Wednesday 27 May 2015

BETTER TO BREAK BAD LAWS THAN THE BACKS OF WORKERS!

In an ancient ritual harking back to medieval times, the unelected monarch delivers the Queen's Speech on behalf of a Tory government elected by only 24.4 per cent of all eligible voters. And in the case of Scotland, a government supported by a minuscule 10.5 per cent of registered voters! 

But the Queen's Speech is saturated with hellish plans to butcher benefits, wipe out workers' rights and slaughter services - class warfare on the millions by a government of the millionaires with no mandate.

That perfectly captures the undemocratic nature of capitalist rule through Westminster. It truly is Tory dictatorship. And it must be defied by a united mass movement of resistance, or generations to come will suffer the consequences.

NO TORY MANDATE

Osborne could not stop the smirks as anti-union measures announced by unelected monarch 


With callous disregard for the facts, David Cameron declares: "We have a mandate from the British people, a clear manifesto and the instruction to deliver. We will not waste a single moment in getting on with the task".

They plan to forge ahead with a blitzkrieg on workers' rights, human rights, and the incomes of millions already struggling to survive.

Scrapping the Human Rights Act threatens the attempts by tenants to challenge the brutal Bedroom Tax, which of course will continue, with rumours of the bills being increased.

Extending the Right to Buy to housing associations will add another twist to the spiraling housing crisis, as the best public sector stock is sold off and virtually no new social sector homes for affordable rent are built, especially as Westminster slashes funding to local authorities.

Shameless, racist measures designed to whip up division amongst the victims of Tory rule include new immigration laws that amount to 'deport now, appeal later' - which in many cases would mean appealing against deportation after death in the war-torn countries people have fled from.

WORKERS' BENEFITS TARGETED 

The core of the Tories' class warfare is directed at the working class majority population. A blitz on benefits and wipeout of workers' rights.

Of their total £30billion cuts, an additional £12billion butchery of benefits is planned. And even the far-from-socialist Institute of Fiscal Studies has analyzed these plans, concluding that it will especially be the working poor, particularly those with children, who will suffer the most severely.

Reigns over us: Benefits scrounger announces measures to impoverish the rest of us...


They point out that the much-trumpeted benefits cap, being cut from £26,000 to £23,000 for a household, will hammer families with several children and high rents, cutting about 24,000 families' incomes by £3,000 a year. 

But as fewer than 100,000 families across the UK will be impacted, this will only meet about £0.1billion of the Tories' total £12bn target, leaving far greater numbers prey to their assault.

A TORY SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

Abolition of housing benefits to jobseekers aged 18-21 may therefore be extended to all those under 25; an outrageous attack on those starting out in life.

As Tax Credits (£30billion a year) and Housing Benefits (£26billion a year) make up more than half of all 'unprotected' public spending, and Disability and Incapacity Benefits a further third of the total, the IFS rightly forecasts that the bulk of the cuts will target these people.

"Of COURSE I care..." 
As they put it, "About 80 per cent of entitlements to benefits go to working age families, and a large majority of these benefits are means-tested, so it will be very difficult to avoid hitting low-income families - especially those with children - hardest." And they add that 75 per cent of benefits go to families in the bottom half of incomes.

Maybe for us that is stating the bleedin' obvious, but it underlines the tsunami of cuts about to hit the working class and poorest, unless we build mass resistance.

Slashing the numbers entitled to Carers' Allowances by 40 per cent; cutting £3.8billion off Tax Credits, by hounding part-time workers with impossible new targets on additional hours of work; slaughtering an estimated 1.3 million public sector jobs by 2019: these are some of the appalling measures leaked out before Her Majesty even got round to announcing the Tory Butchers' plans for the people who never gave them a mandate.

SMASHING THE UNIONS 

Pivotal to this class warfare are plans to virtually abolish trade union rights. The government that won a grand total of 36 per cent of all votes cast, and a mere 24.4 per cent of eligible voters, is imposing rules that demand a 50 per cent turnout and support from at least 40 per cent of all eligible voters before a union can take any form of legal industrial action in defence of jobs, services or workers' rights.

"Cut, cut, cut! More, more more!"
So in a workforce of 200, at least 100 would have to vote, and at least 80 of them vote for the action - an almost impossible set of hurdles designed to stop effective resistance by the organisations that are the first and last line of defence for workers - their unions.

