DRIVE OUT THE TORIES WITH MASS DEMOS - not reliance on judges!

Anyone worth their salt will rejoice at the humiliating denunciation of Boris Johnson's illegal suspension of the Westminster parliament by the unanimous decision of all eleven judges in the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court.   


Johnson is an unelected Prime Minister, chosen by 90,000 Tory party members. He used arcane powers resting within the entirely appointed, unelected Privy Council to enlist the powers of the unelected, medieval monarchy to prorogue parliament - to bypass any limited checks and accountability imposed upon him by MPs. 

So, the unprecedented and excoriating verdict of the Supreme Court judges against this marauding would-be dictator, with his Eton-educated sense of upper-class entitlement, is to be celebrated. 

But reliance on the unelected, upper-class judiciary to win justice for the working-class majority against the rampaging Tories is a dangerous delusion, which far too many mainstream (i.e. pro-capitalist) politicians are only far too eager to feed to the population. 

Instead of relying on judges for protection, we need to agitate and organise for action led by the single biggest civic organisation in society, the trade union movement. Which has been all too lacking so far in these tumultuous times.  

Johnson's Classic Trumpism 

Johnson has consciously cultivated the image of a lovable, bumbling buffoon. Far from it. He's a vicious, calculating, dangerous enemy of working-class people, prepared to go to any lengths to maintain the rule of the grotesquely privileged elite that he is an integral part of.

Just one of many illustrative examples: he was the first prominent Tory to publicly call for a ban on the right to strike for public sector workers, while he was Mayor of London. Thus setting the pace and the foundations for the Tory government's subsequent 2016 Trade Union Act - which has erected more and higher hurdles to a democratic majority for trade union action than the average horse encounters at Aintree. 

Now, amidst all the dizzying twists and turns, all the bizarre and archaic parliamentary manouevres, one thing is clear: Johnson is trying to paint himself as ‘the people's champion’, the hero without a cape who is determined to deliver 'the will of the people', only obstructed by the rotten, corrupt politicians. Classic Trumpism. 

Right wing populism designed to fool the people 

The idea of BoJo (or Trump) being the people's champion against the establishment is a vomit-inducing joke. Millionaires standing up for the millions? Aye, right! 

The real and present danger is that by these manoeuvres, posing as the Brexit hardman, Johnson could mop up most of the Brexit Party voters, and with the treachery of his own parliamentary Blairites splitting Corbyn's Labour asunder, win an outright majority in a general election.  

Which would usher in a period of class-war savagery not witnessed since the dark days of Thatcher's dictatorial regime in the 1980s. For Johnson is hell-bent on winning a mandate - through demagogic, populist lies about representing the people against the widely unpopular parliament - to be an uncontrolled semi-dictator, shorn of the checks and balances of parliament. 

Johnson Wants a Trump Deal

Then he would unleash his preferences for ripping up even the limited protections of workplace rights enshrined in some of the more progressive EU Directives (there are many utterly regressive ones too!) - such as on paid holidays, breaks, the Working Time Directives, and "ripping up red tape" on health and safety regulations. Not to mention proposals by the same Tory think tank that initiated Universal Credit which recently recommended retirement at 75.

And his vision of a post-Brexit Britain is based on a Trump Deal, where whole swathes of the NHS would be handed over to US multinationals for profiteering at the expense of public health. 

As an aside, dewy-eyed EU fanatics (SNP and Scottish Green leaders included) should also be reminded that the same plans were afoot under Britain's EU membership, through the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – TTIP – between the EU and United States. 
In or out of the EU, capitalism means ruthless exploitation for profit, and threats to the single greatest achievement of the post-War workers' movement, the NHS. 

 

Capitalist justice being handed out at Orgreave, 1984

Don't Rely on Unelected Judges for Justice!

It's right to rejoice at the Supreme Court ruling against Johnson's proroguing of parliament, and to use that judgement as an extra argument for his immediate resignation. But when even Labour left-wingers praise the neutrality and righteousness of the judiciary - or fall over themselves with concern at the Queen being lied to by Johnson - they are sowing extremely dangerous illusions, and dodging the central task of helping to build a mass movement of the working class to protect ourselves from the rampages of Johnson and the Tories.

An extra-parliamentary movement, rather than total reliance on parliamentary manoeuvres alone, let alone reliance on the judges for justice (or the monarchy for some mythical neutrality that rises above the murky world of politics).

