'Vote, vote, vote for Nigel Barton' (1965), a TV play by Dennis Potter

Despite a very promising opening scene of 'the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable' as a couple of riders look at the dead body of the sitting Tory MP who has fallen from his horse on a fox hunt, this play disappoints. The death triggers a by-election. Having stood as Labour candidate a few months earlier in this solid Tory seat in the 1964 general election, the young Oxford graduate from northern mining stock Nigel Barton realises he will be expected to stand again. Not that he needs persuading.  Despite his complaints about what it involves, epitomised by the cynicism of the Labour Party agent (who he later discovers is hiding his disillusion in the Labour Party because he needs to keep his job), Barton is ambitious. He dismisses his middle class wife's arguments about how the Labour leadership has been effectively co-opted by the elite. 

The play follows on from Stand Up, Nigel Barton (1965), about a miner's son from a northern pit village going to Oxford. At first shocked by the class divide he encounters, he learns to handle it and finally discovers how he can use it to make a career. As a parliamentary candidate he hasn't forgotten the injustices his father has gone through in forty one years as a miner. But on the campaign trail, he accepts instructions from the agent to tone down his rhetoric, treating the working class people he meets, mainly women, with contempt. His wife, widely read, interested in Brecht, angry at his compromising, has no independent activity of her own that we know of. Potter leaves us with an overwhelming pessimism, no sense of an alternative, no serious left, no possibility of struggle, politics will always be dominated by the elite. The play climaxes with Barton at a dinner for the local establisment where he breaks all the rules for candidates, passionately attacking the parliamentary game only to finish with a pointless gesture flicking a V-sign at his Conservative opponent. 

Nevertheless, with his openly pro-business attitudes, the elimination of Clause 4 etc, Blair isn't as new as some people think, he just took co-option some steps further.With Corbyn's challenge to the elite and renewed discussion whether socialism can come through parliament, these plays, available on Youtube, are worth seeing.

San Francisco, Manchester and Shenzen

With the largest concentration of geeks in the world, something like four hundred thousand hi-tech workers, the Bay area, centred on San Francisco, is a seriously interesting place.  Just sitting in cafés puts you in touch with the buzz of people putting ideas together. Sometimes they will manage to hook up with venture capitalists, angel investors and the like, ready to risk their money and a start up will be born. Everyone knows that around 90 percent of start-ups fail, maybe 95%., but everyone also has a story about those who succeed, or could have succeeded if they'd taken up the offer of stock instead of cash when offered by one of the founders of Google, Facebook, Twitter or Apple or the like. Those that have made it are the force to beat in a world where is difficult to find any city whose leaders aren't trying to build up its science park, or business start ups working with techies. 

Two hundred years ago it was Manchester that performed this role of being the most exciting place on the planet when it came to shaping its future.  The world's first industrial city, 'the city of a thousand chimneys', people came from around the world to be part of it.  Marx's collaborator Frederick Engels, was one of a thousand Germans who lived in the city.  Writers such as the French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville, and novelists such as the future prime minister Benjamin Disraeli and Elizabeth Gaskell wrote about this amazing development.  What everyone commented on was the creation of such vast quantities of wealth in conditions of such appalling exploitation and squalor.

What a contrast to today's San Francisco. Homeless people on many street corners, the local press full of stories of the rising rents squeezing the less fortunate out of the city.  The inequality is there: California spends more on prisons than it does on education and the prison population is disproportionately black. The techies are overwhelmingly white and male.  But something is missing: no chimneys, no smoke and little dirt.   And the answer quite simply is that the chimneys and the dirt are in China.  The I-phone is produced by Foxconn, a Taiwanese company. Its largest factory is in Shenzen, not far from Hongkong employing around 300,000 workers (estimates vary).  So there's the contrast: two hundred years ago the techies worked alongside the spinners and weavers and all the other trades producing the textiles. Today these two groups are  on opposite sides of the globe.

Where does the power lie? With the interconnectedness, the likelihood is that even small groups of workers, whether in Silicon Valley or Shenzen, are potentially strong. But as I remember it, at Cowley, producing motor cars in the early 1970s, they used to say that the closer you are to the finished product the more powerful you are.  I would be surprised if that wasn't still true today.

'Speak softly and carry a big stick' US policy today, Puneet Talwar in San Francisco, April 2015

Visiting my daughter Laura in San Francisco, I'm determined to get my finger on the pulse. So reading over breakfast that Puneet Talwar, assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs and liaison with the Dept of Defense, is speaking to the Commonwealth Club is an opportunity not to be missed. Laura rings the venue, a hotel in the business district,  and registers me. I'm not on the list when I get there but, having given my my name again, I'm admitted to a rather grand reception room with cameras and lighting all in place, the event will be broadcast. The room gets about half full with maybe 120 people, some enjoying a free glass of wine. Most look well heeled, some are post graduate students. 

