UCULeft’s Autumn Conference – “Preparing to Win: Post-16 Education for All” will take place on Saturday 18th November 2017.
Venue: SOAS, Paul Webley Wing, Senate House, North Block, Torrington Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX – see map
With the Conservative Government increasingly looking unable to govern the country, the Labour Party is waiting to form the next government. Labour’s radical manifesto contains many post-16 education polices developed by UCU. This conference will look at developing education policy in anticipation of a future Labour government.
The conference will look at a wide range of areas covered by post-16 education to discuss and design policy that will ensure a progressive Further and Higher Education sector is developed that allows access for all.
The conference will look at apprenticeships, more relevant and inspiring curriculum and the role of adult education in Further Education. The conference will discuss how we can undo the marketisation of Higher Education.
One of the main themes of the conference this year will be the issues of the public sector pay cap and how we can build a movement to get the cap lifted.
Full timetable with list of speakers, panel guests and workshops will be available soon.
The Labour manifesto commitment to phase out tuition fees would throw into reverse the years of marketisation in education and re-open access to education for many disadvantaged students.
This single policy, if implemented, would make a massive difference to the lives of ordinary families and is in line with national UCU policy.
We believe that UCU members need to fight to see the implementation of the end of tuition fees, that means that we need to encourage staff and students to ‘vote for education’ on 8 June.
UCU branches must work with NUS and other campus unions to encourage voter registration before the 22 May deadline as UCU has argued nationally.
The London Region of UCU has called a ‘vote for education’ day of action on 24 May. This is a great initiative and it could and should be replicated by as many regions, colleges and universities as possible.
The election on 8 June will shape post 16 education for years to come.
The Tories HE Bill forced through the Commons in the final pre-election days shows what Theresa May’s vision of education is all about, privatisation.
We now have the chance to get something better. Let’s fight for it.
Support the London Region UCU Day of Action
London Region UCU has called a day of action “Vote for Education” to mobilise the anti-Tory vote amongst staff and students next Wednesday 24 May.
The day has 3 parts:
Organise activity at your college or university to encourage staff and students to “Vote for Education”. You can download the manifesto to distribute here
Bring staff and students down to Old Palace Yard for 5.30pm to rally around the London Region “Vote for Education” banner, bring your branch UCU banners along. Link to map
Come to the 1,000 strong TES election hustings with Justine Greening, Angela Rayner and John Pugh at theEmmanuel CentreWestminster (10 mins walk from Old Palace Yard) from 6.30pm to 8pm, register your free place Here
Join us in our call to:
. Scrap HE and FE tuition fees
• Reverse the HE Bill
• Bring back the Education Maintenance Allowance for FE Students
• Reverse the historic neglect of FE and increase funding
A lobby of parliament, and an online ‘we love unions’ campaign, never got close to the level of resistance that was necessary to defeat this offensive, the most draconian trade-union law since the 1980s or to defend jobs, conditions, equality and services.
The Tory law limits our ability to organise, most importantly introducing new ballot thresholds that will make organising lawful national action very difficult for many big public sector unions.
This attack comes at a time when British workers’ wages have been frozen for the longest period in over 70 years. On every barometer, working people’s lives in the workplace have significantly deteriorated since the economic crash in 2008. As Marx explained, ‘the tyranny of the market leads to the tyranny in the factory’. In the drive to outdo their competitors, employers increase the pressure on their workers to work harder and faster for less. Spiralling workloads, bullying managers, longer hours and insecure contracts are the norm for millions of workers in Britain today. With this worsening of conditions, workers’ physical and mental health has also deteriorated.
With this being the everyday experience of millions in the ‘modern’ workplace environment the need for a well-organised, militant trade unionism has never been greater.
With the lowest level of strike days “lost” since records began, trade unions in Britain look increasing irrelevant – at least, on the surface. The response of the leaders of the trade unions has been to retreat from taking any national action, and unions are increasingly leaving the national battlefield. Our leaders are encouraging local disputes to clock up ‘wins’ as an alternative to national action, and in an attempt to make unions relevant.