Their manifesto homed in on introducing the 40 per cent threshold first in "those essential services - health, education, fire and transport"; services they regard as far from essential as they slash their funding! But of course they will spread their legal poison to every sector if they get away with it in the 'essential services'.

CONSCRIPTING SCABS

On top of that, the Tory election manifesto made it brutally plain what to expect if workers dare defy their dictatorship, which is the dictatorship of capital, of the rich, in pursuit of profit maximization at terrible human cost. To quote the Tory statement of intent: 

"We will repeal nonsensical restrictions banning employers from hiring agency staff to provide essential cover during strikes."

So they plan to scrap the current ban on use of Agency workers to scab on strikes, so they can conscript desperate and insecure people into further undermining fellow workers' wages, jobs and conditions.


"The plebs haven't caught us ... yet!"

BUILD 20 JUNE DEMO

The Tory dictatorship must not be allowed to walk all over us. A massive campaign of resistance needs to be mounted, in the parliament, in the workplaces, on the streets, in our communities. 

It is therefore extremely good news that the Scottish TUC has called the 'Scotland United Against Austerity' mass demo in Glasgow on Saturday 20 June - an idea the SSP pushed for from the day after the election outcome. We all need to build that into a mammoth show of unity against all forms of cuts and attacks on workers' rights.




BUILD MASS DEFIANCE

And it needs to become the platform to launch an ongoing resistance. 

This to include a concerted demand for powers over the minimum wage to be devolved to Scotland so we can fight for a Scottish £10 minimum wage for all over 16, with equal pay for women. 

A campaign to win devolution of powers over employment laws, so as to repeal the lot and usher in a Charter of Workers' Rights instead. 

A campaign to win power for Holyrood over business taxes - but not so as to reduce taxation of big business, as the SNP wish, but to restore Corporation Tax to its 50 per cent pre-Thatcher level, as demanded by the SSP.

BREAK BAD LAWS

Whilst fighting for such powers to protect the Scottish working class from Tory dictatorship, the STUC and union leaderships also need to square up to the fact that submission to the anti-union laws means accepting literal destitution and starvation for big sections of working class people. The unions literally wouldn't exist if our predecessors had meekly accepted the 'laws of the land', written and imposed by an upper-class minority hell-bent on squeezing the last drop of profit and privilege for themselves out of the sweated labour of the real wealth-creators.

Nobody would light-mindedly hand over union assets - accumulated from workers' union subs - but unless union leaders are prepared to defy these anti-union laws, workers will have no chance. It's better to break bad anti-union laws than allow the Tories and profiteering employers to break the backs of workers.

Join the SSP in defiance of Tory dictatorship. Help build the STUC demo on 20 June. Resolve to resist the slaughter of jobs, services, benefits and workers' rights by a government with no popular mandate to rule and ruin. 

United in determined action we can defeat the Tory dictators.






Tuesday 26 May 2015

LAY SIEGE TO SCOTTISH TORIES AS THEY DECLARE BUTCHERY!


JOIN SSP DEFIANCE DEMOS AGAINST TORY DICTATORSHIP ON DAY OF TORY QUEEN'S SPEECH

Several locations - at TORY offices across Scotland - including Glasgow, Ayr, Hamilton, Edinburgh, Arbroath, Inverurie, Paisley 

The SSP is staging a coordinated series of protests outside Tory party headquarters and Tory MSP's offices across Scotland this Wednesday, 27th May, as the new Tory government announces its Queen's Speech.

The Tories have absolutely no mandate to announce their butchery of benefits, slaughter of services, and wipe-out of workers' rights with an effective ban on the right to organise unions or strike. 
Across the UK, 63% of people voted against them. 
In Scotland, only a minuscule 10% of registered voters actually voted Tory. 
Yet they plan (amongst other butchery) to slash Working Tax Credits, young people's housing benefits, Carers' Allowances, 1.9 million public sector jobs, and impose dictatorial obstacles to workers' unions, to prevent working people fighting back.

The SSP appeals to local people to join us in a show of defiance against Tory dictatorship. 
Join our peaceful protests on Wednesday to send the Tory butchers a clear message: hands off our benefits, jobs and workplace rights - we refuse to bow down to your dictatorship!

