NEITHER COUNCIL CUTS NOR TAX HIKES - build mass defiance

As the butchery of jobs, services, community facilities, and workers' conditions looms large and ugly in the setting of Scotland's 32 council budgets, Labour and SNP politicians are knocking verbal lumps out of each other. 

But listening to their excuses for implementing savage cuts, and the feeble 'alternatives' they offer, we could be forgiven for quoting the lines from Macbeth's famous speech: 

"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 

The noisy clash between the SNP government and the non-SNP controlled councils signifies nothing but cynical party political maneuvers for the May elections, rather than any

 genuinely principled opposition to the Tory-initiated butchery of jobs and services. 

Not one council controlled by Labour, or the SNP, or both combined, has shown the courage to actually refuse to implement cuts. Nor has the SNP government, despite its monolithic mandate from the Scottish people, gained largely by their election talk of being 'anti-austerity'. 

Context of Cuts 

Context is key to mapping a route out of this nightmare. The Tories treat cuts to the public sector as a virtue. The class of super-rich and capitalists they represent have little need of public services, which they regard as a nuisance in their pursuit of profit, and they deliberately dismantle the services provided by councils in order to 'justify' privatisation for profit. 

For the past 20-odd years, successive Tory and Labour governments have felt emboldened to slash council funding, in the knowledge the overwhelming majority of councillors would act as their meek servants, rather than leaders of a rebellion.

In Scotland, successive Labour-LibDem and SNP governments have rightly and noisily condemned cuts to Scotland's budget by Westminster... only to then quietly pass on the cuts, devolving their dirty work to councils, FE college boards and the likes. 

Cut to the Bone Marrow

In the past four years alone, at least £3billion has been hacked off the flesh and bone of council expenditure. Now they are down to the bone marrow, with a further £350million cuts announced by John Swinney in his latest Local Authority Funding Settlement. 

The SNP repeatedly trot out the mantra that "this is a challenging but fair settlement for local authorities", as if repetition will take the pain away from the communities and council workers thereby hammered to an extent not seen before. 

Estimates of 20,000 job losses over the next two years; savage cuts to education; library closures; reduced care services for the elderly, children or vulnerable people; school closures; removal of flexi-time for sections of council workers; monstrously increased workloads for those who remain in a job; sky-rocketing charges for use of those community facilities that aren't simply shut down... these are but samples of the consequences of the 'fair settlement for local authorities'.

SNP Council Tax Freeze 

The crunch question, however, is what to do to avoid this butchery. 

The SNP has persisted with its 9th year of the Council Tax freeze, arguing it helps families facing attacks on their income by the Tory government. Of course, low- and middle-income families welcome respite from mounting Council Tax bills. But the richest minority, living in the biggest houses, least in need of frontline services, gain more from the SNP's freeze. And whilst they claim to be compensating councils for it, in reality it has added to the pressure on budgets. 

Raising Council Tax Bills?

The 'alternative' of ending the freeze, jacking up Council Tax bills, is entirely unacceptable, however. Tory-led Moray council, and Independent-led Highlands & Islands council were amongst those threatening to end the freeze - with Moray proposing an 18% rise on household bills. Unfortunately, some trade union leaders also advocate this as an alternative to continued cuts. 

But that's robbing the working class with one hand in order to mitigate the theft of their jobs and incomes by the other hand. And since the Council Tax only accounts for about 15% of total council income, the increases to Council Tax bills would have to be massive in order to claw back the sums stolen from councils by central government. 

The Deal Imposed 

Not content with blowing apart Tory and Labour councillors' planned tax-hiking 'alternative' by argument, John Swinney and the SNP government imposed their Council Tax freeze and £350million cuts settlement with the brute force of threatened multiple penalties, adding up to an additional £408million of cuts. That is the sum they threatened to withdraw from social care and education budgets if councils defied their Council Tax freeze.

Labour Tax on Workers 

Amidst the furore between Holyrood and the Town Hall leaders, Scottish Labour stepped forward with a proposal they hoped would outflank the SNP from 'the left'; a 1% increase on all the bands of the Scottish Rate of Income Tax being partially devolved to Holyrood this April. 

On the surface, confronted by drastic cuts, some people might initially see this as a better alternative, with its claims to raise £430million. But just like the option of a hike in Council Tax bills, it would disproportionately hit lower-paid and middle-income workers. The rules of the Scottish Rate of Income Tax concession are that the top rate of tax can't be raised without the same increase on the lowest tax band. So workers on incomes between £11,000 and £20,000 would face tax increases, another form of pay cut. 

An Election Bung!

Conscious of this, Labour proposed a £100 annual rebate to people in that income bracket. Apart from failing to deliver any detail on how this would work, Labour utterly fails to answer the charge that over a third of all those eligible for other existing rebates - such as Working Tax Credit - never claims them, which means about 150,000 low-paid workers would pay Labour's tax hike but never get the £100 lump sum back. 

Furthermore, since the average wage in Scotland last year was £27,200, the average-paid worker would be clobbered by Labour's 'Tartan Tax' without even the sop of a £100 bung... a sweetener designed to win Labour votes, rather than win the fight against cuts. 

Labour and SNP Cuts 

Just like the SNP's 1999 'Penny for Scotland', this is a regressive proposal, once again robbing wages off the working class to ease the theft of services and jobs from the working class! 

Likewise, the SNP's attacks on Labour's tax proposal - as "shifting the burden of Tory austerity onto working people" - reeks of rank hypocrisy, and electioneering opportunism, since their £350million cuts package is a grand theft of wages, jobs and public services from the same working class majority population. 

Demand No Cuts Budgets 

So what should be done to avert these, the worst attacks on council provision in memory? 

Since our formation in 1998, the SSP has persistently opposed a single penny in cuts to services, a single job loss, and advocated a twin-track alternative: defiance of Tory-inspired cuts by setting 'No Cuts' budgets both at Scottish and local government levels, as a platform to launch a mass rebellion demanding back some of the £billions stolen by Westminster, and immediate legislation in the Scottish parliament to abolish the regressive Council Tax and replace it with a progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax. That's the alternative we've argued for in council unions, in community groups, on the streets and through SSP councillor Jim Bollan in West Dumbarton.

Increasingly, trade unions representing council workers have adopted a version of this 'No Cuts Budget' strategy - including all five unions in Labour-controlled Glasgow city council and those in SNP-controlled Dundee city council. 

Instead of passing on the punishment meted out by the 'Westmonster' Tories, the SNP government and Labour/SNP councillors should discover the collective backbone to 'stand up for Scotland'; the Scotland of workers and working class communities, not the Scotland of the millionaires and billionaires who are dictating public policy to a compliant Cameron government. 

Setting No Cuts budgets wouldn't on its own transform people's lives, but it would be a firm launchpad for a serious struggle to win back the funds to save jobs, workers' conditions and local public services. 

Rejecting Cuts and Buying Time 

As a very short-term tactic, to buy the time to build such a mass campaign of council workers and communities - and to simultaneously pass legislation to replace the Council Tax with one based on ability to pay - MSPs and councillors could devise budgets that avoid cuts by use of reserves, budget underspends, rescheduled debt repayments, and borrowing powers. 

For instance, the Scottish government budget for 2014/15 was underspent by £350million. And that's an annual feature (it was £444million the previous year), as the SNP seek managerial respectability, instead of even contemplating leading a serious fight to defy and defeat Westminster's financial butchery. 

A year ago, Audit Scotland reported that Scotland's councils had a combined total of £1.8billion in what they termed 'useable reserves'. 

So there's no basis for the plea by SNP and Labour politicians that 'we have to balance the books'; that they're obliged to pass on Tory cuts.

There's plenty of room for short-term devices that would buy precious time to mount a ferocious campaign to win back some of the £billions stolen off Scotland to fund tax breaks for the millionaires and big corporations. And to push through an income-based Scottish Service Tax which - based on 2015 figures - would double local tax revenue from £2billion to £4billion, but would also mean 77% of people paying less for council services than they do in Council Tax.

Defiance not Destruction 

With the exception of the SSP's Jim Bollan, no councillor has so far emerged willing to lead this route out of the swamplands of cuts and tax hikes that hammer ordinary people. So trade unions, community campaigns and socialists need to pound the MSPs and councillors in the squabbling Labour and SNP camps with demands of defiance, instead of different roads to destruction for workers and those depending on local services. 

The SSP and other socialists are advocating this alternative, alongside growing numbers in the unions; principled opposition to the butchery dictated by Cameron's capitalist Cabinet, rather than the vote-seeking posturing of both Labour and the SNP leaderships. 

Lobbies and demos at council meetings should be just the start of a struggle to resist and defeat cuts, even if not a single local authority, when setting its budget, discovers the courage to defy Holyrood and Westminster. 

DISARM THE KNIFE-WIELDING COUNCILLORS & MSPs

Defiance or destruction: that's the stark choice facing elected councillors and MSPs across Scotland as they debate the budgets for local councils in the context of the Scottish government's recent Local Authority Funding settlement. 

Defiance of Tory-initiated cuts to public sector jobs and services, or destruction of at least 20,000 council workers' jobs this year alone, and decimation of vital, lifeline services to children's education, and care services for children, frail elderly people, and vulnerable adults.

IN THE DEAD OF WINTER 

Every one of Scotland's 32 local councils is embroiled in decisions about this year's budget, to be voted on in the next few weeks. In the dead of winter, when most people were preparing their family Christmas, the Scottish government announced its budget, which included what John Swinney euphemistically termed "a challenging settlement for local authorities". In honest English, it actually means a 3.5% cut to council funding from Holyrood (which is overwhelmingly the main source of council funding); a loss of £350m this year alone. 

SNP DEVOLVE TORY CUTS 

The SNP rightly condemn the annual cuts to the block grant from Westminster. But when John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon claim that they've been 'very fair' to councils, and that "local authorities' share of the budget has remained fairly steady" over the past five years, they're playing with words to hide the truth. Councils'  share might be similar, but with overall cuts to Scottish public spending as a whole, the savage truth is revealed by Audit Scotland in their 2015 Report: in just three years, from 2010 to 2013, Scottish government funding to councils was slashed by 8.5%. Even the SNP-Labour council in Edinburgh admits a fall of 14% in its real budget from Holyrood since 2010. 

And now a further 3.5% is to be hacked off last year's funding, which itself led to thousands of job losses, service cuts and exorbitant increases to service charges. Indeed, 40,000 local authority jobs have vanished in the past five years.  

NEW SAVAGERY IN 2016

The savagery facing Scotland's 250,000 council workers and communities depending on vital services this year and next makes the recent past look like a Golden Age! Cosla, which represents 28 of the 32 councils, has warned of 15,000 job losses. The union UNITE forecasts 20,000 - this year alone. 

And councils of all political complexions are plunging the knife like maniacs, with Labour-led Glasgow threatening 3,000 jobs to 'save' £131m this year; SNP-led Dundee seeking 'volunteers' for redundancy amongst its 6,000 non-teaching staff to slash £23m; and the SNP-Labour coalition in Edinburgh city council no longer guaranteeing that they'll avoid compulsory redundancies as they seek to butcher 2,000 jobs as part of this year's £141m cut. 

Vital services face decimation. One of the flagship policies of the SNP government is to close the education attainment gap between the richest kids and the rest; a gap that is yawning as wide as ever under their watch. Contrary to any such goal, even the Scottish Parliament Information Service (SPICE) reveals that the national education and lifelong learning budget is being cut by £83m (2.3%). In turn this threatens the loss of specialist teachers and support staff in most local authorities. 

WHAT TO DO INSTEAD??

So what should councils - and indeed the Scottish government - do, instead of meekly passing on a menu of brutality ultimately drawn up by Westminster's Tories? 

Some councils, such as Tory-led Moray and Independent-led Highlands, are threatening to defy the SNP government's 9-year-old council tax freeze. But the Council Tax is a pernicious, regressive means of collecting in £2billion for local authorities... still only about 15% of overall council funds, which predominantly depend on funds off Holyrood. So jacking up Council Tax bills (by 18% in the Moray Tories' plans!) will hit the poorest and middle-income households hardest.  

Putting up the Council Tax is death by financial strangulation rather than death by a thousand cuts. 

DON'T FREEZE THE COUNCIL TAX - BURY IT! 

On the other hand, the SNP's freeze on Council Tax bills also helps the better-off more than lower-income families, and adds to the squeeze on council spending, jobs, services.  

As the SSP has persistently argued, the Council Tax shouldn't be frozen, but put into cold storage, killed off, abolished, and urgently replaced by emergency legislation in the Scottish parliament with a progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax - which we've demonstrated would mean 77% of people paying less, the very rich a damn sight more, with funds thereby raised for councils literally doubled, from £2billion to £4billion.  

SET 'NO CUTS' DEFIANCE BUDGETS 

More immediately, while pushing ahead with such a progressive form of local taxation reform, the Scottish government and local councils should refuse point blank to pass on Westminster's cuts and set No Cuts Defiance budgets. Not as a feeble political gesture, but as the starting gun for a massive campaign built amongst council workers and local communities to win back some of the £billions stolen off Scotland in recent years. 

The SNP swept the elections by claiming to be 'anti-austerity'. Jeremy Corbyn replicated that by storming into the Labour leadership position with his 'anti-austerity' message, which included a call on Labour councillors to "combine and refuse to implement Tory cuts." 

Both the SNP and Labour have a mandate to defy Tory austerity; now they need to start practicing what they preach. 

BUT WHAT IS A 'NO CUTS' BUDGET?

For several years the SSP has advocated Defiance Budgets, No Cuts Budgets, at both Scottish and council levels. But what do we mean? 

It means setting out spending plans that protect every single job, wage packet, local service and community facility. It doesn't even have the ambition of being a 'needs budget', or a 'people's budget', with advances and reforms; merely the modest aim of defending what little we already have.  

WIN BACK THE FUNDING SHORTFALL 

Then, due to successive years of cuts, that would leave an inevitable shortfall compared to income from government funding, council tax, service charges and rents. But instead of punishing the working class by hikes in Council Tax bills or service charges, we advocate a systematic mobilization of workers, user groups and communities to force funds out of the greedy fists of Westminster.  

But that would be illegal, and just lead to fines, sequestration and jail for councillors, cry the Labour (and SNP) benches. Wrong! On several counts, wrong!

In one of his disappointing retreats in the face of treachery in his own party and the media frenzy, Jeremy Corbyn has more recently circulated Labour councillors insisting they "must not set illegal budgets". There's no need for such capitulation to threats of being branded 'illegal'. 

DISMISS THE SCAREMONGERING ABOUT FINES AND JAILINGS!

For starters, councils (and the Scottish government) could temporarily fill much of the spending gap for this year's budgets by use of existing powers over their (annual!) underspend, reserves, borrowing powers and cancellation of debt repayments. On just the latter mechanism, since Scottish devolution, local authorities have forked out £3.6billion in interest charges on their £2.5billion debt!  

Such financial mechanisms would only be a very temporary reprieve, a delaying tactic to help mount a serious struggle to win back funding off the Tory thieves. They would not be a solution in themselves, but a means of buying some time to mobilize for the real solution: more funding from central government. 

And fines and sequestration of councillors were abolished in legislation 15 years ago, giving councillors more room for maneuver than the socialist councillors in Liverpool enjoyed in the 1980s.  

A MANDATE TO DEFY TORY CUTS 

In any case, MSPs and councillors weren't elected to obey David Cameron or George Osborne. Instead of whining about Tory austerity and then passing it on to local people and their own workforce, SNP and Labour politicians should discover the collective spine to stand up to the Tory cuts, defy them, set out a No Cuts budget, and then build a Scottish rebellion to force the Tories into retreat, to win back the funding to balance the books. 

IT CAN AND HAS BEEN DONE!

It could be done. It has been done. I was at the heart of the mass movement in Liverpool which involved regular workplace mass meetings, college students meetings, public rallies in the communities, one-day regional general strikes and demos of up to 50,000 in Liverpool in the '80s. The result? Working class people won back over £60million (about £100m in today's money) off the hard-faced Maggie Thatcher - through a mass struggle inspired by a group of socialist councillors prepared to defy the Tories and go all the way to win the funds to vastly improve working class people's lives, housing, jobs and incomes. 

And that was in one city, smaller than Glasgow. Imagine even a few councils in Scotland, in alliance with the Scottish government, staging the equivalent defiance, demanding back some of our stolen £billions, from the far-weaker Tory government of Cameron? 

MAKE COUNCILLORS & MSPs STAND UP - OR STAND ASIDE FOR THOSE PREPARED TO FIGHT

As we head towards the budget-making meetings, workers, communities and socialists should pound Labour and SNP councillors and MSPs to stand up for the working class majority, defy Tory cuts, and set out on the road to a mass struggle that could defeat the worst savagery in at least a generation. 

And hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully! If these politicians fail to give a lead, and bow the knee to Westminster cuts, they should be forcibly reminded of the forthcoming Scottish elections, where the SSP and other socialists will advocate precisely the option of defiance, not destruction. 

RECOLLECTIONS OF GLACIER METAL FACTORY SIT-IN VICTORY

 

On Hogmanay 1996, the Glasgow Glacier Metal engineering workers were ringing the bells in elation at their victory, whilst Glacier bosses were wringing their hands in despair.

The ‘Polmadie 103’ had scored a landmark victory for class struggle trade unionism, defeating the factory’s multinational owners, Turner & Newall, after a seven week factory sit-in. 

It was the first workplace occupation in ten years, and was provoked by dictatorial bosses trying to impose a 15-point change of contract, which aimed to double company profits, cut wages by £123 a week and slash sick pay, the canteen subsidy and other benefits won over 25 years by these members of the AEEU, now part of UNITE the union.

The boss’s method of imposing this was designed to undermine the union. He picked on the youngest tradesman in the workforce, and ordered him to risk health and safety by doing two jobs at once. The lad went to his union stewards, who had prepared for this confrontation and, advising the entire workforce to ‘down tools’, went upstairs to negotiate.

As they waited outside his office, the manager sneaked down to the factory floor to declare: “Gentlemen, you are all sacked!" Four of those sacked were on holiday, while another was convalescing after operations for brain 

Advantages of Factory Occupation  

Critically, instead of walking out the door on strike, which years before had landed them in a prolonged lockout, the workers stayed in the factory, declaring themselves available for work.

This totally wrong-footed management, and gave the highly-skilled workers several strategic advantages. They seized control of a factory with £1million worth of undelivered precision engineering products, paralysing £200,000-a-day production and thereby putting pressure on the owners from customer companies. I'll never forget the irate phone call to the factory during the sit-in, when a company boss bellowed: "What's going on with my orders? I've got a f***ing nuclear power station to run!"

They psychologically brought the battle into the bosses’ domain, preventing them bussing in scabs past legally-hamstrung pickets with police assistance, as Timex had done in Dundee 1993. And above all, they were fighting for their jobs, justice and full trade union rights inside a well-heated factory, with snow-storms outside, making it one huge campaigning nerve centre.

Building Workers' Solidarity  

If the factory occupation had remained a ‘folded arms’ affair, waiting for concessions from the employers, it would have collapsed, or at best allowed some dirty deal to be hatched above their heads between the management and top AEEU officials, who had secret contact with the company as early as five days into the occupation. But this inspiring workers’ struggle was a model of strategy and tactics. Firm discipline was established by the union stewards and Occupation Committee, with a booze ban and daily mass meetings. Meals were cooked and the factory kept clean.

Role of Socialists in the Sit-in 

Some of us who later founded the SSP played a major role in this historic event.

I first called to offer practical solidarity the morning after they started the occupation. We had been in the thick of building support for the 500 locked-out Liverpool dockers for the previous 15 months, and used our vast array of workplace contacts to arrange solidarity visits with Glacier workers all over Scotland – and parts of the UK, particularly those with big engineering industries. This served several purposes, including financial survival for the workers’ families and a breach in the media vow of silence.

On the issue of whether management could evict them, we explained the law, with the help of a couple of friendly lawyers, but emphasised that the ultimate means of defence of the sit-in from potential moves - involving police, or cowboy security firms - was to build mass support in the workplaces and surrounding community, creating a potential army of defence.

Solidarity Mass Pickets  

The employers hoped to isolate the sit-in with the help of media silence, aiming to starve the workers’ families into submission as Christmas loomed large. Workplace solidarity tours helped scupper that. It also countered the danger of boredom and demoralisation setting in amongst a workforce not previously known for involvement in the wider movement. 

When management told the arbitration service ACAS that they had no workforce, we smelt a rat, suspecting imminent eviction, and in discussions with the Occupation Committee suggested an early morning solidarity mass picket, built through a leaflet around workplaces and the mailing list of the Clydeside Dockers' Support Group (which I was the organiser of). That vastly boosted morale, became a weekly feature, and peaked at a turnout of 400.

Taking to the Streets 

We then suggested a pre-Xmas demo, which attracted well over 1,000 on Sunday 15 December. One report claimed 3,000. The build-up was as important as this stirring event itself. The Occupation Committee had coopted me as an adviser, and put me in charge of a small Demo Committee. We involved the absolute majority of the men, and a few of their partners, in street meetings, issuing hard-hitting leaflets that won support, by-passed the media blackout, and swamped workplaces and shopping centres across the west of Scotland.

An ACAS boss complained after a leaflet was left unwittingly on his windscreen, because it described Turner & Newall as ‘notorious merchants of death’, citing their appalling record on asbestosis. AEEU officials went ape-shit down the phone to the union convener, who firmly rejected their instructions and printed 29,000 of the ‘offending’ leaflet. This propaganda offensive helped bring T&N bosses to heel, as they already faced dire problems with £billions of outstanding asbestosis claims and feared their notoriety being broadcast.

Supporting Locked-out Liverpool Dockers  

The workers were literally dancing with elation after the success of the demo. They then turned their attention to daily street collections in the run up to Xmas – for financial survival, but also to keep the campaign alive and in people’s minds.

The first big collection, on 18 December, raised £488 … for the Liverpool dockers. The Occupation Committee rounded it up to £600, in an act of selfless solidarity born of their own experiences in battle. On Xmas Eve, a team hit Glasgow’s Argyle Street from 10am to 5pm and collected £2,800.

Negotiations began that day, involving both full-time union officials and the factory union convener and deputy convener. T&N’s head of Employee Relations grizzled that as they negotiated, Glacier workers were on the streets with megaphones and leaflets attacking T&N. That was part of the point – to pile pressure on the company and remind right-wing AEEU officials what was at stake.

An Xmas day breakfast was laid on in the occupied factory for families and supporters – another ingenious act of defiance and comradeship by people whose talents erupted in the heat of battle. 

Outright Victory! 

By Hogmanay, the 103 workers were celebrating a landmark victory. All were reinstated, with full union recognition, and very little conceded to the bosses on their conditions of work. In a final fling at undermining union rights, the company tried to get a staggered return to work – which the AEEU full-time officials agreed to. The workers’ direct union representatives went ballistic, refused, said it was a ploy to potentially victimise leaders of the occupation, and won a proud, united return to work.

A multinational giant was brought to its knees by the tactics, skills, and impact on production by this factory occupation. Socialists played an important, constructive part, applying collective experience to living struggles, laying foundations for a united, working class socialist party - in the form of the SSP, established two years after the Polmadie 103's victory. 

Capitalists Complain! 

Such was the impact of this victorious struggle in the southside of Glasgow, that a dissident voice in the hierarchy of Turner & Newall management reproduced the article I wrote on its tenth anniversary, with a covering note bemoaning their losses.

"Even if they worked only 5 days per week, at “£200,000-a-day” this 7-week strike cost them £7 million, plus legal and administrative costs of fighting the strike. And they lost not only the strike but their former stronger position against the union.

Here’s an exquisite example of why [former Glacier Metal Company CEO] Wilfred Brown’s ideas about Works Councils make management stronger, not weaker. Had Turner & Newall had the guts to restore this strong institution — instead of the cowardice of underhanded union-busting — they would have been in a stronger position overall in their discussion with the union."

Interestingly, he advocated a return to earlier methods of Works Councils - the much-vaunted concept of 'social partnership' - rather than full-frontal union-busting methods... to achieve precisely the same cost-cutting, profit-boosting attacks on workers' terms and conditions!

As workplace closures and massive redundancies erupt 20 years on, workers and their union leaderships should study, adapt and apply the lessons from this outstanding model of how to defy the dictatorship of capital.

BREAK THE CHAINS: a book is born!

Behold - a book is born!

My absence from this blog in recent weeks was due to being 'chained' to the computer finishing off this book.
With 276 pages, it's a bargain Christmas present for yourself, family or friends!
Cover price is £7.99 (plus £2 packaging & postage if you can't arrange face-to-face collection) - or £9.99 solidarity price (plus £2 p&p)... which is only right for those who can afford it, as workers' solidarity to win back a greater share of the wealth we produce - and ultimately win power for the working class majority in a socialist democracy - are the central themes.

To get a copy or copies, look out for the official launches next week,
OR contact me through this blog,
OR send a cheque, payable to 'Scottish Socialist Party' - for either £9.99 or £11.99 - or any amount above that!! - to:
Scottish Socialist Party, Suite 370, Central Chambers, 93 Hope St, Glasgow G2 6LD.

Some trade union branches are already ordering multiple copies, in the belief it will contribute to their campaigns and membership's awareness of key issues.

I hope you get it, read and digest it, discuss it. I hope it will make you feel all the more motivated and informed in the struggle against poverty, inequality, exploitation - and the capitalist system that spawns them - and join the battle for socialist democracy.
Enjoy!

CHOOSE DEFIANCE - NOT DESTRUCTION!

You couldn't make it up! 

David Cameron, Tory MP for West Oxfordshire, recently wrote a letter to the Oxfordshire Tory council leader, berating his local authority for (to quote his epistle) "cuts to frontline services - from elderly day centres to libraries to museums. This is in addition to the unwelcome and counter-productive proposals to close children's centres across the county." 

The MP, claiming "shock and outrage", goes on to demand why the council leader hasn't looked at "back-office savings" - a euphemism for sacking council staff.

Tory Tit-for-Tat 

The Tory council leader replies to the Tory MP that his council has already sacked 2,800 staff, that the cuts they now plan are the only ones left to make, and caustically corrects Cameron's claims in his letter by stating:

"I cannot accept your description of a drop in funding of £72million, or 37% of our budget, as 'a slight fall'."

And of course David Cameron, the Tory MP desperate to express feigned concern at cuts to frontline services, is the same David Cameron, the Tory Prime Minister, whose hatchet-wielding Westminster government has hacked the 37% off the local council in the area where he needs to curry favour with voters. 

Tory Axe Maniacs 

Cameron, and his companion in crimes against working class communities, George Osborne, are swinging the axe like maniacs. Osborne's Autumn Spending Review on spending plans for the next three years looms large and ugly. On top of the £35billion cuts last July, it's likely to detail the target of cuts to departmental budgets averaging 30%, a mind-boggling horror story for millions of people who depend on the public sector either for a job, a vital service, or both.

Block Grant Butchery 

One of the multiple cuts the Tories will impose is that to the Scottish block grant. And that comes on top of successive years of budget cuts. In the words of SNP Finance Secretary John Swinney, "since 2010 Scotland's overall budget has been cut by 9%, and its capital budget by 25%."

The crunch question that follows this savagery is stark: what will John Swinney and the SNP government do about it? 

Will they just do the equivalent of writing a letter of complaint before passing on the cuts, delegating the dirty work to further education college boards, Scotland's 32 local councils, and similar public sector services? 

Or will they kick up a storm of resistance, uniting workers, communities and students in a mass movement to stop the Westminster Tory butchery?

Passing On Cuts 

Past experience of the SNP government's reaction is not encouraging. They've rightly condemned Westminster cuts every year, but then meekly passed them on, to the tune of well over £3billion over four years. 

This year, they've even delayed the Scottish government's Spending Review from its usual September slot to the dead of December or early January, claiming this is because they won't know the amount in Scotland's block grant from Westminster until Osborne's pronouncement on 25 November. 

Some people suspect it's also an attempt to hide the consequential cuts to jobs and vital services from intense public scrutiny and organised opposition, made harder to build in the deep mid-winter.

Set a No Cuts Budget at Holyrood! 

If the SNP government seriously wanted to carry out its mandate, showing in deeds what they claimed in words about being 'anti-austerity', they could even take advantage of Osborne's timetable, by setting out their budget for Scotland early, without a penny cut to jobs, pay, capital investment or services, and then mount a full-frontal campaign of the Scottish people to demand sufficient funding off Westminster to balance the books.

It's been done before! 

It can be done. It has been done. I was at the heart of the struggle by the socialist council in Liverpool in the mid-'80s, when we organised mass meetings of council workers, communities and college students, called demos of up to 50,000, organised regional 24-hour general strikes - all to pound the hard-faced government of Maggie Thatcher into conceding the funds to build thousands of council houses, jobs and expanded services. 

We won back over £60million in 1984, through the defiance and mass struggle of one city, led by socialists and socialist councillors. Imagine that method applied to a whole nation - led by a government with a sweeping mandate to 'stand up for Scotland', as the SNP promised to do during elections?

For No Cuts Defiance Budgets

The same points apply to every local council in the land. They face a stark choice: defy the cuts or destroy the services and jobs of hundreds of thousands of people who elected them to oppose the Tories.