There are still over six million workers in trade unions, however, which are approximately a quarter of the total workforce, and there are hundreds of thousands of union reps. At a local level (as in the Durham TAs), trade unionists are continuing to engage in courageous action to defend jobs and services.
What is frustrating about the inability of our leaders to take up the fight in defence of working people’s conditions is that the employers are not confident and cohesive – they are divided, cautious and detached. The vote to leave the European Union has sent employers into a tail spin of rage and confusion. Their continued indulgence in yachts, luxury cars and multiple homes, which has meant that even Theresa May has had meekly to attempt to curb boardroom pay, has led workers to despise and thoroughly distrust the employing class.
In this context rather than going on the offensive and leading a national fight against the employers the trade union leaders are retreating into local disputes. If British trade unionism is to be successful at recruiting the next generation of workers then it will need a strategy that goes beyond fighting localised battles. We need a national strategy that matches the government and employers’ national offensive against working people.
The re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the Labour Party undoubtedly gives the unions an increased and positive profile. But we cannot wait until 2020 before we start to develop and implement a national strategy to rebuild union strength.
We need national action more than ever. From Trump to May to the potential of a Nazis President in France we need more than ever a trade union movement that can launch national strike action. We need a trade unionism that is equally aggressive at fighting racism as it is in defending workers’ collective rights and conditions of service; one that is as engaged in addressing gender inequality or precarious contracts as it is committed to pay increases and defending national pay rates.
Circumstances can change very quickly. As quickly as old established political dynasties can evaporate, new movements, based upon the self-activity of working people, can appear. This article argues that we need to make a shift to taking regional initiatives whilst at the same time maintaining the pressure on our leaders to lead a national fight against the increasing attacks on working people.
I’m all right Jack…
For most union leaderships at the moment the emphasis is building up local union strength by encouraging local battles. The argument that is usually put forward is that the union is not in a position to sustain national action due to members’ lack of enthusiasm for strike action, or structural weakness in the sector, or lack of organisational strength, or the aggressive use of the law by the employers. The consequence of this, the argument continues, is that we need to rebuild local union organisation by encouraging branches to take action over issues about which members have immediate concern. It is in this manner, they argue, that we will be able to rebuild the sectional workplace strength that can deliver and sustain national action.
It is important to stress that many union activists across the movement have been doing this for many years. This is precisely what has enabled them to build relatively strong workplace organisation. It has been the inability of the trade union leaders to generalise this experience across the whole of the areas they organise that has led them to be unable to build and sustained national strike action.
However, this approach is not a new one. It is based upon the way the British trade unions were built in the 1950/60s which was accurately portrayed, albeit mockingly, in the 1950s Peter Sellers’ film I’m All Right Jack.
This was a period in which the economic boom of the 1950s-1960s allowed workers to organise pay and conditions of service on a sectional level. Workers in new industries, such as the enlarged car plants, successfully organised wage increases through local industrial action, and often only through the threat of action. Stewards organised networks of activists that cut across industry to keep each other informed about the situation in each of their particular plants. Faced with a booming economy and full order books, employers were unwilling to face down their workers’ demands out of fear of lagging behind their competitors. When one group of workers won their dispute, the next would pop up to leapfrog on the back of that success; then another group would follow suit creating what the press called ‘wage spiral’.
The workers on the shop floor would often joke, with some irony, that to win your dispute it was necessary to get out of the door before your officials arrived!
The Wilson government in 1968 launched an enquiry called the Donavan Report which looked into the rise of the ‘wild cat’ strike, and at the ‘politically motivated men’ that were behind the rise of such successful action. The Commission recommended legal constraints on unions, in order to back up governmental wage controls. This led to new union legislation. Titled In Place of Strife, the proposed anti-union law was introduced by Barbara Castle. Magnificent unofficial strike action, involving some 600,000 workers, was organised by the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions. It defeated the proposed Bill.
Twenty years of ‘do it yourself reformism’, based on sectional strength, had developed well-organised networks of workers across industries. These networks were able to deliver unofficial national action. The victory at Saltley gates coking plant in 1972 demonstrated the strength of these networks to inflict serious defeats on the employers at a national level.
In an excellent interview with the NUM leader in the New Left Review in 1975, Scargill describes how he spoke at a Birmingham District Committee of the AEUW (the engineering union) calling on engineers across the city to down tools and march on the coking plant to shut it down. On the third day they did. Fifteen thousand workers walked out unofficially, and joined miners at the picket lines, and brushed the police aside to shut the plant.
It was in this period, and as a consequence of the strength of the unofficial networks and regional structures, that national barging was conceded by employers’ organisations and the Government, and welcomed by the trade union leaders. National bargaining was brought in to head off rank and file activists from developing effective collective bargaining at a workplace level. Today, when no such rank and file networks exist, the employers try to move away from national bargaining, and attempt to push through deals at a local level where our side is weaker. That is why we need to campaign hard to defend what is left of national bargaining in every industry, and not to allow our trade union leaders to walk away from this arena of battle.
Unlike the 1950 and 1960s, though, we are not in an economic boom. The employers are more cautious about their industries’ futures, and workers are not confident to walk out unofficially in any industry. What prevents us from taking unofficial action is not the fear of unemployment (unemployment levels are low) but the lack of organisation that can provide us with the confidence that the action necessary to win will be possible.
This is why, in this situation, it makes a big difference to workers’ confidence to fight if their leaderships are also seen to express their anger, and to provide a credible national strategy for action that has a chance of winning
Finding a way out of the bramble bush
The 1950-60s section-by-section approach to rebuilding union strength, whilst important, cannot be the model we looked to rebuild our strength today.
We all understand the difficulties of achieving the kind of big votes for action that will now be legally necessary. Given the cynicism many members feel as a result of the lacklustre attempts of our leaderships to oppose the government and employers, this is hardly surprising. The likelihood of getting national action off the ground through an official ballot, when the law demands a fifty percent turnout for action to be lawful, is small at the moment.
That does not mean that activists should no longer continue to try to get official national action off the ground. Many unions’ campaigns to get the vote out in such national ballots in the past have been incredibly passive and unimaginative. In those circumstances, members do not have any sense that the leadership of their union has the stomach for a fight. Why participate in a ballot in those circumstances?
Nevertheless, if we are to restore the possibility of national action, and be able to mount some pressure in support of national negotiations, or to defend the continuation of national bargaining and existing national agreements, then we need a national strategy to rebuild this capacity.
But we cannot rely on this alone. Where possible we need to encourage unions to put in local claims over pay and conditions, over local patterns of gender discrimination, and over abusive contracts of employment. Where possible, these need to be organised as part of a region-wide campaign where the union puts its national resources into supporting the action to be taken.
In the Higher Education Sector, for example, where the HE and Research Bill is being rushed through Parliament, and is designed to end the existence of public universities, and where the UCU’s national leadership has just thrown away the possibility of a national fight on pay, gender discrimination and casualisation, we need university branches to group together at a local level to pursue pay, gender pay equality, and anti-causuliastion campaigns. Five or six of the better organised university branches need to coordinate their local actions, and to offer a lead to other university branches in their regions.
For such a strategy to work, to have the ability to give confidence to the less well-organised sections, then the national union would need to coordinate solidarity from other branches, and other regions, and with other unions.
What such a strategy doesn’t mean is different universities taking individual action over local issues, which are seen as separate local disputes that have nothing to do with each other. If this version of localised action takes place there is no guarantee, even where university branches are successful in achieving their local aims, that the ‘win’ translates into raising the level of confidence of the less well-organised branches.
Learning from our history
We cannot base a strategy for rebuilding union strength through twenty years of isolated local disputes. The I’m All Right Jack approach cannot be the model for rebuilding union strength in this period.
History does not simply progress through gradual incremental change. There are breaks – great leaps forward. We need to factor this into our understanding of how organised labour can revive its ability to successfully bring about real change that so many working people desire.
Indeed it’s not only a question of identifying the appropriate industrial strategy. Rebuilding trade union confidence and strength is also about recognising the pivotal political issues of the moment that impact on trade union organisation. For us, today, that is unquestionably the rise of racism, the re-emergence of reactionary populism in politics, and the real threat of fascism.