And we appeal to the trade union movement to defy the Tories head-on. It's better to break bad anti-union laws than let the Tories break workers' backs!

Scotland has just witnessed a landslide vote to fight Tory austerity. The SSP is demanding powers for the Scottish parliament to halt and reverse Tory welfare cuts; introduce a Scottish £10 minimum wage for all over 16, and repeal all anti-union laws.

Wednesday's protests are just for starters! 
Let the defiance of Tory dictatorship begin as they declare vicious class war in Westminster on Wednesday in their Queen's Speech.

Tuesday 12 May 2015

ELECTORAL UPRISING: NOW DEFY TORY DICTATORSHIP


Words fail to adequately convey the enormity of the political revolution witnessed in the General Election.

An unprecedented tsunami of support for the SNP swept all before it, winning 50% of all votes cast. Labour plunged to its worst election result in Scotland since 1918. The treacherous LibDems were wiped out, with the loss of 4 million votes, in punishment for their collaboration with the Tories the past 5 years.

But the results at UK level could not have been more profoundly different from those in Scotland - setting us on a collision course with the Westminster Tory dictatorship that will hasten the day when Scotland demands outright independence.

TOO LEFT WING?!

To judge what the people of Scotland need to do now, we first need to look at a few myths and fundamental features of the outright majority for Cameron's Tories, the cataclysmic downfall of Labour's 50-year domination over Scotland, and the sweeping parliamentary conquest by the SNP.

Some, including Tony Blair, David Miliband and competitors for Labour leader since Ed Miliband's resignation, have argued Labour was too left wing for England; that they need to woo 'the aspirational middle class' to compete with the Tories. Their underlying idea is that England has swung to the right. That is far too simplistic, and downright dangerous in its implications.

NO TORY LANDSLIDE

For starters, the Tories did not win some landslide mandate for their plan of brutality against the working class, benefits and basic rights; 63% of those who actually went to the polling stations voted against them.

They only got 24.4% of the total electorate. Their share of the vote crept up a minuscule 0.4%. They gained 26 of their seats from the spectacular, richly deserved collapse of the LibDems, especially in South West England.

There is a vast variation in voting patterns across the regions of England. In the richest South, with half the population and half the seats, the Tories gained from their relentless propaganda about their success with the economy, and critically the doubts of voters about the economic competence of Miliband and Labour. In areas of substantial opulence, this message fell on fertile ground. Significantly, in areas of multiple deprivation, like London itself, the Tories were rejected - but they won in rich suburban outskirts of the city.

PLAYING WITH ENGLISH NATIONALISM

The Tories abandoned all hope of winning Scotland, and stooped to unscrupulous anti-Scottish propaganda, with their scaremongering about a minority Labour government being in the pocket of the SNP, stirring up resentment amongst a minority in parts of England who already feel hard done by. But they only got away with this because of the abject failure of Labour to challenge the fundamental Tory narrative.

Labour more or less stood still in its share of the vote, creeping up by 1.4%, winning 10 seats off the Tories, but losing 8 to them elsewhere. After 5 years of savagery by Cameron's regime that is abject failure. And it's not because Labour was "too left wing for England"!

LABOUR FAILED TO INSPIRE

For decades - going back to the 1980s - Labour has abandoned its working class roots and origins, seeking to woo 'Middle England'. Even during the election campaign, including on TV debates, they emphasized their agreement with the Tories on the need for austerity cuts; hardly a message to inspire people to dump the Tories in favour of a Tory-lite Labour. They stumbled around, trying too little, too late, to win back workers' votes with half-hearted promises on 'tackling exploitative Zero Hours Contracts'; raising the minimum wage to an £8 level it would reach through inflation anyway by 2020; a mansion tax to fund NHS investment; a one-off tax on bankers' bonuses; a temporary freeze on energy prices. Significantly, it was when they highlighted these mild measures against bankers, rip-off energy companies and the obscenely rich that Miliband's and Labour's ratings temporarily improved in the polls.

