PETERLOO MASSACRE,1819: Rise Like Lions!

Two hundred years ago, on 16 August 1819, one of the defining events of working class history in Britain occurred; the Peterloo Massacre. 

A crowd of 60-80,000 working-class men, women and children gathered in St Peter's Fields, near Manchester, demanding radical reforms in the face of rampant political corruption, and ruin and starvation for the people. 

The ruling authorities - magistrates, politicians and military officers, fully endorsed by the UK government - replied with a savagery that profoundly changed the outlook of the masses in the days and years that followed. 

At least 15 were killed and 700 wounded as the cavalry of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry charged, swords drawn, hacking left and right into the crowd, under the orders of magistrates safely ensconced in a nearby mansion, who feared the entirely peaceful, well-disciplined crowd would challenge their economic and political monopoly of power. 

The first to die was two-year-old William Fildes, knocked from his mother's arms as one of the cavalry galloped to St Peter's Fields, intent on helping to put these protesting workers back in their box.

Political corruption remains today - if modified compared to 1819

Corruption and Famine

The demands of the mass rally arose from bitter anger at their treatment by those in power, especially in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, which ended in 1815, and in its wake led to a very brief boom in textile manufacturing, followed by deep and chronic depression. 

Whilst the mill owners and other rising capitalists continued to luxuriate in wealth, mass unemployment, starvation and actual famine stalked the country, including Lancashire, the main centre of textile weaving and spinning. 
The Corn Laws of 1815 exacerbated the conditions of mass starvation, imposing tariffs on foreign grain imports, forcing food prices up and the quality of food down, triggering outbreaks of famine. 

Rotten Boroughs

Propping up the inequality and mass hunger was a political system stinking of the worst corruption.  

Voting rights were restricted to adult male owners of freehold land above a threshold rental value. This tiny, narrow franchise - part of the shoddy compromise between the landowning and capitalist classes in the decades after the English Civil War - totally excluded the wealth producers, the working class, those rightly described by many historians as "the manufacturing class". 

For instance, Manchester and surrounding towns had a population of a million, but the whole county of Lancashire had just two MPs, returned by a tiny handful of the propertied class. 

Of 515 MPs across England and Wales, 351 were sent to 'the Mother of Parliaments' by a minuscule 177 rich individuals - and every single one of Scotland's 45 MPs relied on the same system of patronage. 

In at least two separate seats, two MPs (in each) were elected in a 'rotten borough' by one, single, solitary voter! So twice as many MPs as voters! 

Next time you get a lecture from a Tory, or employer, or lickspittle defender of the wonders of capitalist democracy, it might be worth acquainting them with this slice of rotten, corrupt reality. 

Peaceful Demands for Democracy

The 60-80,000 who assembled, after marching in well-drilled formation from neighbouring towns and districts, carried banners with slogans like Universal Suffrage, Vote by Ballot, Annual Parliaments, No Corn Law, Liberty and Fraternity, Unity and Strength. 

They were entirely peaceful, but put the fear of rebellion into the corrupt, cankered hearts of the rich and their magisterial agents. They amassed troops from Special Constables and several cavalries, thousands of armed men in total. 

"The Tory party in arms" feared revolution and assaulted peaceful meeting 

Business Mafia on Horseback!

These sabre-wielding militias were enlisted from the class of tradespeople, shopkeepers and especially publicans, described at the time by one local newspaper as "the fawning dependents of the great, with a few fools, who imagine they acquire considerable importance wearing regimentals." 

More recent historians have described them more succinctly: "The local business mafia on horseback", or, in another case, "Young members of the Tory party in arms."

Next time you're assured British democracy is a God-given blessing we should be grateful for, it's worth remembering the struggles and martyrdom workers went through to even win the elementary right to vote every few years - and the armed savagery in opposition to basic democracy of "the Tory party in arms", the "business mafia on horseback". 

From Peterloo to Chartism

The horror and outrage at the massacre in St Peter's Fields - dubbed the Peterloo Massacre in bitter ironic reference to the Battle of Waterloo, just four years earlier - spread beyond Lancashire to the whole country. 

But it met with an escalated bout of repression, including the arrest and prolonged imprisonment of those who organised and spoke at the Peterloo rally, such as the radical orator, Henry Hunt. He was slapped in jail for 30 months. Workers were sacked, leaving their children to starve, for merely attending the rally. 

But repression cannot hold down the working class indefinitely. Henry Hunt contributed to a new force in the decades after Peterloo, the Chartist movement, Britain's first working class political party. 

Gradually, through mighty battles, general strikes and attempted insurrections included, this movement squeezed incremental reforms on the right to vote from a capitalist ruling class that fought brutally to retain a monopoly not just of economic but also political power. It took over a century after Peterloo to win full suffrage for the working class, for women as well as men. 

Democracy Today - a Good Idea!

Today, of course, we live in a very different world - in some respects! 

Past generations fought and suffered to win the limited democratic rights of today. The demands for universal suffrage and vote by (secret) ballot have been conquered, at a high price for earlier generations of fighters. 

But unless we win economic democracy there can never be full-blown political democracy.  

Two hundred years on, we may not be suffering famine in this country - but that's the cruel fate of millions in the global South, and here in the fifth-richest economy on earth, we have mass reliance on food banks. It's sobering to register that one of the causes of this is the fact real wages have declined more and for longer in the last ten years than in any decade since Peterloo! 


We may have the right to assembly - so long as the ruling powers deem it safe to allow us to exercise that right. Police assaults on striking miners' demonstrations in 1984/5 were a harsh reminder of the limitations of even that right, so long as we have a capitalist  minority in ownership of the main centres of wealth. Likewise, their kettling of anti-capitalist protesters on numerous occasions since. 

Orgreave: Capitalist state was mobilised to smash miners' union 

Workers in Chains - Still!

The (anti)Combination Acts passed 20 years before Peterloo were torn to shreds by mass workers' resistance, but the whole array of anti-union laws - introduced by Tory governments, retained by Labour governments - still make this one of the most repressive countries in the developed world. 

The rights fought for by the pioneers at Peterloo and in the Chartists are still often denied to workers, such as the growing number of employers who refuse to permit let alone recognise and negotiate with workers' collective trade unions. 


We may have the right to vote in this country,  but we don't really have the right to decide.

The working class majority population are still dictated to by a few capitalist monopolies: a few big banks; the Big Six energy companies; private shipyard owners who throw skilled dedicated workers on the scrapheap; one-man capitalist dictators like Jim Ratcliffe of INEOS who threaten to shut down the whole Grangemouth plant and hold the Scottish government to ransom; Jeff Bezos of Amazon, or the Walton family (ASDA owners) who threaten workers with the sack if they don't surrender to their dictats, and likewise instruct governments on what they must do, even when it subverts the will of those who elected the governments.

Break the Chains!

In saluting and honouring our dead and maimed predecessors at Peterloo and elsewhere, we should redouble our determination to fully achieve real democracy. 
Including workplace democracy, economic democracy, as well as an end to political rule by a rich, powerful elite. 

We need to relentlessly expose the corruption and inherent exploitation and inequality of capitalist rule. We need to paint a picture of a socialist democracy, where those who produce the wealth of goods and services also collectively own and control that wealth, taking concrete steps to eradicate poverty and inequality. And use that vision to inspire others to rise like lions. 


As a modest contribution to that effort, I wrote the book, Break the Chains. It strives to arm activists with arguments for socialist change, and elaborate the case behind a whole package of 21st century policies that would transform the lives of millions.

Introduction to Break the Chains

I quite consciously referenced the Peterloo Massacre in the Introduction to Break the Chains - and just as consciously quoted Percy Bysshe Shelley's inspirational poem, written in anger at the Massacre.  

In Shelley's phrase, the working class still, 200 years later, need to "Rise, like lions after slumber/In unvanguishable number!" 
Never forgetting that - even more so than in the world of 1819 - "Ye are many - they are few." 

Copies of Break the Chains available HERE

[Some of] MY LIFE AND TIMES AS A SOCIALIST!

A huge thank you to Jim and all at Sunny G radio for inviting me to do this extended interview on some of my experiences as a lifelong socialist. It covers parts of my upbringing and early influences in Ireland; the civil rights movement and 'Troubles'; victories for mass workers' struggle in Liverpool; expulsion from the Labour party; Scotland and the foundation of the SSP; a wide range of principles and policies I've fought for; and publications I've written as a contribution to working class socialism. Please find the time to have a listen (link below). Consider ordering some of the books and pamphlets. And strengthen the struggle for socialism by joining the SSP. Thanks. Here's the link to listen - comments and shares welcome! https://scottishsocialistparty.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Sunny_Govan_-_Richie_Venton.mp3

Labour Conference Adopts a Policy Pioneered by the SSP

Labour Party Conference has adopted a policy pioneered by the SSP!

