cited the need to comply with equal pay legislation for slashing real wages, but the real reason was to make the service more attractive for prospective private contractors. Councillor Richard Brett, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, stated that it was his intention to privatise the service if they did not call off the strike; and that he would only talk to the workers if they suspended their strike action. The resolve of the striking workers in GMB and UNISON was such that in the end the Tory/liberal administration was forced to climb down on the proposed pay cuts. Had these cuts been implemented they would have been devastating. For instance, refuse collectors stood to lose up to £6,000 per year and in real terms this would have been a third of their wages. Street cleaners would have lost in excess of £2,000 per year and the drivers who work with the street cleaners stood to lose up to £4,000 per year. In the case of refuse collection, the pay cut has been reversed due to the implementation of a productivity deal. In street cleansing, the pay cuts were reversed due to a proposed implementation of shift working: while this is not ideal, it does address the wages being slashed. In waste management, the unions have been given firm assurances that their members will have their jobs graded in the next band. Throughout the dispute regular mass meetings were held with secret ballots and two shop stewards from both unions scrutinised the votes. On 23 November 2009 another mass meeting was held and the membership voted 80 per cent in favour of accepting the revised offer. Glen Pickersgill, Leeds UNISON Senior Steward stated that:

The Labour Party locally was very supportive and Colin Burgon MP in particular threw his weight behind our campaign….I am of the firm view that the New Labour cronies could learn a lot from him. New Labour policies have included an obsession with privatisation and keeping the anti-trade union legislation that was enacted by the previous Tory Government. Until there is a radical shift in policy, Labour will fail to connect with ordinary people. The Leeds strike was an heroic struggle and I feel proud and privileged to have been part of it. It showed what ordinary working people can achieve when acting in solidarity.