Don't lose pension strike momentum

The commitment shown by at least 1.5 million workers in 29 unions who staged a 24-hour strike against attacks on the pensions, and marched in cities and towns in their tens of thousands, is now in jeopardy.

Union leaders are resuming talks with the ConDem coalition today in a bid to reach a settlement before the government’s imposed deadline of December 31.

But if they were really serious about defending their members’ interests, union bureaucrats would be boycotting the talks because, in reality, there is nothing really to negotiate about.

For yesterday’s historic action was, as every striker knows, not about winning an improvement in their hard-won pensions but about stopping the government from cutting them through higher contributions and having to work longer before entitlement.

So any “compromise”, along the lines called for by the wretched Ed Miliband – by the way just nine out of 258 Labour MPs backed a Commons motion supporting the strike – must mean worse pensions in one form or another.

A contributions increase will slice even more off the value of real wages, already reduced by a government-imposed, pay freeze – which union leaders did nothing to oppose. With chancellor Osborne imposing a below-inflation 1% pay limit for the next two years, incomes in the public are set to plummet by 15% by 2014.

We repeat: what is there to negotiate about?

While the government has declared class war on behalf of the banks and corporations, union leaders continue to live in a fantasy world where “common sense” will prevail and an all-out conflict can be avoided.

Worse, they consider their members as cannon fodder to be sent over the top before suing for peace. Conscious of the feebleness of their opponents’ officer class, the Coalition is playing a divide-and-rule game. Their plan is to get the teaching unions to agree a separate deal and split them from other unions.

The major Labour-affiliated unions like Unison have no plans for further co-ordinated national action – not least because of the dangers (for them) that it could lead to calls for strikes that are more than a one-day affair (which the government can handle).

Instead, if there is no deal by Christmas, there is talk of local, rolling so-called “smart” strikes. These will have no impact whatsoever and contain the danger of demoralising and isolating groups of workers.

Yet the conditions exist to maintain the momentum of yesterday’s tremendous strike. Osborne’s budget will slash the incomes of every household, not just those in the public sector as the Institute for Fiscal Studies report today shows.

The British economy is heading for recession, along with the rest of global capitalism. While trade unions were marching for their rights, the major central banks took desperate measures to try and prop up the euro. But it’s too late – another credit crunch is under way, leading to a second financial meltdown worse than that of 2008.

The deepening crisis will hit everyone very hard and provides the opportunity to bring all sectors of society together in new ways. Local, alternative seats of power such as people’s assemblies can maintain the energy of November 30 and more.

Limiting our response to calls for more strikes or days of action is inadequate. In Greece, for example, a number of general strikes have failed to end the massive attack on living standards.

Overriding every government’s actions are the demands of the financial markets and the recession that makes it impossible to return to the “growth” that is the lifeblood of the capitalist system.

The success of the pensions strike confirms without a shadow of a doubt the will to confront the government. Now is the moment for the rank and file to demand an end to negotiations and seize the initiative through the creation of democratic assemblies that can mount a serious challenge to the failed profit system itself.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Out of work? Cameron has just the job for you

As the dole queue lengthens and living standards fall faster than at any time since the 1930s, you’ll be pleased to know that there is work there for all who want it in a planned new government agency.

The Stop The Anonymous Suspect Immigrant Agency (Stasia) is looking for staff to put into practice the policy announced by prime minister Cameron yesterday when he called on people to “shop” those they suspected might not be entitled to live in Britain.

Applicants should preferably be white British and able to answer questions like who won last year’s X-Factor and who are the judges in this year’s competition. Guidelines for spotting an illegal immigrant are being prepared, but are likely to include people who:

• are not fair-skinned and who have fuzzy hair (especially on the face)
• are heard speaking in a non-European foreign language or with a strong accent
• decline to go down the pub for a drink after work/refuse to buy a round when it’s their turn
• show no interest in the fortune of England sporting teams (especially at cricket)
• do not go for walks in the countryside and/or stay at home a lot
• are spotted sending money abroad to relatives
• work very long hours and perhaps have two or three low-paid jobs
• live in cramped houses or even sheds in people’s back gardens in Southall
• visit a hospital or GP without proving their entitlement
• do not own a car or drive without insurance (a lot of white people do this as well, which is a challenge)
• are unable to say when the Romans conquered Britain, what the Wars of the Roses were and whether the Magna Carta includes the right to a jury trial.