Axel Persson, a French rail worker, speaking at the Unite the Resistance Conference in November described the challenges that his members face. He spoke about the attempt by the Socialist government in France to introduce new labour laws attacking collective bargaining. He also described the context in which they were fighting; the continual and frightening rise of the Nazi Front Nationale led by Marie Le Pen. This is not the first time that the French working class has faced such a threat.
We have historical precedent. In 1934, the French fascists attempted a coup d’etat. A mass demonstration was called by a number of fascist leagues in Paris – the most notable was the 60,000-strong manifestation by Action Français. The workers’ movement had not been particularly active before this point. The movement united and confronted the fascist demonstrators backed up by thousands of workers taking strike action. The movement stopped French fascism in its tracks.
The political radicalisation that developed around this fight against fascism raised the confidence and organisation of organised labour in France. In 1936, this radicalisation led to the victory of a left-wing Popular Front government, and a general strike involving millions of workers. These strikes ensured that the left-wing Government immediately introduced significant reforms which included a shortening of the working day, and regular paid holidays.
French workers in 1936 enjoying their paid holidays (by Henri Cartier-Bresson for Communist Party magazine Regards)
Hope: does history repeat itself?
No, … not at all but it can act as a guide.
The rebuilding of trade union organisation that can deliver real change will take a mixture of local and national action – both, not one or the other; it will involve the union responding as vigorously to the political threats to members as it does to the economic threats to their conditions of service.
The situation can be transformed overnight by workers taking action over issues that we least aspect. In 2010, the anger and revulsion felt amongst education workers, when witnessing their sons and daughters being attacked by the police whilst demonstrating against university fees, could have resulted in a series of large-scale walk-outs. Thankfully, and despite the terrible injuries inflected on some, and only by luck, none of our students were killed. Had one of them been killed, walkouts across the country in every university, college, and in many other workplaces, could have transformed union organisation.
The Brexit campaign shows that some workers can direct their anger against migrants and refugees if there is no alternative explanation for economic decline. The issue for the trade union movement should not be concern at a lack of anger, rage or radicalism amongst working people or young people. The central issue for the trade union movement is passivity. The more inactive union members are in campaigning to defend their living standards, the more their confidence will be sapped. It is this passivity that allows right-wing demagogues to offer false hopes as a way out of our current political impoverishment.
We live in an era where all the old political certainties have dissolved. It is not a given that what replaces the old political order will be progressive. To ensure that it does takes conscious intervention in the world we live in based on the values of solidarity and collectivity with a coherent alternative to competition and marketisation.
US $15 an hour campaigners speaking in committee room in Parliament
Last weekend I went to see two exhibitions at the Royal Festival Hall. One was called We are all Human and showcased offender art and the other was the ‘photo journalist of the year’ exhibition. Each in their different ways showed extremely graphically what a brutal and inhuman world we live in today.
The offender art exhibition exhibited a wide range of art from paintings, sculpture, poetry and song. They illustrated the humanity of those who have been incarcerated in one of the most non-human environments. Their art, poetry and song also reveal the mental and physical distress they find themselves in.
The photo exhibition was harrowing to see. Pictures of dead children cradled in their parents arms. Photographs of living children, looking like ghosts, covered in blood and dust from the bombed buildings in Aleppo from which they have just been dragged. Images of young black men and women refugees looking up at the camera from the hull of a boat, reminiscent of slave ships of the 18th Century.
The reason why I start with this in an article about Trump is because this is the world we are confronted with today: war, environmental disaster, unimaginable poverty and mass migration on a scale we have not witnessed since the Second World War.
Trump will not deal with these problems. Not simply because he is a misogynist, racist and reactionary but because he is part of the establishment, all be it a maverick one, that created these problems in the first place.
As usual fingers point to the ‘stupid’, ‘uneducated’ white working class to explain why Trump was elected without providing any explanation as to why he succeeded in beating Hillary Clinton. A simple but not unimportant starting point to explain why Trump won is his use of the race card. He played on the real fears and anxieties of sections of the working class in the United States. In the rust belt areas like Michigan, Trump connected with voters when he promised that a vote for him would take away the pain of mass unemployment and halt the wage decline that now means that it takes two wages to provide the same standard of living as one wage did in the 1970s.