The president of the club, a retired general, welcomes us and introduces Puneet Talwar, formerly an adviser to Biden and much else, specialising in the Middle East. Talwar quickly sketches an overview of American foreign policy, unashamedly emphasising the importance of US dominance.  He quotes Teddy Roosevelt on the unavoidability of American leadership. He speaks firmly, a carefully trained delivery,  a straightforward presentation of the liberal superpower imperialist in the increasingly challenging twenty first century. 

Very non partisan, always  speaking from the standpoint of the White House, he progresses like a Cook's tour of  the world's trouble spots, starting with the Middle East and an apology that discussions with Iran are at such a delicate stage he can't talk about them. He's telling the truth here, the preliminary deal on Iran's nuclear programme is announced just two days later.

Speaking with a very hard edge, he describes how ISIL (Islamic State) is being dealt with.  We get a detailed military hit list: how many air strikes, what targets. It's a narrative of clear progress: while ISIL isn't beaten, 'the allure of the caliphate is shattered'.  I think, that isn't how it looks in Britain where young Islamists are still making their way to Syria.  Some of what he says is valid. He correctly challenges simplistic 'Sunni v Shia' analyses: there are other dimensions such as ethnicity.  

There is a need to confront the enemy ISIL ideologically but "those that go in that direction will have to be dealt with". Egypt has not been certified as "moving towards democracy" but is still being helped in accordance with  the legality laid down by Congress under a budget line for "security".

There are slips on our seats for questions but the friendly moderator  politely generalises with people have written so the reply can be in similarly general terms and there is no danger of being put in an awkward spot. So Talwar's talk of 'our values' is of a general commitment to freedom and democracy and there's no possibility of a challenge about Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden or Guantanamo.  His responsibility being for international security with a budget of $6bn, it's interesting that he's spent the earlier part of the day with Twitter. 

He claims the strength of the US is in its values but his talk is mainly about how the big stick is being used.  It is hard not to conclude that the US today hasn't shifted from when  President Teddy Roosevelt said 'Talk softly and carry a big stick and you'll go far'.

What kind of history do we need?

As trade union leaders continue to call national demonstrations but fail to organise concerted strike action, so employers record rising if not record profits, the chancellor claims recovery and looks forward to winning the next general election.

Resistance continues but often it is isolated. The action of small groups, even individuals, is often crucial. Such actions are not spontaneous. They rely on an understanding of how to fight, how to organise, how to mobilise, how to communicate. Again and again we find that at the heart of the resistance is a political consciousness, a political memory, sometimes just one socialist who is able to give a lead.

Employers will often express surprise, "Oh we’ve never seen such behaviour". As always, if they're not actually lying, then they rely on ignorance. Aware that undermining people’s ability to resist includes weakening their self respect, their pride in themselves and their roots, they work to devalue, if not fully destroy people's past as well. 'History is bunk’ as the anti union, Hitler sympathizing Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, said.  For all its failure to show how to reestablish collective class strength, Selina Todd's 'The People, the Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010' demonstrates a solid pride in workers ability to organise themselves.

Against the attacks on our past, while we recognise that in itself history does nothing, it is only of value when it is put to use, we argue that those who do not know their own past are destined to repeat it. History has to be learnt and that requires an organised effort. The magnificent documentary of the 1984-85 miners strike, 'Still the enemy within', is a fine example of a memory that needs to be preserved.

We take our starting point from Marx, insisting that history is not determined, that there is no destiny, that astrology is rubbish and that men and women make history but not in circumstances of their own choosing.  In the uncountable number of events that constitute our activity as a species, the challenge it to bring some kind of order so that a narrative can be established. For us, the basis of all human existence is the labour which transforms nature and ourselves and in so doing enables us to meet our needs.  Labour is the basis of human existence, and, for last ten thousand years or so, the form that labour has taksn has been determined by the fundamental division in society, the class structure, whereby at the top are rulers and at the bottom are ruled. The rulers constitute the class that controls the productive wealth of society and the ruled are overwhelmingly those who labour for a living and in doing so produce the wealth of society, not only enough for their own continued existence but a surplus which is controlled by the rulers.

As it says in the Communist Manifesto, ‘All history is the history of class struggle’.  The driving force of history, what makes sense of it as a whole is the battle over who gets what.  This is not only a question of how the exploited are squeezed to produce over and above the necessities for their own existence, creating a surplus out of which the rulers expand their own wealth and meet their own needs. It also includes the battles between rulers over the division of the surplus.