Hot on the heels of the TUC congress unanimously adopting the pioneering new policy of a guaranteed minimum 16-hour working week - instead of the abomination of zero and short-hours contracts - so too has the Labour Party conference, in a composite Motion on In-Work Poverty, moved by my union Usdaw, seconded by the GMB.

If acted upon, this could be a lifeline to millions of workers subjected to insecure, low-paid jobs, dependency on foodbanks, and mounting mental ill-health.

So it's immensely welcome that the Corbyn-led Labour conference has overwhelmingly agreed a policy pioneered and spearheaded by socialists OUTSIDE Labour - specifically, the SSP!!

To avoid any confusion, here's the timeline:
- in my book, Break the Chains, published in December 2015, I first proposed this new idea of a guaranteed minimum week for all workers who want it; 16 hours, to match criteria for Working Tax Credit, Statutory Sick Pay, and employers' NIC contributions.

- in 2016, this was unanimously agreed as SSP policy, and then fought for on the streets and in our unions.

- in April 2018, I proposed this policy on behalf of Glasgow no 1 Usdaw branch at Usdaw national conference (ADM), winning unanimous support from nearly 1,000 delegates. 

- as a newly elected Usdaw Executive Council member, I combined with others to argue for rapid implementation of the 16-hour policy, in tandem with the 4-year-old policy of a £10 minimum wage (NOT seriously acted upon up until now!).

That included pushing for it to be advanced by Usdaw as policy at the TUC, Labour conferences... and likewise in other parties. 

The result? Usdaw has now launched the major 'Time For Better Pay' campaign, with these demands at its core, winning support at both the TUC and Labour conferences.

HISTORIC VINDICATION!

I can't resist a wry smile at this brilliant news, especially as it comes from Labour's Liverpool-held conference.

Back in 1986, I and eight other socialist leaders in Liverpool were expelled from the Labour party by the insufferable windbag, Neil Kinnock - for the crime of being far too successful at mobilising the Merseyside working class, defeating Maggie Thatcher's Tory government, winning massive concessions in government funding to build council houses and create thousands of jobs. And winning record votes for socialists in Liverpool elections, whilst Kinnock displayed an unrivalled ability to lose elections and leave the Tories in office to assault the working class.

I remember saying at the time that they might succeed in expelling socialists from the Labour party, but they couldn't expel us from the wider labour movement or the working class. It's taken a while, but it's quite gratifying to see that prediction proven.

And it's a perfect 20th birthday present for the SSP; courageous, principled socialists organised OUTSIDE Labour have been instrumental in committing Labour to a policy that could transform many workers' lives - in a fashion Scottish Labour's 'left' never managed to do. 

We now look forward to uniting in action with fellow-trade unionists, both inside and outwith Labour, to force through the implementation of this far-reaching policy, to give workers a bit of security and control over their working lives.

WELCOME NEW USDAW CAMPAIGN FOR MINIMUM EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEES

In a major new breakthrough for millions of workers suffering poverty pay and insecure jobs, the country's fifth-biggest union, Usdaw, has launched a campaign for a £10 minimum wage, a guaranteed 16-hour minimum contract for all who want one, and contracts that reflect actual hours worked. 

And as agreed at Usdaw's annual conference in April, these policies are being taken to the September TUC congress, as a policy Motion, to seek the support of the entire trade union movement. 

Low pay is condemning a huge swathe of the population to stress, deprivation and dependency on food banks. 

Work is no longer a route out of poverty; 52% of the Scots officially living below the poverty line are actually in a job, working to remain poor. 

We have the grotesque spectacle of fast food workers and supermarket staff turning to food banks for emergency food supplies in 21st Century, rich, arable Scotland. 

Workers' wages have suffered the worst real stagnation and fall since the Napoleonic Wars, 200 years ago! 

And with a national minimum wage that peaks at £7.83-an-hour for those aged over 25, and slumps to £3.70 for apprentices, decent pay is not about to be gifted to us any time soon.