No wonder that, living in such dire circumstances, some of the working class want to believe Trump can bring back a mythical world where ‘America is great again’.
His victory was made easier by his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Clinton is part of a political dynasty that is despised by millions of Americans. Rightly, the Democratic Party tradition is seen as one that has spectacularly failed generation after generation of working class people. If you want to beat a populist reactionary who puts themselves up as an anti-establishment candidate don’t put up a candidate who has impeccable establishment credentials. Bernie Sanders was in a much better position to beat Trump. Many of the same people who voted for the reactionary Trump were also excited by the socialist vision that Sanders offered.
President Francois Hollande would do well to remember this as he stands against the Nazi Marie Le Pen in the French presidential elections coming up soon.
‘It’s the economy, stupid’
Trump will fail to make good on any of his promises. He will continue to play the race card and stir up divisions so that he can push through further attacks on working class lives. In an interesting article by Michael Roberts he states that,
‘Trump has been handed a poisoned chalice that he will have to drink from: the state of the US economy. The US economy is the largest and most important capitalist economy. It has performed the best of the largest economies since the end of the Great Recession in 2009. But its economic performance has still been dismal. Real GDP growth per person has been only 1.4% a year, well below levels before the global financial crash in 2008. It’s a story of the weakest economic recovery after a slump since the 1930s.
The IMF now expects the US economy to expand at only 1.6% this year. And the US Federal Reserve bank economists are now forecasting just 1.8% a year expansion for the foreseeable future. And all this assumes no new economic recession.’
He goes on to explain that
‘US corporate profits are falling. According to economists at investment bank JP Morgan, US corporate profits declined 7% over year-ago levels. On that basis, they reckon, “the probability of a recession starting within three years at a startling 92%, and the probability within two years at 67%”.’
Trump’s only solution to this will be to cut the tax of the very rich and slash government spending, hitting welfare, education and health.
United resistance
As usual, then, we are back to the only people who can defend ordinary people’s living standards – themselves. In the US, over the last couple of years, we have seen mass movements in defence of black, working class communities from police killings that are reminiscent of the struggle of the 60s. Those struggles radicalised a new generation of activists, and led to the US pulling out of Vietnam – and the impeachment of a President. We have seen the inspiring campaign by fast food workers demanding a living wage of $15 dollars an hour which united black and Hispanic communities.
We also saw in Bernie Sander’s campaign that collectivist and unifying socialist ideas, in the heart of the US, caught the imagination of millions of young, working class people.
It is to this vision of collectivism and resistance we will need to look to stop the continued attacks on the working class, here and in the US.
It won’t be long until Trump will be faced with a mass resurgence of working class unity against his policies. The sleeping giant of the American working class has the potential, as it has done historically, to challenge poverty and injustice.
It will be interesting to see how big and confident Trump then looks when confronted by one of the most powerful working classes in the world.
There are moments in political life when those who rule society are exposed. These moments reveal how removed and disconnected they are from the mass of people who they seek to rule over. The outcome of the European Union (EU) referendum is one of them.
Fifty-two percent of the population voted to leave the EU. This is despite the vast majority of the employers, MPs and mainstream political parties campaigning to remain in the EU. Those who voted to remain are understandably fearful of the future as they see Farage being paraded around TV studios gloating over the result.
Cameron said that he would call the referendum in the run up to last year’s General Election as an attempt to keep his right flank in the Tory party on board. Probably not the wisest tactical move ever made! By calling the referendum not only has he opened up the old wounds within the Tory party to such an extent it is difficult to see, in the short to medium term, how they can be healed but also he has opened the door to the possible destruction of the European Union.
What the referendum campaign has also done is politicised society. 72% of the population, around 35 million people, voted. The establishment, who bemoan the fact that working class people do not bother to turn out to vote in general elections, are now castigating the working class for using the referendum to show their rage at an establishment that has wrecked their lives.
Corbyn, the Labour Party and working class resistance
It is a disgrace that the first thing that some Labour MPs have done after such a momentous event has been to turn their fire, not on the Tories, but on Jeremy Corbyn. The idea that Margaret Hodge, Yvette Cooper, Hillary Benn or any of the Blairites would be more able to reconnect the LP to its working class base is laughable.
Inside or outside the Labour Party we must do all we can to defend Corbyn from any attempt to oust him from the leadership of the Labour Party. The petition launched by twelve General Secretaries in support of Corbyn is one we should ensure is sent round to all our members. Corbyn must continue to throw his weight behind building the movements against austerity and he must call for a general election now.
Elsewhere I have argued that it was a serious mistake that Corbyn decided to join the Remain campaign. Some of us warned Corbyn that by failing to provide an independent left case for exit the working class in Labour’s heartlands would be left to the racist populism of Farage to give voice to their concerns. If Corbyn and McDonnell had spearheaded a left exit campaign, speaking at rallies up and down the country, tens of thousands would have joined, and we would be further down the road to providing a real alternative to the racist little Englanders.
A working class revolt
Let us not mistake the nature of what took place on Friday 24th June 2016; it was a revolt by the working class against an elite they perceive to be responsible for the destruction of their communities.
But like any political revolt that leads to a political crisis, it is never pure. It is not the case that one set of people line up on one side under the banner of ‘anti–corporate, anti-racism and for equality’ whilst the other side line up under the banner of ‘reaction’.
People entering into social movements against the system for the first time carry with them contradictory ideas; anti-corporate and anti-immigrant. As a leading Russian Revolutionary once warned, ‘Whoever expects a “pure” social revolution will never live to see it.’
Those of us who aim to build movements to defend our communities from the wrecking ball policies of government need to understand that people will hold contradictory ideas and that these contradictions have the potential to be overcome when working people continue to play an active part in shaping their destinies.
As financial markets collapse and there is panic and despair amongst the ruling elite sparked by the revolt of working people we must resist the lure of being pulled into this despair. We rightly, year after year, denounce a system that creates poverty and inequality. When it starts to fall to pieces, because ordinary people flex their muscles, it is not down to us to run to its aid to keep it alive so that we can continue to reform it.
Our task is to build a bigger and stronger movement that can provide an alternative to their divisive and destructive system of inequality and despair.
Was racism the reason why people voted to leave?
Already one of the central explanations that has been offered as to why working class people voted to leave the EU is because of their deep seated racism. The official Leave campaign led by Gove, Johnson and Farage, as well as the Remain campaign, used anti-immigrant racism to win people to their cause. But the majority of working class people who voted to leave are not racists.
The three towns outside of London where the “White British” population is a minority produced large Leave votes.
Although people in London backed Remain more strongly, leave still had strong support among working class people in the capital.
For example, in Newham 47 percent of people voted Leave. The east London borough is one of the poorest and most multicultural boroughs in London, with only 17 percent of the population being “White British”.
The point here is not to ignore or deny the impact the official Remain and Leave campaigns of racism had on turning some people’s fears against immigrants, particularly Leave supporters. But to show that an explanation that starts from all those who voted to leave are racist bigots does not grasp the contradictory nature of the vote and the anti-austerity rage that lay at is heart.
Make our 5th July a day to remember
However we voted we now need to unite (see UCU NEC statement below) to continue to build a movement that offers hope. The first opportunity we have to do this is on the 5th July when hundreds of thousands of teachers will be taking strike action in defence of working class education. This strike takes on even more significance. It will be the first opportunity to demonstrate the unity and strength of the anti-austerity movement in the aftermath of the EU referendum vote.
UCU members in around twenty universities will also be taking strike action on that day. We need to drill this strike down into every community inviting parents and their families to join us on the rallies and demonstrations. At every rally a migrant worker should be invited to speak. Those in work who cannot make the lunchtime protest should organise their own one at work to demonstrate their solidarity with the defence of working class education.
Their system is in disarray. Neither side of the debate have answers to the poverty and pain that working people are suffering except to heap more pain and misery onto our communities. The best response to protect our futures is to do all we can to make sure that 5th July is a mass demonstration of working class unity that has at it’s core equality for all.