This means that we need not only the history of our class, 'history from below', we also need 'history from above'.  Only then,  in what is sometimes called ‘total history', can we fully capture the history we need.

On the insatiable greed of a bunch of plunder-hungry Oligarchs

Hani Shukrullah's excellent 'People's History of the Egyptian Revolution'  - http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/4/81690/Opinion/A-people%E2%80%99s-history-of-the-Egyptian-revolution-.aspx - talks of the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood in their year in government to make a single attempt

"to deal with the massive inequities of a nation lorded over by the insatiable greed of a bunch of plunder-hungry Oligarchs with one foot in the state, the other in business, producing next to nothing, but consuming voraciously.

While it's true that the Oligarch as individuals produce nothing, I think that this is a little one-sided to omit the Oligarchs' need to exploit their workers which in turn requires that they invest in the machinery and raw materials needed to make what will be sold - it is hoped - at a profit.  As Marx points out, the capitalist's own consumption is a robbery on the process of accumulation.  However, he also talks of 'the prestige cost of capital', that is, the expenditure of making the business (and its owner) look  credible. Banks have to have posh facades. And, no doubt, Oligarch's need huge houses, yachts etc.

What is certainly true is that there is an insatiability at the heart of each and every Oligarch. Insatiability usually goes with a narrow focus on the object of desire and an inability to look at the big picture.  That is, an inability to see the massive destructiveness of their pursuit of profit, destroying both the human beings caught up as workers and consumers and also destroying the natural world, an inability to see the unsustainability of it all. The uprising that started on 25 January saw the masses step onto the stage of history.  They are still there. The revolution,  for that is what it is, whatever Hugh Roberts might argue - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n17/hugh-roberts/the-revolution-that-wasnt  - more of that anon - has arisen precisely out of the need to stand up to the insatiable voraciousness of our rulers.

Notes on Manchester and Salford after reading ‘Ground Control, Fear and happiness in the twenty-first century’, Anna Minton, Penguin, reissued 2012 with a new section on the Olympics

Who owns and who controls Manchester and Salford?  The August 2011 riots showed that there are plenty who don’t feel these cities belong to them.  Should anyone be surprised as Manchester city centre becomes more and more a ‘mall without walls’, controlled by a private organisation, CityCo, the city centre management company?

The tiny political and business elites that run our cities are driven by the desire to increase the value and value for them is money, the price of property.  To this end, since the 1980s, the council leaderships, first in Manchester and then Salford, have put in public money, hoping to attract private money, what they call ‘leverage’. The two cities certainly looks very different from twenty years ago. Not just new shopping but a giant conference centre, ever more new hotels, new and expanded museums, galleries, concert halls and huge numbers of expensive flats, thousands of them empty, unsold.

Away from the city centre and Salford Quays, the disastrous Pathfinder programme, funded with large amounts of public money while driven by the interests of the private developers has targeted what they call ‘cold spots’ where property values are low, destroying working class communities and often leaving only empty sites with developers sitting on their money waiting for the next (speculative) boom.  Meanwhile, ‘council housing’ is renamed ‘social housing’ which is renamed ‘affordable housing’ and ever more unregulated and uncontrolled private landlords exploit the worsening housing shortage.  Except that, with ever more properties empty, it’s a shortage that is deliberately created by the big property owners.

But can we call this ‘regeneration’ when Manchester now is the most unequal city in Britain, the ASBO capital of Britain, the city with the greatest CCTV coverage, a city where the poor are simply not welcome in the centre because only those with money to spend are welcome and those who are seen as ‘problems’ are deliberately displaced from the city centre? Policing, whether by policed or security  guards exploits the fear of crime (unrelated to actual crime figures which have been falling for many years)  to justify ever more restrictions of those who want to meet friends or skate board, those who want to engage in political activity with leaflets, stalls and street meetings, or just do nothing.

Controlled for many years by sizeable Labour majorities, with Manchester sometimes described as New Labour favourite city, we have seen public space privatised, the historic Free Trade Hall turned into a hotel, the further education city centre campus sold off to the giant Spinningfields development controlled by Allied London.  In such one party states, there is no democracy.  Not that a change of control into the hands of the Tories or Liberal Democrats would make any difference.  There is complete consensus among all these parties that there is no alternative to the market: the only solutions are private solutions.  Nor are spin doctors only to be found in Whitehall.  The local authority press offices present only ‘positive’ images.