For starters, the judiciary are divided on this whole issue, with different Court bodies declaring Johnson's actions legal in some, illegal in others. So not a solid defence of democracy there, then!

But far more to the point, justice - like most things in life - is class based.

The Courts have frequently been used to mete out brutal injustice to workers who dare defy the rule and ruin of the rich. 

A Dirty History of Repression 

In the 1970s, Ricky Tomlinson, Des Warren and the Shrewsbury pickets were jailed - and tortured - for their role in a building workers' strike, on trumped up charges, under an obscure law that was exhumed as a weapon against these workers in struggle - the 1875 Conspiracy Act.

In the 1980s, miners and their communities were hammered with the help of the Courts - and the millionaires' media, the police, secret services, undercover use of army personnel, jail sentences and legislation on benefits to starve them into submission. Thatcher and her parasitic, financial wing of the capitalist class were aided by the judiciary as they laid waste to industry and sought to smash the key obstacle to their mission, the organised trade union movement.

Numerous groups of workers and their unions have been denied the right to fight back and resist assaults by the government and employers in Court rulings against democratic majorities in strike ballots.

And that's not to even elaborate on the dirty, inglorious history of the British capitalist judiciary in brutal miscarriages of justice against the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Maguire family, the Hillsborough 96, and countless more.

Speaking at USDAW Annual Delegate Meeting 

Call Trade Union-led Demos

No, we urgently need those in authoritative, leading positions in the trade union and labour movement to stop peddling illusions in the judges and start organising and agitating for rallies and demonstrations to defend the working class against the rampaging attacks planned by Johnson and his upper-class crew. 

At the national Executive Council of my own union, Usdaw - which I was elected onto by the Scottish members last year - I've argued for such action to be fought for in the structures of the TUC and STUC. At the May, June, July and September Usdaw EC meetings I've repeatedly put forward the proposal for the TUC and STUC (plus their equivalents in Wales and N Ireland) to call and mobilise for demos around the theme 'We won't pay for Boris's Brexit'. For putting forward concrete demands in defence of our jobs, wages, workplace' rights, migrant workers' rights, the NHS... with the aim of uniting workers who voted Remain and Leave.  

Nobody disagreed each time I proposed this. All agreed the toxic division in the working class over Brexit must be fought with action and arguments based on the common class interests of workers who voted differently in the 2016 Referendum - introduced by Cameron to fend off Farage and the Tories' own right flank. 

No Call for Action at TUC Congress

As a delegate at the more recent TUC Congress, we heard many excellent speeches on the very same theme of wanting to heal the division in the working class arising from Brexit - including one that particularly chimed with me from Unite's Howard Beckett, about growing up in a country where people were defined by their attitudes to a Border, which he (and I) chose to reject in favour of trade unionism and socialism.

But I sat (and tried to get in to speak!) awaiting a clear call for unifying union-led rallies and demonstrations to defend working class interests - and topple the Tories - in vain! 

Yet even now, at this eleventh hour, that's what is urgently needed, if we are not to sleep walk into a majority Johnson government that feels emboldened to decimate our rights, jobs and services, confident in the belief that the leadership of the TUC won't match fire with fire. 

Posties gear up for huge conflict with cowboy millionaires

Unite the Many Separate Struggles

The heroic fight put up by the united workers of Belfast's Harland and Wolff shipyard - occupying the yard since the end of July, demanding renationalisation to save the yard, jobs and skills, and for a plan based on green energy production - was rightly and roundly applauded at the TUC Congress.

So were the fighting speeches of CWU leaders Dave Ward and Terry Pullinger, as they won the unanimous backing of delegates from all 48 unions present for the planned strikes by 100,000 Royal Mail workers, against the vicious assaults on the workforce and postal service by the latest millionaire cowboy to take over the privatised Royal Mail.

Similar warmth and solidarity was given to other groups of workers waging their own strikes and struggles, including librarians, NHS staff and cleaners in the civil service. 

All of which points to the potential for pulling workers together in action in our common, class interests - regardless of how people voted in 2016 on Brexit.

New generation take action 

Furthermore, a whole new generation could be enlisted to such anti-Tory demonstrations, if calls for defence of workers’ rights, jobs and public services is married to concrete demands for a Green New Deal to combat the climate crisis, creating at least 1.5 million new, quality, unionised jobs and apprenticeships. 

#StopTheCoup Rallies

Substantial demonstrations have been staged against Johnson's brazen trampling on even the vestiges of democracy that capitalism has conceded, in the form of parliamentary elections, under the banner #StopTheCoup. But these have been mostly called - and dominated in terms of platform speakers - by groups wishing to block or reverse the Brexit vote, advocating Remain and claiming undiluted virtues for the EU. By definition, that alienates workers who voted Leave - vast numbers of whom are not racists, but were lashing out their disgust at the establishment's decades of neglect, whether at EU or UK levels. 

No Such Thing as 'The National Interest'

During all the current parliamentary shenanigans, we are subjected to calls for 'a government of national unity' to steer us through the Brexit crisis. 
Loud amongst these voices is that of new LibDem leader, Jo Swinson, who of course draws the line at the notion of Jeremy Corbyn being a caretaker Prime Minister - proffering instead the option of somebody like Tory grandee, Kenneth Clark. 
Hardly a surprise from someone who was instrumental in assaulting sickness and disability benefits; imposing student tuition fees; cutting funding for youth training; preventing caps on fees charged by landlords; and blocking a tax on bankers' bonuses...  in her tenure as a Coalition partner in crimes with Cameron's Tories. 
The same Jo Swinson famously advocated a monument to Maggie Thatcher - something I suspect she didn't highlight in her election manifesto in former mining villages around East Dunbartonshire!

There's no such thing as one national interest 

Two Nations - Us and Them

Instead of peddling the dangerous nonsense of needing SNP, Labour, LibDem and rebel Tory politicians to “come together in the national interest”, we need to recognise there is no such thing as ‘the national interest’.

Which ‘nation’ does this refer to? The 0.01% of the population whose income has tripled, or the millions of workers whose wages have suffered the longest, harshest fall since the time of the Peterloo Massacre, 200 years ago?

The Big Six energy companies piling up mountains of profit, or the million Scottish families shivering through winters due to fuel poverty?

The giant agribusinesses and supermarkets, or the workers turning in desperation to food banks?

It’s the interests of the working class we need to act in defence of; the vast majority of the population.

Instead of perpetuating and exacerbating the Remain/Leave divide, we need action based on the common class interests of working-class people, regardless of how they voted in the false, binary choice offered them in 2016. 

The power of united workers in action needs to be called up 

TUC and STUC - Call Demos to Unite Against the Tories!

The TUC,  Scottish TUC and individual unions should urgently step into the breech and give such a lead, naming the day for mass rallies, then linking together solidarity for those in struggle (like Royal Mail workers, RMT members, etc) with youth climate strikers and working class communities facing the axe of escalating cuts and deprivation. 

The crisis in the Tory party is historically unprecedented. The oldest capitalist party in Europe is ripped asunder. Their appointed Prime Minister now has a parliamentary 'majority' of about MINUS 43! 

They shouldn't be let off the ropes. More than any other single organisation, the trade unions have the potential to give a decisive lead, winning the support of other sections like climate strikers, by calling rallies and demonstrations that could heal the wounds and divisions over the false choices of a capitalist EU or a capitalist Britain.

The time is rotten ripe for trade union and labour movement leaderships to step up to the plate, rather than sit back and rely on judges and parliamentary shenanigans to save us from the savagery planned by the people's enemy, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

CLIMATE CHANGE: A WORKERS' ISSUE

As school students and other young people spearhead global strikes and direct action against the planet-threatening climate crisis, they have appealed to workers to join them in 'a global general strike'. 

This appeal is an extremely important and welcome step forward; a glimmering of recognition by young people too young to have experienced work or trade unionism that the organised workers' movement is critical to winning meaningful action against global warming. And an important riposte to the utterly false and dangerous idea that it's older people who are to blame for the climate crisis.

As we've said before, the climate crisis is not a generational issue, it's a class issue.  

Older or middle-aged workers haven't polluted the planet. Profit-crazed capitalists have. 

For over 200 years they've plundered the planet and exploited its people for carbon, to fuel their accumulation of private profit. 
Recent reports confirm that it's the likes of BP and Shell - financed by the big banks - who are the biggest polluters. 
Another reveals the biggest 100 companies on earth account for 71% of carbon emissions. 

Trade Union Issue

As the recent TUC Congress unanimously agreed, climate is a trade union issue. The radical changes needed to tackle the impending disaster - with scientists giving us a mere 12 years to stop irreversible damage to the planet - require the active, urgent, collective action of workers. 