But after their record in government, easily recalled at least by voters over 30, these belated whispers of reforms were drowned out by their noisy promises of austerity cuts, which meant large numbers in England who told the pollsters they'd vote Labour actually stayed at home and didn't vote at all. The overall turnout in England was 65%, compared to poll predictions of 74%.



WORST OF BOTH WORLDS

In a sense Labour got the worst of both worlds: they enraged the very rich with their milk-and-water measures against bankers, mansion-dwellers and energy multinationals, but failed to inspire millions of working class people that they meant business, in terms of radical redistribution of wealth that would transform the lives of those suffering the savagery of Cameron. And when Miliband effectively said he'd rather let the Tories win than join forces with the SNP to lock out Cameron, that not only sealed Labour's fate in Scotland, but repelled many potential Labour voters in England too.

ANTI-AUSTERITY APPEAL

As part of their indescribable surge in Scotland, the SNP also attracted the support of substantial numbers of English voters, precisely because in the TV debates Nicola Sturgeon spoke of being 'anti-austerity'. In fact, not only did I hear people in England ask on radio phone-ins whether they could vote SNP or join the SNP, but in some polls the SNP won 9% - in England and Wales!!

The anti-austerity message also chimed with the 1.1 million in England who voted for the Greens.

SCOTLAND'S BALLOT BOX REBELLION

It was this anti-austerity message that was key to the SNP's historically incomparable landslide here in Scotland. They battered Labour mercilessly, with swings from 20% to 40%. In large part, the 1.4 million votes for the SNP was a continuation of the 1.6 million who voted Yes in the referendum, with the SNP seizing a near-monopoly of the Yes vote, because those thwarted last September saw the SNP as the main vehicle to get the self-government they voted for. So despite Nicola Sturgeon repeatedly saying this was not a vote about independence - both during and since the election - in part it indisputably was. But only in part.

CORRUPT, REMOTE LABOUR DUMPED

The SNP won over ex-Labour voters who had voted Yes, but also many who had voted No. Partly by denying this was about independence; partly by reflecting the desire for more devolution with their slogan of a 'Stronger Voice for Scotland'; partly as an anti-Tory vote as Cameron whipped up xenophobic anti-Scottish scaremongering; but above all due to their anti-austerity theme. And the SNP were the overwhelming beneficiaries of a revolution in consciousness against a Scottish Labour machine that was rightly seen as remote, corrupt, and having inexcusably spent two years in bed with the Tories in the Referendum campaign.

The SNP's was both an anti-Tory and anti-Labour vote, but especially a vote for change, for an end to austerity.

TORY CLASS WAR LAUNCHED

After the euphoria of crushing Labour comes the reality check for all those who've invested their hopes of change in the SNP and 'Nicola'. What issues loom, and what will the 56 'Strong Voices for Scotland' do about it?

Despite the hard facts about 63% voting against them, Cameron's Tories feel immensely emboldened in their mission to destroy the remnants of the welfare state, which they ideologically detest. They imagine they have a popular mandate to carry out crucifying austerity cuts, which within days of being elected they've said will be fast-tracked, with the £30billion public spending cuts carried through in two years rather than three. Cameron has hopes of an immediate 100-day blitz. Before the election the Tories feared their plans would need to be watered down under a Coalition deal. But now they can let the dogs of class war off their leashes.

WELFARE BENEFITS WARFARE

Within that overall butchery is the £12billion cuts to welfare benefits, clobbering some for the poorest to satiate the appetites of the new influx of Tory MPs. Plans leaked or announced include means testing unemployment benefits; limiting Child Benefit to the first two children; taxing Disability Living Allowance and Personal Indpendence Payments; removal of housing benefit for young people; reduction of the benefit cap for any household from £26,000 to £23,000. They hope to slash the numbers getting Carers' Allowance by 40 per cent. And if anyone falsely imagines it's only those unfortunate enough to fall sick, be disabled or simply unemployed that are in the Tories' gunsights, think again; the reactionary outfit that Cameron had the gall to label 'the party of working people' plans to rob £3.8billion off Tax Credits, which low-paid workers rely on to survive.

PUBLIC SECTOR DESTRUCTION

Vicious measures like the Bedroom Tax will be implemented in full.

In brutal contrast to this systematic robbery off millions, with the claim it's 'necessary to wipe out the deficit by 2018', Trident will be renewed next March, at a cost of £100billion.