But, as Shelley put it in 1819, ‘Ye are many, they are few’. In 2012, ‘We are the 99%’. The efforts by the council to shut down political stalls on Market Street in 2011, failed because the numbers willing to put up stalls and defend them went up and up. Wherever resistance is organised, it gains mass support.  Already we have shown that anti cuts campaigns can succeed.  The November 30 strike gained massive support with over 20,000 marching in the city on that day.  Around 90% of the cuts planned by the coalition are still to be implemented.  They have the money but we have the numbers. This is the fight of our lives.

A crisis of confidence in ruling class ideas?

Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph columnist, was on Newsnight last night. He's written that:

"I'm starting to think that the Left might actually be right".

The argument runs "What with the the phone-hacking scandal, the eurozone crisis and the US economic woes, the greedy few have left people disillusioned with our debased democracies."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8655106/Im-starting-to-think-that-the-Left-might-actually-be-right.html

Thatcher, he argues, was popular when she cut taxes and attacked the unions. We can challenge this: the cuts were not popular and Thatcher herself, "the Iron Lady", became extremely unpopular in the early years 1980s, her first years in office. What she was good at was in having a clear step-by-step plan to defeat her opponents, the Ridley Plan, sticking to it and understanding that the TUC could be relied on to wobble at the crucial moment. Eventually, people lost hope in an alternative and, helped by the Falklands War, her popularity revived and she won the 1983 election.

The comparison is nevertheless interesting. It reflects a growing crisis of confidence among our rulers. I would argue that this is not because he isn't as powerful a figure as Thatcher. That would be to overvalue her as a historical figure. Rather the circumstances are tougher for Cameron. The system went into crisis in the 1970s. Thatcher was one of the figures that lead the shift to neo-liberal, free market economics, breaking the post war consensus about commitment to full employment.

Coming up to forty years later, despite the continuing economic growth especially in Asia, the system is in much worse shape. Cameron has a tougher task than Thatcher. Nevertheless he can win if he follows Thatcher's example. He needs a plan. He has to stick to it. He has to rely on the TUC to wobble at the crucial moment. So far his plan has been to push ahead much harder and faster than Thatcher did. There have already been a few U-turns. As Moore points out the threat of another recession, the phone hacking scandal and the riots have shaken the confidence of our rulers.

But, if Cameron holds his nerve, he can win unless our side gets its act together. June 30 was a good day but it needs serious follow up. That's the key question for us. The march in Manchester on October 2 is a real opportunity to seize the initiative and put the Tories on the back foot.

Why is the call for a 24 hour general strike important? a reply to Brian Bamford

The mass strike - of which the general strike, called by the trade union leaders is one form - is essential for workers to develop their confidence as a class, capable of ruling society, abolishing exploitation and oppression and, eventually, abolishing class society itself.

Through the mass strike the repressive nature of the state, its police and military becomes clear and with that the need to destroy these institutions and replace them with institutions that workers control.

At the moment, workers' confidence to use the strike weapon is very low. At the same time the £81 billion of cuts announced by Osborne is a bigger attack than any of us have faced in our life times. We will not defeat this attack without mass strike action. We need to start that argument now. As Brian says it won't happen by simply issuing the call. It will need arguing in every trade union branch every stewards committee and, more importantly, it will require building confidence. Through mobilising in every way we can for protests and strikes, small, medium and large

Brian was right that the numbers on the streets on the day of the CSR, 20 October were nowhere more than the low thousands but on Saturday 23 Oct. we saw 25,000 march in Edinburgh and 15,000 march in Belfast. These are impressive figures and shows how when there is a call from the official movementan much can be done.

Of course, the picture is very uneven. In Manchester, the Right to Work organised 1,000. A very spirited demonstration and rally but we clearly have much more to do.

But who is going to do it if not us and when are we going to do it if not now?

I'm not saying Brian is wrong to point out the danger that the TUC's mobilisations will not lead towards strike action but away from it. That was the experience in the 1980s and Dave Douglass is wrong to tell you to 'keep ya gob shut'. But as the TUC has already set 27? March as the date for a national demonstration, we must be arguing now that getting hundreds of thousands to march is excelelnt but it isn't enough to stop the Tories. It shows the potential for a successful general strike and that can only happen with powerful organisation at the rank and file level.

On this, it's worth repeating that the general strike in Spain was a step forwards. For millions it showed in practice that unity in action is possible, that workers have huge power as a class and for those who hwlped occupy a bank in Barcelona is showed it's possoble to start challenging the power of the property of the bosses while those who witnessed police firings live rounds learnt a lesson in how far our rulers are willing to go to defend that property.

Myth of General Strike?

Brian’s opposition to the call from SWP members for 'a 24-hour general strike' argues that it is premature and that members are not ready for it. He wants “less political drama, demos & street theatre & more concentration on grassroots development on the shop floor & in the workplace.”

Most of us would see this as a strange ‘either-or’. Generally, grassroots activity in the workplace and public protest go together. The thousands who turned out in the rain in Birmingham, carrying over a hundred union banners and including over two hundred from Manchester, talked afterwards about going home to build the grassroots and mobilise them in support of both local campaigns like that launched by the South Manchester Law Centre and the street activity on 20 and 23 October, following the Comprehensive Spending Review. When has any serious movement from below not brought people together on the streets?

Equally strange is Brian’s quoting the New York Times on the general strike in Spain on 29 September, as an elaborate ritual manipulating workers. http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2010/10/myth-of-general-strike.html Of course, Spain’s union leaderships have been pushing conciliation and ‘social partnership’ with their equivalent of a Labour government and they have much delayed calling this strike. The significance of the strike is precisely that it has been pressure from the rank and file that has forced the union leaders to call it and it has been the activity of the rank and file that has made it a success, with 16,000 shop stewards meeting in Madrid to prepare it, local assemblies in the bigger cities, postering and leafleting everywhere. On the day, millions struck, electricity use fell to Sunday levels, many thousands picketed, police attacked pickets, in one instance with warning shots using live ammunition. Well over a million demonstrated on the afternoon of the strike, with slogans such as “Let the capitalists pay for the crisis.” Such mass action is a step forward. It strengthens workers’ confidence and weakens the government and the bosses. If we are to defeat Cameron & Co, we need action like this. A 24-hour general strike would be a huge step forward for us too. We need to start now to argue for it. If not now, then when? If not us, then who?

Some local resistance, we need more

It’s still true - and has been for quite a long time - that “There is far too little strike action in Britain.” The big question is “When will this change?”

Brendan Barber was right when on ‘Any Questions’ last night he described the situation at the moment as “a phoney war”. The battles are going to come, mainly but not exclusively, after Osborne’s ‘Comprehensive Spending Review’ on 20 October. The problem is that the TUC isn’t getting ready for the battle that Barber is telling us will come. We must give them credit for getting the propaganda out. Today’s Guardian leads with the TUC report that that the proposed Tory cuts will hit the poorest ten times harder than the richest:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/10/coalition-cuts-poor-tuc

But this isn’t enough. There is a danger that the attacks will find many on our side like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights. So there is a need to be there where the action is. This week’s Socialist Worker features two excellent examples, both local, the angry 400 strong lobby against local authority cuts at Bolton Town Hall and the protest in Buile Hill Park, Salford, against the closure of Hope Maternity Unit. We need lots more of these and I’m sure we will get them but I’m not sure they will be organised on the scale and at the speed necessary. We need to get the message across that there is organised resistance so no one feels isolated and abandoned.

This is why the demo outside the Tory party conference is so important. It’s true that some are much easier to organise than others but we have to get it across that our enemies aren’t as confident as they like to portray themselves. Compared to Thatcher, they aren’t starting off against the background of the biggest global economic crisis since the 1930s, they aren’t able to portray the unions as the enemy and people no longer see privatisation as preferable to nationalisation. Rather, as in any battle, the enemy will look for weakness. It’s clear from the battles in the 1970s that those who resisted often succeeded. Those who didn’t went to the wall.

We mustn’t forget how vicious this government is. Lib Dem MP Bob Russell, the MP for Colchester, make the point, if in absurdly polite way when he tells the Today programme: "Yes, let's deal with the welfare cheats. But the notion that they are responsible for all the ills of the nation is in fact a smokescreen and it's not very ethical."

Tomorrow, Sunday’s, lobby of the TUC, calling on it to organise a national demonstration now, focuses on how the TUC is so far failing to give a lead. A brief glance at our history shows how this is no surprise. The nine months notice given by the Conservative government in summer 1925 was used by government and employers to build up coal stocks and a scabbing organisation, the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies. The TUC did precisely nothing. And that was a TUC with much bigger left than today’s TUC. They didn’t invite Stanley Baldwin to address them as the current general council Cameron to address the congress.

The lobby of the Lib Dem conference in Liverpool in a week’s time is a step in the right direction but when union leaderships leave it to branches to organise transport, the limitations of organising from the top down become clear.

Reflections from February: "far too little strike action in Britain at the moment"

There is far too little strike action in Britain at the moment given the pay freezes, the job losses and, above all, the anger and in the last year we have seen the return of both the all out strike - Superdrug and the Leeds bin strike - and occupations. So in taking action and doing it in such a lively and determined way, the UNITE Fujitsu workers are a beacon and they certainly shone at the Right to Work conference a week ago.