Payment per illegal immigrant shopped is being considered as a way of measuring performance of Stasia staff. Demand for the 10,000 jobs available with Stasia is likely to be heavy because of plummeting living standards.

A new report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that falling incomes will lead to the sharpest drop for middle-income families since the 1970s and will push 600,000 more children into poverty. By 2013 there will be 3.1 million children in poverty in the UK, according to the IFS projections. Some 17% of UK children were already living in absolute poverty in 2009-10.

There will also be 2.5m working-age parents and four million working-age adults without children in absolute poverty by 2013, says the report. Alison Garnham, chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said: "Ministers seem to be in denial that, under current policies, their legacy threatens to be the worst poverty record of any government for a generation. They risk damaging childhoods and children's life chances, as well as our national economic wellbeing from wasted potential and social costs spiral. It would be a catastrophic failure in public policy and political leadership."

For some, albeit a small minority, the crisis simply passes them by. We are talking of chief executives, directors, hedge fund managers, speculators and other assorted masters of the universe. Their role, among others, is to minimise tax payments and maximise shareholder returns.

A new report by ActionAid reveals that of the 100 biggest corporations listed on the London Stock Exchange, 98 use tax havens. Of their more than 34,000 subsidiary companies, joint ventures and associates, nearly one in four is located in a tax haven. The biggest tax haven user overall is the advertising company WPP, which has 611 tax haven companies!

Now, setting up a hot-line to shop a capitalist tax avoider/bankster/speculator/polluter/anti-union employer… Dream on!

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

The truth behind Brown's boom

A committee of MPs today blames the “reckless behaviour” of the banks for the financial crisis, which is as neat a way of any of letting the New Labour government off the hook as any yet devised.

The Treasury committee’s view of the collapse of the financial system is partial and one-sided and a bit short on history. If the banks were reckless – and they were – it was because they were encouraged to be so. And no one in government complained as the tax receipts rolled in, especially not Gordon Brown who was chancellor for the decade when the credit-fuelled boom took off.

Why were the banks “reckless” and take extraordinary risks with their lending? That is the question. Why, as the committee asks, did bankers make “an astonishing mess of the financial system”? The answer usually given is that they were “greedy” and simply loved piling up the bonuses and forgot to look out for tomorrow.

That doesn’t really get below the surface, however, and puts the collapse of the global financial system down to a few badly-behaved individuals. The real truth is that the so-called boom Britain has experienced was only made possible by a massive extension of credit (and its opposite, debt) under the direction of the government.

It is not that Brown did not know what was going on. His government actively encouraged London to become one of the centres of fantasy finance, which inevitably contributed to the series of bubbles that have now burst and broken the back of the global economy in the process.

Verification of this comes from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, whose director Robert Chote, shows how the Treasury actually knew that the boom was not what it appeared to be. Between 1998 and 2008, output in the economy was 3-4 per cent above its sustainable level, he estimates, in what he calls “an alternative view of history”.

This view, he said, would “cast a much less flattering light” on Brown’s record as chancellor. “It would certainly suggest that he should have been running a much stronger fiscal position.” In plain English, Brown’s officials suspected it would end in tears, and should have reined in spending, but decided to keep the illusion going in the hope that the days of boom and bust were a thing of the past.

Chote explains how much of the so-called boom actually amounted to an increase in share and house prices, which people cashed in on to fuel consumer spending on imports. Yet this activity was treated as if it were a sustainable growth in the real economy. Apparently, the Treasury is now rewriting history to try and disguise what happened.

Of course, the banks contributed. Why shouldn’t they have? They are in business to make money and if that could be done by recycling dodgy loans as securities, creating more and more complex ways of moving funds around the globe, increasing profits as they went, they knew that the government was behind them all the way, to the point where Brown told them in June 2007 that they had created a new “golden age” in the City.

Ultimately, the banks and the government responded to the fact that the only way that the expansion of the goods-producing side of the global economy could be maintained was through greater and greater amounts of fictitious or fantasy finance. The collapse of one has revealed the massive over-capacity and over-production in the other, which is why trade has collapsed around the globe. Global capitalism as a whole is unsustainable any way you look at it and the best way to mark May Day is to renew our efforts to put it out of its misery.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor