Labour's demise in British 2015 General Election

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The reason Labour did so badly is down to at least three reasons.

One being that they made a mistake backing the No Campaign in Scotland

Two that they have moved so far away from the true values of the original Labour party that the working class no longer feels them to be their home

Three that they have refused to entertain a referendum on UK membership in the EU (NO2EU has been part of some of the Trade Union message for some time now and Labour has completely lost it there) claiming that – and openly saying that – that the people of the UK cannot be trusted with that question and that it is up to politicians to make that decision.

But there are also a number of other reasons and one of those is that people are selfish in the extreme in Britain nowadays, ever since the Thatcher era.

Time and again I hear some people say “What has Labour ever done for me?” or when one suggests to them to join a Trade Union “What have the Unions ever done for me?” without stopping once to think what Labour under Clement Attlee did in creating the welfare state, the National Health service, and the unions by bringing them the five-day working week, paid holidays, and such like. Some even go as far as to say “Oh well, I get those benefits even if I am not in a union”.

The problem is selfishness in the extreme and people also vote according to which party promises them personal benefits. But in the words of J F Kennedy we should not ask what our country can do for us but what we can do for our country. Instead of looking out for only what we can gain from this or that personally it is time that we looked out also for those less fortunate for we could be the next one losing out job and thus our home and be dependent on the no longer existent, if the Tories get their way, welfare state.

However, the truth be told, the Labour Party no longer is the party of the working class even though, unfortunately, many of the working class still seem to believe that. There is almost not a single MP left from that party who has ever done an honest day's work at the coal face, in a factory, a shipyard, or in the fields and forests.

Those that are now being put forward for leadership are also no better in that respect. None of them have a clue as to the working class and its problems, coming from privileged backgrounds and in the main having been privately educated. Furthermore they are drifting further and further to “the right” and are becoming just pink Tories.

The British working class (and in all honesty not only the working class of Britain) needs new leadership and the Labour Party or the Social Democratic Party (in the case of Germany, etc.) does not cut the mustard.

It is also time that the Unions cut their ties with the Labour Party. The Unions do not need Labour but Labour the Unions. Without the Unions the Labour party is nothing. Labour, however, has forgotten that and the very fact that the Unions gave it life.

To the majority of the working class in Britain the Labour Party is but the other side of the Tory coin and that seems to be a fact, unfortunately, which can also be seen in that they were prepared to use basically the same austerity measures proposed by the Tories and also were hellbent to continue the British Independent Nuclear Deterrent (may I laugh) in the form of the Trident submarines. The cost for the renewal of those alone could pay is more than the proposed austerity measures but no, it has to be kept. Sure it has to be kept because the master, the USA, who actually command that “independent” nuclear deterrent, says so.

It is time for the British working class to wake up and – one – understand that they are not millionaires or even billionaires in waiting but simple wage slaves as long as they do not have control over the means of production and – two – that the Labour Party was only intent on creating capitalism with a human face and no socialism, where the workers do own the means of productions, etc. And today Labour does not even want to know the word socialism in any shape or form. They have become a party for the bourgeoisie and now longer – if ever they did – represent the proletariat.

Furthermore it is time for the British working class to take matters into their hands and to rise from their prisons of starvation into which the Tory “masters” intend to toss them, once again, and overturn the tables of the moneychangers.

But, alas, the British working class has been lulled to sleep by promises of being able to aspire. Aspire to what? We can all aspire but getting there in the current climate to fulfill our aspirations, whatever they may be, is all but a dream.

The Labour Party is dead and has been on its deathbed for some time and now it is time for the working class and with the Trade Unions in the lead, maybe, to bury the poor thing and give birth to a proper organization of the working class, by the working class, for the working class, and bring about a system where all will be the winners, including the Planet.

© 2015

Gap between rich and poor 'widening on a daily basis'

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

UNISON delegates in Glasgow on June 17, 2015 committed the union to keeping inequality at the forefront of political and economic debate.

Clare Williams of Northern region told the hall that the government’s austerity policies were affecting the most vulnerable in society – and that the UK was experiencing the biggest rise in poverty in decades.