Savage cuts to departmental spending on jobs and services include councils and fire brigades, and NHS privatisation is set to rocket.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies predicts that the Tories' plans will wipe out 1.3 million public sector jobs by 2019. The same IFS reckon self-employed jobs (average earnings currently £10,000 a year!) will exceed public sector jobs by 2018. Zero Hours Contracts and insecure temporary jobs will let rip even more than before 7 May.



SMASHING THE UNIONS

And as an integral part of this plan to rob millions on behalf of the millionaires, the Tories have already made clear their determination to effectively wipe out trade union rights. They've already priced workers out of any semblance of justice with their 2013 introduction of fees for Employment Tribunals, starting with a minimum of £1,200. Now the new Tory Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, has announced that the Queens Speech on 27 May will include plans to make it virtually impossible to take strike action on jobs, wages or workplace victimization. They will pass laws that require a 50% turnout in any union ballot for action, plus a threshold of at least 40% of those eligible to vote - not 40% of those voting, but of all members.

And to establish even harsher dictatorship of big business over workers, they will also lift the current ban on the use of Agency workers to scab on strikes, so they can dragoon workers suffering terrible job insecurity to help undermine other workers' wages and conditions. This Scabs' Charter runs alongside the Snoopers' Charter planned, giving frightening powers to the police and secret services to spy on people's emails, texts and social media.

CHOICES FOR THE SNP 56

So what will the 56 SNP MPs need to do in the face of such wholesale butchery, which flies in the teeth of everything Scottish voters gave the SNP a mandate to pursue?

As the third-largest party at Westminster, the SNP carry the hopes of millions of Scots on their shoulders for stiff resistance to the Tory austerity which the SNP spoke out against during the election.

They've spoken about how they are there to be constructive, not to destroy. Of course they should use every parliamentary committee, every Westminster debate, every Prime Minister's Question Time to expose and oppose the scorched earth policies of the Tories towards benefits, jobs, public services, workers' rights, civil liberties, and against Trident renewal.

But they face a stark, simple choice: even if they convince some or all of the other opposition MPs to vote with them against Tory measures, they will still lose the parliamentary vote, and then either mobilize 'extra-parliamentary' mass movements, or end up impotent as a minority at Westminster.

When Labour had 50 Scottish MPs in the late-1980s/90s, they were dubbed the 'Feeble 50' for their refusal to lead a movement of mass non-payment of the Tory poll tax, imposed by Thatcher's parliamentary majority. The same fate awaits the SNP 56 if they were to repeat that failure to use their elected authority to spearhead mass movements on the streets, in workplaces and communities against what is probably an even more savage package of attacks than those of Thatcher.

MORE POWERS

The SNP have made the welcome demand for far more powers to be devolved to Scotland, including welfare, income tax, the minimum wage, employment law, business tax.

Cameron is likely to make at least some concessions on powers in the face of the SNP tidal wave, in the hope of not becoming 'the last Prime Minister of the UK'. It's not the most likely scenario, but you couldn't even rule out some version of 'Full Fiscal Automony' being granted by the Tories, as a device to let the SNP government carry out its own cuts, thereby undermining the attraction of independence!

MASS DEFIANCE - OR DEVOLVED BUTCHERY?

But serious questions need to be pondered by the 1.4 million who entrusted the SNP to oppose austerity - and especially the 80,000 new members who stampeded into the SNP to fight austerity and win full independence: are the SNP leadership going to lead a mass movement to defy and defeat the Tory butchery, or just make fine speeches in parliament and then pass on the cuts whilst blaming the Tories?

Will the SNP government at Holyrood refuse to pass down cuts to the Scottish budget from Westminster, and mobilize the newly awakened masses in a huge movement to win back our stolen £billions in defence of every job, service and pay packet? Or will they continue what they've done for the last four years, devolving about £4billion of Tory/LibDem Coalition cuts to colleges, councils, and public sector workers?

Will the SNP demand powers over employment law so as to repeal every single anti-union law on the statute books? And to replace them with a Charter of Workers' Rights, including the right to strike, and to take solidarity action with fellow-workers, even when the strike is deemed 'political'? Certainly they've never promised to do so up until now. Yet that is the minimum required in the face of Cameron's onslaught.