This week I've been in the WCML reading about the Automat dispute 1976/1977, and the row about the Engineers Charter pamphlet which was temporarily withdrawn at the request of the strikers because they didn't feel confident enough to support an open challenge to Mather the local right wing official. The Automat workers weren't strong enough to occupy - they tried, though not in sufficient numbers - but they had amazing tenacity, the strike lasted a year and as the mass pickets were established, the employer finally crumbled. I suspect because of pressure from other employers, unhappy that the mass pickets, in mobilising the rank and file, were creating a strength that they, the extremely class conscious EEF, could see as a real threat. Looking back on it, it looks like a Pyrrhic victory: we won but at a cost which weakened the confidence of our side and boosted that of the employers. It will be worth looking at the actions of Winston Churchill Junior, MP for Stretford, and involved in the dispute, not least because he wanted to “get JT”, as revealed in a leaked letter, JT being John Tocher. 1976 is the year that Thatcher gets elected a Tory leader and the hard right in the Tory Party, inspired by the free market idea of the Institute of Economic Affairs, is busy planning their revenge for the defeats under Heath.

I’ve also gone back to the chapter on the Manchester occupations in ‘Glorious Summer’. There is a marked contrast here with the chapters on the miners and the building workers and the dockers where the strikers won a clear victory. The attitude of the strike leaders to the rank and file is the key here. In fact, the contradictions of John Tocher’s politics seem to sum it up.

Here was a man who mobilised the rank and file to win a decisive victory at Roberts Arundel in the late 1960s. This happened under the control of his leadership in a purely industrial dispute. It did not create any tensions with the CP and its relations with left officials, the heart of their industrial strategy.

By 1972, under a Heath government with the AUEW the key union in the resistance to the IR Act, Scanlon’s leadership was seen as tactically skilful. In fact, the right remained a very powerful force in the union and the overall CP strategy of an alliance with left Labour MPs, a parliamentary road to socialism, meant that the emphasis was on the election of left officials, getting the vote out at geographical branch meetings, not on the organisation of the rank and file. Thus the election campaign of AUEW president involved having transport ready to get people to go from work to the branch to vote. In the event, Scanlon’s majority in the Manchester area was greater than his majority nationally.

It is also worth noting the mobilisation of the Birmingham engineers, under right wing leadership to Saltley in March 1972 and their absence during the fight against the EEF that followed soon after. Only Manchester and to a much smaller extent Sheffield fought.


I’ve heard that Tocher many years afterwards, said it had been our International Socialist bulletins – the Greater Manchester Engineer – that had worried him during the dispute. The chapter in Glorious Summer certainly keeps referring to them for the argument on how the dispute was progressing.

It is a complicated story at one level. Large numbers of workers on one side, ranged against a large number of employers. In the context of 1972 it was perhaps the biggest battle

The title refers to Richard III – the original quote was ‘the winter of discontent’. There is a curious reversal however in the timing. Glorious summer in the original succeeds winter. Here it precedes it. It leaves open the question ‘Why?’

Colin Barker argued with me the question was easy to answer and Adam Rose put it simply in a recent meeting -. It was he said ‘A lack of politics’. More of this anon.

Coming back to the RtW conference, and how the discussion in the pub the day before with UNITE strikers: they've certainly developed a clear understanding of the position of their officials but that isn't the same as an overall view of the relation between rank and file and bureaucracy

All history is the history of class struggle. Easy to say, harder to spell out. The struggle is ‘sometimes open, sometimes hidden’. Rather more hidden at the moment.

Building for the Right to Work protest on 22 June

Saturday afternoon in Market Street, working for half an hour or so on the RtW stall with Andy and Tom. It’s quite hard work to engage with people - perhaps something to do with football - but we do get a response. Sometimes it’s about the big picture as with the woman doing market research. She is angry; in particular as the little guys are being asked to pay as the fat cats get fatter. Sometimes it is people worried about what is going to happen to the services they are delivering. A volunteer in a hospital trust speaking at length about excessive dependence on volunteers. And then going on to talk about PFI and the financial burden it imposes. And there is a civil servant who when I said 'Ah! Your union is backing protests on the 22nd’ replied 'Well, no, I’m in the FDA (First Division Association, organising the top 18,000 civil servants) but I will be with you in spirit’

The Emergency Budget won't be all the cuts; there'll be more in the comprehensive spending review in the autumn. But they will be savage (as promised by Clegg) so the friendly image being cultivated by the government will be damaged. Cameron's offer of more dosh to soldiers on active service and limiting of the war aims to 'national security' (**) may help him at home for the moment but will the image last beyond Tuesday 22 June?