"The gap between rich and poor is widening on a daily basis," she said.

A recent Oxfam report has stated that by 2016 the top 1% of society would possess more than 50% of the world’s wealth.

And the latest annual report by the Joseph Roundtree Foundation has highlighted that insecure, low-paid jobs are leaving record numbers of working families in poverty. Two-thirds of people who found work in the past year have taken jobs for less than the living wage.

Ms Williams said that unemployment in the north east was at 7.5%. Around a quarter of the children in the region were living in poverty.

Josie Bird of the NEC said that inequality was "impacting on our members, their families, their quality of life. It’s affecting my children and the society they are growing up in."

It was agreed that trade unions had a central role to play in tackling inequality.

Conference called on the union to:

• engage with politicians, academics and economists to tackle growing inequality and rebalance the economy to deliver real social mobility and a fair distribution of wealth;

• campaign for decent living standards, through measures to support the unemployed, especially the young, prevent homelessness and lift people out of poverty;

• continue to campaign to establish the living wage as the national minimum wage;

• continue to campaign for local authorities to sign up to the ethical care charter.

I hardly think that it comes as a great surprise to anyone who has not spent the last couple of years on the other side of the Moon that the gap between rich and poor is widening. The problem is though that even, it would appear, the trade unions in this country – and elsewhere – have lost the plot and are far too much tied into the matrix to actually be prepared to mention proper socialism.

The language used in the call by conference to the Union is that of the matrix as can be seen in terms such as “real social mobility” and it is all the same as being used by the light-blue Tory party, that once regarded itself to be the Labour Party, the party of the working class.

It is no surprise that working people are getting disillusioned with both the Labour Party and the Trade Unions when they hear such waffle all the times from those that are supposed to lead the workers in the class struggle. Oh, I forgot, that is what the unions and the Labour Party have abandoned in order to be socially acceptable and presentable in the circles in which they like to move.

The leadership of the working class, the Labour Party and the very Unions that actually created the party, have become so removed from the grassroots of the working class and from the day-to-day concerns of the working people that it is no longer funny at all. It would appear that it is time that the working class has new true leadership and was led forward to its true destiny by people who really care about the plight of the workers and not by people who most of the time sit in ivory towers or who even may have been born with a silver spoon in the mouth, with one exception and that being the late Tony Benn and Jack Crowe. The former was born with a silver spoon in the mouth but abandoned all for the working class and the latter was a true working class man and hero.

We shall have some discussions with the rich to ask them to drop a couple of more crumbs from their richly laden tables down to the workers says Unison. And that is supposed to make everyone happy and jump up and down with joy? I think not.

Only when the workers own the means of production – note, I say the workers own the means of production, the workers, not the state – and are in charge of their own communities, only then will there be an end to inequality and poverty. Only then will there be enough for everyone's need, though not for everyone's greed, as the greed will have to be nipped in the bud. Crumbs from the rich man's table is not what the workers need and want but it would appear that the Unions have gone too deep into bed with the class enemy to still be able to understand that. Some of the leaders of the Unions still do but their number is very small indeed.

Time for a real change and the change means a total change of system, not tinkering around at the edges and promising workers a few more little crumbs from the capitalist's table.

© 2015

German cabinet passes bill to curb strike power of small unions

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The German government has approved draft legislation to limit the power of small labor unions whose strikes have paralyzed train and air traffic in recent months, by making a wage deal with the largest union in a company applicable to all employees.

"We are reinforcing the majority principle," said Labor Minister Andrea Nahles, after Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet approved the bill on Thursday morning, sending it to parliament for debate early next year.

Nahles said that the power of smaller unions to force company-wide stoppages of pay and conditions threatened Germany's generally harmonious labor relations.

Industry bodies have called for a change in the law to stop unions like Cockpit, which represents about 5,400 pilots at Lufthansa, from being able to halt the entire operations of a company that employs more than 110,000 people.

The GDL train driver union's strikes at state-run railway Deutsche Bahn in recent months have affected 5.5 billion people who travel by rail each day as well as industries that rely on rail freight like automakers, chemical companies and steel producers.