It takes an organised fight to win a decent minimum wage - with the abolition of the lower youth rates too. 

Demand £10 Now! 

£10-an-hour is an extremely modest demand. It's not even two-thirds of the median wage of male workers - the policy of the SSP since our foundation, 20 years ago. 

But compared to the pathetic wages on offer today, £10 would be a mighty step forward. 

And the SSP has always argued for the full rate at 16, recognizing younger people don't enjoy discounts on food, rent or clothing! 

So the campaign launched by Usdaw - the 440,000-strong main union in retail, with members also in food production, transport and distribution - for £10 minimum for all at 18 is a very welcome step. Especially after four years of holding that policy but doing nothing about it until now. 

The same applies to the TUC as a whole; it unanimously voted for "£10 minimum wage for all workers" a full four years ago, in September 2014, but hasn't lifted a finger to fight for it since. 

The time for serious action by the unions is long overdue, so Usdaw's campaign plan is very welcome. 

Demand Guaranteed Minimum 16-Hour Contracts 

Casualised, insecure work - in its modern forms - has been around since at least the 1970s. 

Zero hours contracts, the very pinnacle of this monstrously insecure employment, have existed in the UK since the 1980s. 

But a plague of job insecurity has exploded in more recent years, masked by government boasts of 'record levels of employment'. And low pay goes hand-in-hand with insecure contracts. 

TUC research suggests a full one out of every ten workers is in an insecure job. Latest figures on zero-hours contracts range from 1.4 million to 1.8 million. And much less publicized, but at least as pernicious, are short hour contracts - typically 8, 10 or 12 hours a week. These are absolutely rampant in retail. Increasingly so, as full-time jobs become an endangered species. 

These zero and short hours contracts put millions of workers at the beck and call of their employers; dragged in for far more hours than their contract when it's busy, slashed back to contract hours when it suits the bosses' needs. 

It blights workers and their families with totally insecure incomes, with all the attendant stress and suffering. 

It blocks workers on low guaranteed hours from loans and mortgages; it's their contract hours that count, not actual hours worked. 

Part-time work also imposes lower average hourly rates of pay than those for full-time jobs.

And it even denies access to wage top-ups for many; a couple seeking Working Tax Credit, for instance, must have one person on at least 16 hours.

Break the Chains 

Those are precisely some of the reasons I first came up with the idea of a minimum working week - a guaranteed 16-hour minimum contract - for all workers who want it, in Break the Chains, published in December 2015. 

In turn, this policy was agreed at the 2016 SSP conference. 

And in a major, pioneering breakthrough for the mass organizations of the working class, the April 2018 Usdaw national conference voted for this new policy, unanimously, after I'd proposed it on behalf of my Glasgow G111 Usdaw branch. 

After being recently elected to Usdaw's Executive Council, I've combined with others to insist on a plan of campaigning action on this agreed, pioneering policy - which is now being implemented. 

Join the Struggle! 

Workers and trade unions throughout Scotland and the UK should welcome and support these demands for a minimum £10-an-hour and guaranteed 16-hour minimum contract for all who want it - with the only exception being where a worker, accompanied by their union rep, asks for less than a 16-hour contract. 

Usdaw is committed to a public launch at the September TUC, plus putting these demands into all negotiations with employers, and lobbying all levels of government and political parties.

The SSP stands enthusiastically alongside Usdaw and all other trade unions prepared to fight for these life-changing demands. We appeal to other workers to join in campaign activities, to bludgeon the employers, the Scottish government and local authorities into conceding these minimum standards of employment. 

The demands for £10now and a guaranteed minimum 16-hour week for all workers who want it are both modest and also a revolutionary change compared to the low-paid, casualised wage slavery that curses society today. 

Join the struggle! 

EQUAL PAY DAY - MIND THE GAP!

Women work for nothing from 10 November to 31 December this year!!

Today is Equal Pay Day.

In my book Break the Chains, I wrote:

"The Fawcett Society's August 2014 research claimed that by 2013 shortfall [the gender pay gap -RV] had risen again for the first time in five years, to a staggering 19.1%. That's the equivalent of a workplace where full-time male workers are paid all year round, but female workers work for free from about 22 October!"

Since that was published, the Fawcett Society calculates the annual date equivalent to when women cease to be paid for the rest of the calendar year, due to the gender gap in pay.

This year it is today, 10th November - which has remained unchanged since 2015. It's due to their calculation that for every £1 men earn, women get just 86p.

So alongside fighting for an immediate, legally enforced £10-an-hour minimum wage for all from the age of 16, I and the SSP are proud to persistently demand equal pay for women. And to unite with the women battling for equality, as for example described in this blog I wrote recently - Women Workers Demand Equality.

THEM AND US: capitalism creates class divide

The gap between Them and Us is widening - at an appalling speed. 

The Great Class Divide is a global feature that makes the Grand Canyon look like a shallow sheugh. It's an inherent part of how capitalism functions; a gut-wrenching reminder of the sick, dysfunctional system of inequality and exploitation we need to overturn. 

The global class divide is encapsulated by one startling fact: the eight (yes, 8) richest men on the planet have combined wealth exceeding that of the poorest half of the human race, 3.5 billion people. 

UK Rich List 2017 

The annual Sunday Times Rich List has just added to the mind-boggling statistics revealing the gaping chasm between the richest 1,000 in the UK and the multi-millioned rest of us. And Scotland is no different to any other corner of the capitalist UK or capitalist world. 

The richest 1,000 in the UK last year enjoyed a massive 14% boost to their wealth - a surge of £83billion, to a new total of £658billion. 

Almost two-thirds of that pile of wealth (£419billion) is in the tight fists of Britain's 134 billionaires - 19 of whom raised their wealth by over £1billion in the past year alone! 

In keeping with the modern 'city state' of London sucking in a vast chunk of the total wealth of the UK - and contrary to the deceitful nonsense about us being 'better together' in a 'caring, sharing United Kingdom' - 86 of the billionaires are based in London, making it home to the most sterling billionaires of any city on Earth. 

Which Scotland? 

Here in Scotland, we are now blessed with 10 billionaires, compared with 5 in 2012 and one in 2009. 

The 73 Scots now placed in the UK's richest 1,000 are 'worth' just over £30billion - the same sum afforded to the other 5.3 million of us through Scotland's annual block grant from Westminster! Remember that the next time your local council, or NHS board, or employer, tells you they can't afford a pay rise, or have to slash services, or obliterate jobs.

That's an increase of £3.4billion on the pile enjoyed by the Scots on the 2016 Rich List; an increase of 12.6% for the 73 richest people in the nation, in the same year when employers and governments (at UK, Scottish and local authority levels) imposed real-term pay cuts on millions of the workers who produce the actual wealth of the nation. Class division is alive and kicking the livelihoods out of us! 

If you happen to be fond of Glenfiddich whiskey or Hendrick's gin, you're fueling the fortune of Scotland's richest family, the Grant Gordons, whose wealth rocketed by another £210million last year, reaching £2.37billion. 

And don't imagine last year was an aberration, a blip. It's true, as the Sunday Times report commented, that:

"the astonishing strength of the Rich List defies expectations that wealth creation would stall in the lead up to the 2016 EU Referendum and crash after the Brexit vote". 

It's also nauseatingly true, as they add, "wealthy individuals have benefited from the weaker pound" after the Brexit vote. 

But far from being an accident of Brexit and the plunging pound that aided those capitalists and companies with overseas investments, the trend towards ever-increasing class division is ongoing for several years (indeed decades). As the Sunday Times comments: 

"While the rise in wealth among Scotland's richest last year is stunning, the difference over the last 5 years is even more stark. The total wealth of this year's 73 Scots on the Rich List is almost DOUBLE what it was in 2012, marking an £11.49bn (or 62%) increase in the wealth of the Scots in the UK richest 1,000 over 5 years."

Food-banks in Food-rich Scotland
Just in case you've forgotten, this vast mountain of wealth, accumulated in the hands of a tiny handful (about the population of two school classrooms!), has occurred in the same Scotland where last year emergency food parcels for three days were handed out to the equivalent of the entire population of Dundee city. 

And as I said in a speech at my USDAW union national conference in Blackpool last week, this is under the same government which can afford to spend £170-200billion on renewal of Trident nuclear weapons of mass destruction - so we can feel secure in the knowledge we have Trident to protect our food banks from being stolen by any invading foreign states! 

Capitalism Creates the Great Class Divide 

The stark, shattering contrast between the capitalist rich and the rest of us, between Them and Us, is no coincidence, no accident, no act of nature. It's the inevitable product of a capitalist system of ownership and production. It's planned inequality and planned poverty. 

And don't look for the pages of the Sunday Times to find any critique of this gross, gargantuan inequality, nor any hint of how society could be different, more egalitarian. On the contrary, this capitalist mouthpiece carried an editorial headlined 'Don't beat the rich - try to join them', which ended with the clarion call to all us plebs: "We should celebrate the success of the wealthy and try to join them."

We have to assume the Sunday Times readership figures amongst those swallowing their pride as they turn to food banks - workers included - are not high... nor in general amongst those on low or average wages. Why the hell should we 'celebrate the success of the wealthy' when it's the working class produces that wealth in the first place, only to have it legally robbed off us, on a daily basis, by the profit-driven employing class and their hired governments. 

Far from suggesting you race out to buy the Sunday Times, I'd advise you instead add my book Break the Chains to your reading list! It tries to dig deeper, to explain the root causes of exploitation and inequality. It explains and justifies a joined-up package of real-life measures that would transform the lives of millions of people in Scotland, to put an end to 'Them and Us'.

Break the Chains 

Arm yourself not only with facts, but comprehensive arguments for an entirely different type of society, where capitalist exploitation is replaced by a socialist democracy; where the grotesque class divide between Them and Us is eradicated in favour of a system of cooperation and collectivism in ownership, production and distribution of the vast wealth of Scotland and beyond.

Buy the book, join the struggle, help put an end to excruciating hunger and deprivation amidst grotesque gluttony and greed on the part of the profiteers - the Rich List and their hangers-on.

BUY it HERE.

DON'T GET APRIL FOOLED! - £7.20 is not a living wage

The Tories must think we're all April Fools. 

On 1st April, their much-trumpeted and obscenely mis-named 'National Living Wage' takes effect. But you have to be 25 or over to qualify. And £7.20 an hour is nothing like a living wage. In their own hidden government documents, Cameron and Osborne more accurately label this a 'Minimum Wage Premium'. It's an extra 50p for those reaching their 25th birthday, compared to the miserly National Minimum Wage suffered by millions aged 18-24, not to mention the insulting pittance earned by younger workers and apprentices. 

The Tories' scheme is a conscious campaign to confuse the hell out of people about what constitutes a real living wage - as well as being yet another layer of age wage discrimination, which also threatens to displace 'older' workers with dirt-cheap younger wage-slaves.

No Street Parties!

Anyone over 25 getting an extra 50p an hour will welcome it. Even more welcome is the £8.25 Living Wage Foundation figure which 500 employers in Scotland have now signed up to - voluntarily, as this scheme has no legal standing, and is purely at the whims and fancies of employers. A scandalous 29% of women and 18% of men still earn less than this £8.25. 

But street parties are not about to break out across the nation! Neither the £6.70 minimum wage for 18-24-year-olds, nor its £7.20 'premium' rate bear any resemblance to a living wage that guarantees a  decent life for workers. Nor indeed is the voluntary, unenforceable £8.25 - even according to its own authors! Back last summer, the Living Wage Foundation admitted that if their calculations stopped assuming reliance on a full uptake of in-work benefits - such as Child and Working Tax Credits - the London Living Wage rate would have to rocket from £9.15 to £11.65! 

And of course the Tories are hellbent on slashing such in-work benefits. Despite being forced to temporarily retreat on their more blatant version of cuts to Tax Credits a few months ago, they are still brutally cutting them by a combination of a freeze on the amount paid, literal cuts through the new Universal Credit, and new sanctions against part-time workers they deem to not be sufficiently seeking additional hours of work. 

Taking these attacks into account, the Resolution Foundation recently calculated that despite the Tories' misnamed 'National Living Wage', by 2020 the poorest 30% of the population will lose an average of £565 a year, with the example of a low-earning couple with three kids being a shocking £3,000 a year worse off.

SSP Pioneers of £10 now!

The Scottish Socialist Party has consistently and persistently fought for a legally enforced national minimum wage set at the modest level of two-thirds male median earnings - £10-an-hour in today's Scotland. That's the minimum required to climb out of depending on top-up benefits. That's the least required to afford a very basic standard of living. It's still just £18,200 a year for somebody working a 35-hour week, hardly the route to becoming a millionaire. 

We have always demanded that the multiple lower youth rates should be scrapped, with the £10 minimum guaranteed to all workers and apprentices from the age of 16 upwards. That would also help prevent employers turbo-charging their profits by displacing older workers by super-exploited young people, which is precisely one of the Tories' motivations in their bogus 'National Living Wage' at 25. 

The demand for a £10 minimum for all workers was unanimously agreed at the TUC conference way back in September 2014. The time is rotten-ripe for the unions to act on this policy. Not for a £10 minimum in 2020 or some other distant date, but now. Unlike all other parties, that's what the SSP is demanding, as are our allies in the May elections, RISE. 

Slashing Real Wages 

In fighting for this modest but radical wage rise, the unions and socialists also need to organise ferocious resistance to cuts in other payments, conditions of work and hours of work that are - right now - transforming hourly pay rises into actual pay cuts for tens of thousands of workers. 

Capitalist employers have howled their anguish at even paying £7.20 to those old enough. Other profiteers have won massive Brownie points in the media for signing up as Living Wage Employers, giving a grandiose £8.25 to those who produce profits frequently measured in £billions rather than £millions. Meantime, behind the backs of society, smothered in silence from the mainstream media, these same employers are systematically slashing the incomes of many of their workers.

Retail giants like Tescos and Morrisons have scrapped double time premium payments for working Sundays.

In response to the Tories' £7.20 for over-25s, B&Q have just forced workers to 'sign up or be sacked' to a package that reduces many workers' wages by thousands of pounds, including loss of winter and summer bonuses equating to 6% of annual salary, and removal of double time for working Bank Holidays. 

McVities biscuit factory has been handing out 6-day weeks in recent months, on the miserable £6.70 minimum wage, but days before the £7.20 rate came into being, suddenly announced a lack of orders for the next two months and told workers they'd get no work at all - whilst denying they employ these people on zero hours contracts! 

The 15% leap last year in the numbers suffering the cruel insecurity of zero hours contracts is a sure recipe for capitalist employers - and cost-cutting public sector employers - to compensate themselves for a piddling pay rise by slashing hours of work, with the added, backbreaking workload on staff that accompanies these cynical steps to reduce the overall wage bill. 

Unions Need Action 

The unions need to step up to the task of organizing a battle to win their own declared policy of £10-an-hour minimum for all workers - regardless of age - and to defend and enhance premium payments for working unsocial hours, such as weekends, nightshift and public holidays.

Unions in Scotland's local authorities - who employ about 250,000 staff - need to organize appropriate industrial action to stop councils slaughtering these premium payments, and build a campaign to win back the funding off Holyrood and Westminster to defend all jobs, wages and local services.

Socialist Alternative 

This whole issue raises the need for power over the minimum wage (and employment law) to be devolved to Holyrood - this side of outright independence - so workers can organise and demand a £10 Scottish minimum wage without any loss of hours, jobs or premium payments. And within the private sector it points up the need for the socialist alternative of democratic public ownership - to remove the dictatorship of capital, where profiteering capitalists hold workers hostage, slashing hours of work, jobs and other conditions in order to boost their profit margins, whilst basking in the kudos of signing up to a marginally higher hourly wage rate. 

Join SSP 

Join the SSP in campaigning within the unions and on the streets for an immediate £10 minimum wage for all at 16, without loss of hours, jobs, premium payments or working conditions. 

Vote for that in the Scottish elections by using your second vote - the regional list vote - for RISE, Scotland's Left Alliance, to elect SSP members and other socialists to boost the battle for a legally enforced living minimum wage of £10-an-hour, without strings. 

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YOU'VE READ THE ARTICLE, NOW BUY THE BOOK!

If you want to read far more extensively into the issues surrounding and underlying poverty, pay and profit - and a vision for an entirely different (socialist) future - buy a copy of my recently published book, Break the Chains.

And for all the stories, statistics and socialist arguments it provides, it's cheap at twice the price! You get 276 pages for less than an hour's wages in the kind of system we want here and now!

Order online at www.scottishsocialistparty.org

Buy, read, enjoy and use it - and let me know what you think.