** Cameron, of course, does nothing to clarify, how this is going to be achieved, nothing about how NATO can avoid defeat in Afghanistan.

Looking forward to 2010

Best moment of 2009? Not often so easy to identify , politically at least,
but it has to be Monday 22 June and the hundreds of contract workers walking off the
Stanlow site in solidarity with the workers sacked at Lindsay. See the June posting on this blog.



There have been other good moments, not least the freezing cold
morning, 18 December, on the UNITE picket line at Fujitsu with a good
number of pickets and supporters in excellent spirits, albeit a little
soft on the picket line.

Both are good omens for 2010. Add to this the victory of the Leeds
refuse workers. And the strong start to the jobs dispute at Leeds Uni.

On the down side has to be the failure to confront the judges in the
BA cabin crew dispute. Perhaps that will go right, second time around,
in the new year.

I anticipate something of a 'phoney war' from now to May and all hell
breaking loose afterwards but I could be wrong. Quite a lot will
depend on what happens at BA and perhaps at Leeds Uni.

There are bound to be comparisons with 1979 and Thatcher's victory.
The situation, though, could hardly be more different. Then Thatcher
was crusading in favour of the free market and deregulation, against
trade unions and had a good deal of popular support. Today, though
government and business still practise Thatcherism - renamed
neo-liberalism - and have no alternative to it, these ideas are in
crisis. The world has seen its biggest ever financial crash which
flowed from the ever more unrestrained practice of Thatcherism and
remains mired in economic crisis. The next government may try to
follow Thatcher's example and implement swingeing cuts - the figures
indicate they should be much tougher than they were in 79 and the
early 80s - but the reasoning 'the need to balance the budget' will
convince few.

The question will be how do those attacked respond? The ballot
results at Fujitsu and BA show that where the work is done properly,
the response is overwhelming even on a postal ballot. The lesson of
the Thatcher yars is of lions led by donkeys. In every major dispute
the leadership of our side failed. Thatcher understood that if she
picked her moment, avoiding going into battle too early I the Ridley
Plan - and, crucially, was willing to raise the stakes without limit,
then at some point the leadership of the other side would bottle it.
There was nothing novel in this. Lloyd George did this in 1919 as
described by George Smillie and Stanley Baldwin as well on the General
Strike of 1926.

The same is true today. The obvious differences are that there are 7
million trade unionists as against 12 million then and there were
fresh memories of significant victories. Today the long shadow of the
defeat of the miners has receded. The challenge in 2010 is whether a
new generation can get its act together hard enough and fast enough.
Gramsci's watchword 'Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will'
seems to fit these times.

Ghazal concert in Faisalabad

In the Arts Council building and its huge and mostly empty Nusrat Fateli Khan auditorium, a ghazal concert with voice, tabla (drums), harmonium. My guide in this is the 19 year old Dupree - his nickname, inspired by Owen Wilson whom he resembles a little. Dupree isn’t working or studying but describes himself, without a trace of hesitation, as a playboy.

I succeed in avoiding being a guest of honour. I am, nevertheless,introduced as a socialist and trade unionist and asked to shake hands with a couple of vice chancellors. The singer is a woman, sharp faced and looking strict, gorgeously dressed. She sings seated cross legged on an embroidered cushion. Many of her songs are love songs by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, poet, communist and trade unionist. The audience behaves as in eighteenth century Italian opera houses. Coming and going all the time, chatting with each other. They applaud their favorite ghazals enthusiastically and send request slips to the singer. Then the lights go up, the music stops and the artists pack up and leave. No encores, no special applause.

After the concert, Dupree drives me, the poet Anjum and Tahir to the very centre of Faisalabad where there is a Victorian clock tower surrounded by markets. There is a group of sleeping weavers who have organised a protest over the yarn shortage. We eat in the street, rice and spicy dall. Someone asks me if India or Pakistan is better. I reply they are both good and they should be united. ‘A good answer’ says a local businessman sitting next to me.

Speaking at LQM meeting

We drive out of the city for a couple of miles into the setting sun to the industrial suburb of Sudhar where there is a crisis because the weavers can’t get yarn as it is all being exported. The union has called a meeting about it and I’ve been asked to say a few words.

Approaching the centre along a narrow road crowded with traffic, vendors, cows and goats till we get to the meeting organised in the street. A dozen police are there to protect us. Or so I’ve been told. We get out of our minibus and walk towards the meeting, around four hundred, all men. Suddenly I’m garlanded with roses and hoisted up and carried to the platform amid cheers. The speeches are all very declaratory and I struggle to match the style. So I keep it short. And not much later, for reasons of security, we set off back into town.