Economists estimate the rail strikes have cost the economy up to 100 million euros a day by forcing assembly lines to suspend activity because of supply shortages.

The striking pilots and train drivers have been pilloried in the media for stranding travelers on holiday weekends and even Merkel, who usually remains silent on industrial disputes, has urged the train drivers to act responsibly.

However, her government was eager to avoid the bill – drawn up by the labor ministry, which is run by Merkel's center-left Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners – from looking like an attack on workers' rights.

"The unified tariff regulation does not affect the right to industrial action," reads the draft law. The president of Cockpit, Ilja Schulz, said it was unlawful and was bound to be "shipwrecked" when challenged in the constitutional court.

This action is aimed to be able to control labor relations by controlling the large trade unions, via the DGB, the German Trades Union Congress.

Much like the British TUC in the 1920s agreed to stop the General Strike which was started to aid the striking miners in the Scottish coalfields and others, thus stabbing the miners in the back, this legislation is aimed to be able to do the very same to small trade unions during a labor dispute. They too were enforcing the majority principle and by more or less buying the TUC they won against the miners in Fife and other areas of Britain.

It won't be long before strikes will be made illegal, and not just those by the small labor unions. There are things to this effect already in the offing at least in Britain and they, no doubt, are also being played with in other EU member states, in the same way that they are playing with the idea of making even peaceful protests illegal.

The system, which is dying and in its death throes, unfortunately is not prepared to go quietly and in dying it is prepared to take as many as possible with it. They have seen George Orwell's book “1984” as a manual rather than as a warning, what it is meant to be.

© 2015

Labour has deserted the working class

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

RMT general secretary Bob Crow has accused Labour of deserting the working class and called for a new political party rooted in the trade unions after Ed Miliband promised Labour would cap benefits spending if elected to office.

The fact is that Bob Crow is absolutely right when he said that the Labour Party has deserted the working class and is did that already under Tony Blair when “New Labour” was created and under Ed Miliband with the “One Nation Labour” it is getting worse still.

The Labour Party now, under Miliband, is having a tiswas with the trade unions because it has been accused of being in the pockets of the trade unions and thus they are going to cut their nose off in spite their face and want to distant themselves from the movement that gave the party birth.

Labour has moved so far to the right that it is difficult to differentiate between that party and the Tories and one could, as I have done before, refer to them as the left-wing conservatives while the Lib-Dems are middle ground conservatives. The once party of the working class, Labour, has become a party full of toffs and people who have never done a real day's work in their lives and are about as far removed from the working class and the lives of the real working people as Moscow is from Cape Town; further probably.

The Labour Party rose out of the trade unions and the movements of the working class but, since Blair, has been stabbing the working class in the back. Ever since the death of John Smith the Labour Party has been leaning further and further to the right and deserted the working people more and more.

It has to also be said that many of the trade unions today are about as democratic as the Stalinist Soviet Union and thus are not suitable to create a new party of the working class. The working class itself – from within itself – has to bring about a new party of the working class. One with true values of socialism and democracy and which puts the interest of the working people above everything else.

What This country needs, and not this country only, is a party of unity of all those on the left, whether in a party or not. A true Socialist Unity Party that truly will be representative of the working class. The Labour Party in the UK, in the same way as the Social Democrat Party in Germany, and other, has long ago lost the mandate.

While it might be possible to resurrect a true Labour Party as was intended by the founders of the Labour movement a unity of all true socialist parties would make much more sense and would create a better power base and the trade unions, after being reformed and brought back to democracy and honesty, could be an integral part of it.

© 2013

Trade Union elections and democracy

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Over the last couple of decades a rather undemocratic process has entered the British Trade Union Movement and that is that in elections candidates are on the ballot papers that cannot be voted for (or against).

Those are the so-called “reserved seats” in elections to regional and national bodies of the unions that I speak of here.

Reserved seats are something you may have in a restaurant or a theater or such venues but not on committees and executive bodies of supposedly democratic organizations.

Those candidates, often ethnics, GLBT, or women, or all of the above, are listed as “elected unopposed” without any of the members, aside from may be those at the executive, having had a say in the matter. This is not democracy. It is a farce and tantamount to Stalinism and indeed fascism.