As the SSP has consistently argued, and TUC Congress reiterated, we need a Just Transition to fossil-free energy, not a punishing programme of job decimation and deprivation of working class communities, as some of the fringes of the environmental movement advocate. And public ownership of all forms of energy and other key sectors of the economy - including transport, housing, shipyards, and banking - is at the very heart of the solution to pollution. 

Public Ownership of Energy 

Policies adopted - unanimously - at the recent TUC Congress recognise this truth. Alongside Motions demanding that 'workers must be at the heart of delivering' a Just Transition, and a green transport system, Congress demanded public ownership of energy and the big banks. As Bakers Union general secretary, Ronnie Draper, said in proposing it:


"Public renewable power is less expensive than private, which not only faces higher interest rates and other costs, but also relies on various subsidies and long-term “power purchase agreements” in order to guarantee profits for investors.
Public ownership not only eliminates those unnecessary costs and provides cheaper power for users, but also allows us to address domestic skills deficits. Under public ownership and a planned approach, we can make use of the skills we have in the present, while we develop the new skills we need for a vibrant, thriving sector in the future."

SSP Members Active on Issue

SSP members in the unions have combined with others to maximise involvement of workers in the Youth Climate Strike week of action. For instance, both as an elected Usdaw national Executive Council member for Scotland, and SSP representative, I've collaborated with union activists in Unison, GMB, PCS, Unite and EIS to establish a Campaign Against Climate Change group in Glasgow. 

Though in its infancy, this group is working to involve workers alongside young people. We recognise that the first task is to engage with workers, explaining the issues, offering alternatives that would enhance workers' lives, rather than pose a threat to jobs and living standards. 
For example, we've discussed the win-win policy of free installation of solar energy in homes, and I advocated the council unions lobby Glasgow city council to take over the bus service being surrendered by First Group, as a baby step towards a full municipal bus service, which in turn should become part of a free public transport service to help combat car pollution. 

Alongside that we have been building for attendance at the demos and rallies on 20 September, for instance during workers' lunchtimes, or using flexitime, or days off, or where possible by clocking off to attend. Unison stewards have negotiated non-victimisation agreements with councils for members who participate.

Answering Workers' Fears 

Likewise, at the September meeting of the Usdaw Executive Council, I got the issue put on our agenda, introduced it, spelling out the key issues from a worker's perspective, and advocated concrete steps by our union - all of which were agreed, unanimously.  That includes appealing to all reps to take part in rallies if possible, encourage members whose shifts allow to join the events, and to stage workplace events where feasible - above all, starting discussions on climate change and alternatives in meetings of members.  

Crucially, we need to overcome the legitimate fears of many workers that what's on offer is the slaughter of jobs and a 'hair-shirt'  existence. That emerged in our very healthy discussion at the Usdaw EC, which our explanation of massive job creation through a Green New Deal, and trade union control of a Just Transition, convinced the entire meeting. And that's in the union primarily organising retail workers; how much more critical it is to have a package of policies to engage, convince and mobilise workers in the fossil-fuel sector, such as North Sea installations.

Class and Climate 

That's precisely where a class-based socialist alternative comes into its own. The public ownership demanded by the TUC would open up the opportunity to redeploy existing workers, reskilling where necessary, as well as a whole new green industrial strategy that could create at least 1.5 million skilled, well-paid, unionized jobs. 


The concrete example of the heroic resistance to closure being staged by the 123 Harland and Wolff shipyard workers in Belfast proves the point.  They are battling for renationalisation to include green energy production, which they've already done as their primary source of work in recent years, to help build equipment for offshore energy. 


Alongside the campaign to end the globalised capitalist lunacy of equipment for the giant £2bn NnG offshore windfarm a few miles from the Fife BiFab yards being built in cheap-labour Indonesia, and then transported 7,000 miles in diesel-belching vessels, this shows how democratic public ownership of all production and distribution of energy supplies could vastly boost jobs and wages, combat fuel poverty, and help clean up our corner of the planet for generations to come. 

System Change - to Socialism 

We urgently need system change to combat climate change. 

Change to a system of democratic public ownership, where the skills of workers are deployed to produce and distribute clean, green energy; build and retrofit homes to the highest environmental standards; offer an integrated, free public transport network that combats both poverty, social isolation and pollution; and uses the vast funds of a state bank to help finance a Green New Deal. 


The power of organised workers - alongside the energy and vision of young people - needs to be mobilised for such a clean, green, and nuclear-free, socialist Scotland. 
The SSP commits to combine with others for that future.