When they call for control over business taxes to be devolved, all their past policies suggest this would be in order to cut even further the taxes on profits paid by big business, rather than restore Corporation Tax to its pre-Thatcher 50 per cent level, as demanded by the SSP.

SOCIALIST PRINCIPLES MATTER

The SNP is at best a party that fuses civic nationalism, neo-liberal capitalist economic policies and social democratic reforms. It was the latter that mostly won them the landslide; they were better at being the old-style Labour than Miliband and Murphy's Labour Party ever could be. They are not, and never have been, a socialist party - contrary to the thousands of self-declared socialists who recently joined them.

And that's where the ideology and principles of a political party are critical. Without a socialist vision and mission they are not driven by the aim of fundamentally ending the rule of big business and the economic policies that follow.

They claim to be anti-austerity, but their 'modest spending plan' of 0.5% per annum would leave intact at least 15% cuts to the public sector already imposed by Westminster. And try telling council workers in authorities they control, or FE college students, that the SNP is anti-austerity!

BREAK THE ANTI-UNION LAWS

The looming Juggernaut of cuts by Cameron spells disaster unless a mass movement is mobilized to resist, defy and defeat the Tory Mission to Destroy.

As STUC general secretary Grahame Smith rightly wrote in the Sunday Herald, "Democracy is about more than politicians and parliaments...the unions are well placed to provide a legitimate and effective voice if the Tories' cruel plans are to be thwarted".

He also wrote: "New anti-union laws will be fiercely resisted and, if they remove our democratic right to organise, broken."

That's precisely the spirit that needs to become decisive action, and without prevarication.

Mass demos to garner public opposition to the cuts by a Tory government with absolutely no mandate in Scotland should be called the STUC, with or without the active support of the SNP 56.

These could build confidence for more decisive action, including coordinated strike days and civil disobedience, such as community occupations of threatened facilities.

Such mobilizations outside parliament should be used to pound the MPs, MSPs and councillors - whether SNP or what remains of Labour - to defy Westminster's cuts, set No Cuts Defiance budgets when the time comes at Scottish and local authority levels, and mount a struggle of the increasingly expectant Scottish working class to win back the funding off Westminster, rather than simply make parliamentary opposition speeches and then surrender to the inbuilt Tory majority.

STOP PROPPING UP LABOUR

Politically, the unions in Scotland need to stop propping up the bankrupt project that is Labour. We were told to reject independence last year and get 'social justice with a Labour government' in 2015. That's failed, utterly.

We've seen attempts by the biggest of all unions, UNITE, to drag Labour back to the left. That's proven utterly futile.

We now see a rising chorus of demands for Labour to return to undiluted Blairism, to appeal to 'the aspiring middle class'.

It's about time the union leaderships broke from these failed attempts to reclaim a party that is a shell, dominated by pro-capitalist place-seekers, with a Scottish Labour leader about as popular as herpes. They should instead combine with the SSP and all genuine socialists to build a mass, working class, socialist party to stand up for Scotland's working class majority population - not the ephemeral 'aspiring middle class'.


SECOND REFERENDUM

There's been an electoral mass uprising for change, sweeping change. But to tackle the underlying causes of austerity cuts, we need not only taxation powers, but the powers and political will to take the banks, energy giants, transport companies, construction and big business into democratic public ownership. That's why the socialist vision and socialist policies of the SSP are more indispensable than ever.

And rather than succumb to another five years of escalated class war from a Tory dictatorship at Westminster with absolutely no mandate in Scotland, we need to call for a mandate in the 2016 Scottish parliament elections for a second Referendum - and demand that the SNP leadership do likewise.

FROM BALLOT BOX TO THE STREETS

The political landscape has been transformed by an incredible movement through the ballot box. But to implement and achieve the aspirations of those who swept the SNP into the hallowed chambers of Westminster, we need a mass movement on the streets, in the workplaces and communities against Tory class-driven atrocities. It's mass movements that bring about real change; witness the downfall of the hated poll tax and its architect Maggie Thatcher, which founders of the SSP helped spearhead.

The unprecedented mass movement for change through the ballot box lays the foundations for a campaign of mass defiance on the streets against Tory dictatorship. The alternative is unthinkable.