But, time and again, in fact each and every time such ballot papers arrive at member's addresses, this goes on despite the fact that members have raised objections to this practice. This imposing of people on the members is nothing more than fascism, period!

One might have thought that we had gotten rid off any form of Stalinism and fascism in the Labor Movement and the Trade Unions by now but, apparently, this is not the case.

If Labor Unions want to be democratic and all inclusive, and the same goes for political parties also, the practices such as this one and similar ones must be thrown into the trashcan and that now. Otherwise no claim of being democratic can be made and those groups have lost their mandate.

© 2013

Tories about to declare war on unions with new strike rules

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Trade unions could face fresh curbs on their ability to call strikes under plans being considered by the Conservatives.

Surprised I am not... Here we go again is also a term that comes to mind...

Was it not Maggie Thatcher who was hellbent to destroy the Trade Unions and their power and she was of the same party. The party has not changed and is still anti-working people, anti-working class. As far as the Tories are concerned Thatcher left unfinished business as she did not manage to destroy the Unions entirely. That is what they are now aiming to do, no doubt.

A new plan by the Tories of the current Con-Dem coalition would make strikes illegal unless at least 50 per cent of union members voted in a ballot. But, general elections are legal even if less than 40% of the electorate vote. Different rules, it would appear, for different people and causes.

Right-wing Tory ministers are pressing David Cameron to include the proposals in the party’s next general election manifesto, so it is understood and this planned legislation would make industrial action illegal unless at least 50 per cent of union members take part in a strike ballot.

Supporters of the threshold – who insist the potential policy is “under active discussion” in Downing Street – believe the plan would prove highly popular with the voters. For voters it would be best to read Tory voters and those that are being whipped up by the right-wing gutter press.

The proposal, however, has divided opinion around the Cabinet table, with the Transport Secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, understood to be among the leading opponents.

Ministers are also examining new steps to crack down on the Public and Commercial Services union, representing civil servants and local government staff, which is regarded as the most militant in Britain.

The introduction of a threshold has been championed by Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, following clashes with transport unions in the capital. Mr. Cameron has been careful to avoid ruling the idea out, although has stressed he had no plans to press ahead with the move which, in Whitehall speak, which is related to Washington speak, means that they are seriously considering just such a move.

While it had been thought that the proposal had been put on ice in recent months, it would appear, according to rumors, that the policy is being seriously considered within Downing Street.

There is thought to be no prospect of any new trade union legislation while the Coalition is in office – Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, has said publicly that he would oppose it. Mr. McLoughlin, a former trade unionist, has also argued in private against the move. His opposition has proved important because, as Transport Secretary, he is in the forefront of dealing with industrial disputes.

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, who deals with public sector unions, is also believed to be skeptical about the wisdom of the threshold idea but Tory sources confirmed the issue is being discussed as a possible commitment in the party’s next manifesto. One of the attractions of the policy for supporters would be to put pressure on Ed Miliband, the present leader of the British Labor Party, to state whether supported the move and cast a spotlight on his party’s union links.

It is understood that George Osborne, the Chancellor, and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, are sympathetic to the introduction of a threshold, although neither has spoken publicly on the issue recently. Other suggestions are altering the law to allow agency workers to cover for staff who are on strike and increasing the notice period unions have to give to employers before industrial action begins.

Trade union legislation has remained largely unchanged since the 1980s, when the Thatcher Government outlawed the closed shop in the workplace, introduced secret ballots for strikes and banned secondary picketing. In an attempt, I hasten to add, to destroy the Trade Unions in Britain altogether and hence the Tories belief that there is unfinished business to deal with.

This proposed legislation should show everyone where each and every individual Tory minister and MP stands when it comes to it and it is time that the people, for most really should regard themselves as working class are they not most wage slaves like everyone else, woke up to the fact that their rights are under threat.

Each and everyone who is a salaried worker, whatever his job, is a wage slave and thus has benefited from the work of the Trade Unions which has often been in blood.

Without the Unions we all will head back to the conditions of Dickensian England, of that we can all be sure.

© 2013