A rarity in Faisalabad

Photos: Outside the National hotel - see below


There is a real problem being such a rarity, that is, a white person in Faisalabad. At breakfast with my colleague Tariq, as we discuss Obama’s insistence he won’t rule out using drones on targets in Quetta, capital of Balochistan (which is sort of equivalent to saying he might target IRA safe houses in Belfast) not only did someone in the restaurant come over from another table and ask if he could comment on what we were saying but another man came over to comment on what we had been saying at breakfast yesterday!

As we get to the hotel where our course is, Tariq goes to an ATM in front of a bank. I stand by the road, taking photos of the street life. In less than two minutes one of the managers is out asking me who I was and what I’m doing, soon joined by two colleagues. A mixture of curiosity and paranoia. Much of this is fuelled by the press which sees spies everywhere.

National Student Federation /IS Pak meeting, Faisalabad

At seven I’m driven to the National Student Federation / IS Pak meeting organised by Ali Sajjad, Twenty five of us there, three women. Mostly young and serious. I’ve been asked to talk about imperialism and working class revolution. As we start load shedding again but candlelight is fine. The discussion is sharp and lively. From Che Guevara to permanent revolution to state capitalism to the nature of socialist transition to women’s liberation which I raise after it is suggested that the women comrades make the tea. I spend the tea break talking to the women. Someone else has made the tea.

Some one raises post modernism which we reasonably quickly agree is rubbish. More importantly, someone argues that workers can't grasp the essentials of Marxism. It isn't too hard to challenge this but there is a need for these students to talk to workers.

It’s gone ten before we finish. Arif, an older worker, member of the reformist National Workers Party, takes me home on the back of his motorbike. A coldish 15 minutes. Arif lends me his scarf to wrap around my face, just to be on the safe side.

Hum Khayal meeting

Photo: Nabila and Um-e-Maria

Late afternoon I’m invited to a meeting of Hum Khayal - ‘We think together’ in Urdu. I’m welcomed by Rana Wajid, founder director of Hum Khayal. It’s a group of writers, musicians and thesps. Also a religious scholar, a professor of law, a lawyer, a business man. Twenty of us sit squashed round the walls of a small room. Nabila, Shakila and Um-e-Maria are three of the four women. There is a discussion about social activism with a lot of input by Zulfiqar Shah. At the end, a couple of short, rhythmic poems, greeted with ‘Wah’.

LQM course in Faisalabad

Winter has arrived here. Suddenly it’s cold and grey. It’s chilly in the rickshaw as we travel across town to the National Hotel, vast, empty concrete affair where an impressive group of over two dozen Labour Qaumi Movement activists slowly appear.

The LQM is a general union with thousands of members; mainly power loom workers here in Faisalabad, perhaps the most successful example of organising workers in recent years in Pakistan. Five women, two of whom were on yesterday’s course. The students give sharp clear reports on their history of fighting on wages, to get health care, to protest the price of flour, to support the lawyers’ movement and much else.
Our room overlooks a main road with endless horns of everything kind, blaring.

We have just started when the room is plunged into near darkness. Load shedding, that is, power cuts. I appear to be the only person who is upset. The students, by contrast, carry on introducing each other unruffled. I have to laugh or I would cry when after twenty minutes - I was promised five- the emergency generator starts up and as the lights come on, the noise of the generator makes it near impossible for anyone to hear. Again, no one is fazed by this except me. Luckily within half an hour the power returns.

An evening at Tahir's house

Tariq takes me by rickshaw to Tahir’s house in a working class part of the city. Here we walk the last hundred yards down a narrow, ill-lit street past two large sheep, bikes and motorcycles. I’m welcomed into a large space with a three piece suite and low table, no carpet, in the front part of the house, all for coolness in summer, though now it is beginning to be cold.

I’m introduced to the family, three generations, Tahir’s 6 month old daughter, Toula-iman, which means ‘messenger of God’, his sister course today and two other women from today’s course, Shakila and Nabila. All very bright sparks. They see themselves as being an activist household. The grandmother has been campaigning on getting school places and getting the streets cleaned - not least because of the lack of proper sanitation. Soup is followed later by biriyani and aloo methi where methi is similar to spinach. Maria who is still a teenager is thinking of becoming a beautician. Nabila works as a receptionist at an insurance company. Just 8000 rupees a month - £60 - half of which goes on rickshaws because the transport situation for women is so bad. This was one of the problems raised on the course. When I suggest that anyone harassing a woman on a bus should be reported to the driver or conductor and thrown off the bus, the class laughs. The drivers and conductors are the worst offenders.