Sean Vernell UCU NEC ( PC)
UCU NEC statement:
The vote to leave the EU has created a political earthquake
The referendum was marred by disgraceful racism and scaremongering over immigration by figures on both sides of the official campaigns and of course by the tragic death of Jo Cox MP.
However millions of people have voted to leave the EU as a direct result of years of austerity and economic decline.
The UCU rejects any attempt to use the ‘Leave’ vote to impose further austerity measures. Post 16 education is already under attack, we will fight any attempt at further cuts as a result of the referendum.
We will determinedly oppose any attempt by politicians to use the vote to restrict the rights of migrant workers and refugees and reaffirm our Congress commitment to supporting EU students and staff in UK institutions.
On 5 July teachers will be striking against attacks on education and will be joined by our members in HE who have elected to strike on that day. We will mobilise as a union to back their strikes and protests on the day.
We support the mobilisation called by the People’s Assembly against austerity at the Tory Party conference on 2 October.
Below is a joint press statement from the leaders of the biggest trade unions in the UK backing Jeremy Corbyn. There is also a petition of confidence in him that already gained over 133,000 signatures within 24 hours of its launch.
A statement from union leaders backing Jeremy Corbyn to continue as Labour leader.
The Prime Minister’s resignation has triggered a Tory leadership crisis. At the very time we need politicians to come together for the common good, the Tory party is plunging into a period of argument and infighting. In the absence of a government that puts the people first Labour must unite as a source of national stability and unity.
It should focus on speaking up for jobs and workers’ rights under threat, and on challenging any attempt to use the referendum result to introduce a more right-wing Tory government by the backdoor.
The last thing Labour needs is a manufactured leadership row of its own in the midst of this crisis and we call upon all Labour MPs not to engage in any such indulgence.
Two weeks to go to decide if Britain should remain in or leave the European Union (EU). Most UCU members in my workplace seem to favour remaining in the EU. Many cite the virulently racist nature of the leave campaign as justification to vote to remain. For many the thought of Boris Johnson, who is increasingly morphing into Donald Trump, leading the country is a frightening one.
Whilst I too share these fears I don’t except that the Remain campaign led by Cameron et al is less racist or less dangerous to working people. In fact the reason why I support leaving the EU is because every anti-racist and anti-austerity campaigner would be faced with a far more confident Cameron after a victorious vote to remain, itching to push through his privatising agenda.
The idea that Cameron is less of a racist compared to IDS or Johnson doesn’t match up to his history. Throughout his premiership he has continually played the race card. It was only a few months ago that he was blaming Muslim women for not ‘integrating’ and accepting ‘British values’. It is Cameron who has been at the forefront of attacking the welfare state, driving down living standards and cutting the benefits of some of the most vulnerable in society.
Is the European Union more progressive?
The fear of being accused of being a ‘little Englander’ has lured many of those on the left to come in behind the Remain campaign believing it to be a more of an internationalist position to take. But we only have to look at what is happening in the Mediterranean and the murder of refugees fleeing the impact of European backed imperial wars to see that Europe is not a frontier for liberation but a fortress Europe, blocking entry to those who desperately need help.
Greece also shows the true face of the pro-austerity core of the European Union. The Troika doing the bidding of the IMF and European bankers imposed a ‘structural adjustment’ programme on Greece reminiscent of that the IMF imposed on Zimbabwe in the early 1980s with the same inevitable consequences; devastating attacks on the Greece working class.
The ruling elite are evenly split over remaining in or leaving the European Union. At the heart of the argument lies a debate about the best way to reverse the historic decline of British capitalism, a decline that can be traced from the early 20th century as Britain lost control of its vast empire and Germany and the US became the economic powerhouses in Europe and across the globe.
In the 1950s the argument was between those who believed that they had to integrate with Western Europe to reverse this decline on the one hand, and those who believed Britain could continue to go it alone on the other. In the 1960s/70s it was between those employers who saw Europe as their key market in contrast to a minority who had their main investments in the US, where Britain was and is the largest overseas investor.
It is this concern, making British capitalism profitable and a player on the world economic scene, that drives the EU debate today.
It is out of these concerns that a European Union has emerged. A EU that is about driving forward the competitive interests of multinational companies and the financial sectors that support them. This comes with all the necessary measures intrinsic to the development of capitalist states; the ratcheting up of the rate of exploitation of working people through driving down living conditions and wages (ie an austerity programme), the support and financing of imperialist wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe and the use of racism to divide the peoples of Europe though blocking the free movement of refugees.
Cameron, Johnson and Farage; the racists can be stopped.
It is the fear of racism that motivates many on the left to look for the lesser of two evils and leads many to support remaining in the EU. However both sides of the campaign have raised the level of racist hysteria around the issue of immigration to new heights. There seems to be unnecessary pessimism about the reasons why many working class people, according to the polls, will be supporting exit. It is not because they are all racists. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, used the phrase ‘dual consciousness’ to explain how working people can hold contradictory ideas.
It would be a mistake to assume that either people are all racist or anti-racist. Life would be very easy for those of us who are in the business of winning people to challenging government attacks if this were the case. We would simply need to identify those who were anti-racist and join them. But we have all met people who are furious at the unjust nature of society. At the way the 1% take all the wealth that the 99% produce and at the same time hold the belief that immigrants are in some way to blame for their increasing immiseration. With the continual bombardment of anti-immigrant propaganda and being passive in the face of the barrage of attacks on their lives, many will feel that the anti-immigrant lies provide an explanation for their predicament.
This is why I think it is a mistake that Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have not stuck with their previously held belief that the European Union is a bosses’ club and that we should leave. If they had done so they would have be able to provide an internationalist case for leaving the EU. They would have been able to connect with those working class people who are enraged by the austerity agenda of the government and at the same time challenges the lies about immigrants.
The danger is that by not providing an independent internationalist Leave position to that of the two main leave and remain camps it can play into the hands of Farage allowing him to pose as the person who speaks for the ‘working class bloke down the pub’.
The centre cannot hold
Leave or remain, neither side of the employers have a solution to the economic crisis ushered in by the financial crash of 2008 let alone the historic decline of British capitalism. The splits in the Tory party reflect the deep divisions amongst the employers. They might seem that they are at each other’s throats (and indeed they do have a deep loathing for one another) but they are united by one key issue – any ‘recovery’ must not be at the expense of big business or the financial sector – it must be sucked out of those who work or who survive through living on benefits.
In the aftermath of the 1st World War the Irish poet William Butler Yeats penned the poem The Second Coming in which he warned that ‘the centre cannot hold’. Indeed to borrow from another Marxist thinker, Eric Hobsbawm, we live in ‘an age of extremes’. As the main political parties over a thirty year period rushed to the centre ground of politics across Europe and the US they have lost their purchase on the working class. Their politicians are seen as corrupt and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people. From right to left we see new political representatives who claim that they speak for the poor and the oppressed. The more far sighted sections of the employing class will be having real fears about this and will be weighing up how best to protect their interests – either by lurching to the right or to the left – to ride the blows that are coming their way.
In or out the antidote is to unite and fight
The fall out of the referendum will be a significant political crisis for the government. Rumours are spreading fast that a snap general election may be called, possibly as early as Christmas. Therefore the day after the vote, in or out, the anti-austerity movement must continue to unite to defend living standards and against more privatisation if it is able to shape the direction of the struggle.
The best antidote to whichever racist wins the referendum will be to get onto the streets as soon as possible to show that a united working class, that is black, white, migrant, men, women, disabled and LGBT will not be divided.
As we head towards the end of the academic year many UCU members in HE will be striking alongside the NUT. UCU and the NUS have agreed to call a national demonstration at the beginning of the autumn term. And more possibilities for coordinated action across the education sector in the first ever cradle to the grave strike to defend working class education is becoming a real possibility.
The first show of this unity whatever side you are on the in/out debate will come just two days before the vote itself. The convoy to Calais on the 18th June will see tens of thousands uniting around the slogan ‘Refugees are welcome here’. Both Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell will be speaking in London seeing the convoy off.
Let’s make sure this day is a demonstration of working class unity based upon a real internationalism.