Labour and SNP councils alike are declaring mass butchery of jobs and frontline services, in a shameful refusal to stand up for the working class who elected them. 

Trade unionists, user groups, workers and students should pound these politicians to find a collective backbone, set No Cuts Defiance Budgets, and join in a massive movement to 'win back our stolen £millions', off Holyrood and Westminster. 

Pound the Politicians  

All five council workers' unions in Glasgow city council have adopted the fighting policy of setting a No Cuts budget. Union branches across Scotland should emulate this. And socialists in the SSP will stand four-square with council staff, the trade union movement, user groups and other anti-cuts campaigners in demanding that councillors choose defiance rather than destruction. 

Labour councillors have been advised by their party leader Jeremy Corbyn to 'resist Tory cuts'. The SNP won a landslide by claiming to be 'anti-austerity'. In both cases, let's see the colour of their money. 

Stand Up - or Stand Aside!

Empty talk won't save jobs or protect services. But a serious campaign to win back some of the £billions robbed off Scotland, and the £millions stolen off local councils and colleges, would ignite a movement of hope and determination to change the way we live, on a par with the enthusiastic Yes movement during the Referendum. 

Defiance or destruction: that's the choice facing MSPs and councillors. 

The SSP knows which side we are on. Join the battle to make the politicians in power fight the Tories - or stand aside for those of us prepared to do so. 

POVERTY PAY SCANDAL WORSENS

New figures on low pay reinforce the importance of the campaign by the SSP for an immediate £10-an-hour minimum wage. And the urgency of pounding union leaderships into taking action in pursuit of this policy, which was agreed unanimously at the 2014 TUC conference.

A new publiciation by KPMG has revealed that 450,000 workers in Scotland - one in every five workers - earn below the so-called Living Wage, which was £7.85 at the time of their research, but has been uprated this week to £8.25-an-hour. And far from representing progress, this figure is a leap of another 27,000 workers in Scotland working for less than the Living Wage Foundation's (far too modest) hourly rate compared with last year.

Across the UK a shocking 5.84 million workers suffer such poverty pay. That includes 3.21 million in part-time jobs, a category which is three times as likely to be on low pay as those working full-time.

A disgraceful 90% of bar staff, 85% of waiters and waitresses, and 80% of kitchen and catering staff are condemned to work for this pittance. And the biggest single section of workers affected - 920,000 of us - are in retail and sales.

SICK TORY JOKES 

All the guff about the Tories promising a 'National Living Wage' is designed to confuse the facts, not to eradicate poverty pay. 

The idea of a voluntary 'Living Wage' - now £8.25-an-hour - is noble, but ignored by the vast majority of employers... and in any case still far too low to merit the title 'Living Wage', especially in the context of the Tory slaughter of Working Tax and Child Tax Credits.

The idea that the Tories' £7.20 is a 'national living wage' is a sick joke - made sicker still by excluding workers aged under-25.

£10 NOW!

The SSP is fighting for a national minimum wage, legally enforced, of £10, for all aged 16 or over. Here and now, not in 2020 or some other distant date. 

That's the level required to have a decent, if modest, standard of living. It's the level needed to remove workers from reliance on tax-funded top-ups like Tax Credits. And it's the hourly rate the TUC agreed to campaign for over a year ago.

I'd appeal to anyone reading this to join us in fighting for this living minimum wage, on the streets, through your union, in your workplace. Help banish poverty pay in this rich country.

NATIONALISE TO SAVE OUR STEEL JOBS, SKILLS & PRODUCTION!

The timing could not have been more obscenely appropriate, as a symbol of the cold class warfare facing working class people under Tory rule, and indeed under the rule of capital over labour in general.

Hot on the heels of the destructive closure of SSI steel plant in Redcar, shedding 2,200 jobs, came the devastation of Tata Steel's closure announcement, slashing 1,200 jobs in Scunthorpe, Motherwell and Cambuslang. These closures threaten the permanent end of the steel industry in Scotland.

In both cases, SSI and Tata owners blamed a flood of cheap Chinese steel on the world market for their decisions to wipe out livelihoods for whole communities. 

Royal Banquets for Rich - the Bullet for Workers 

Meantime, Cameron's upper-class regime hosted and banqueted dictatorial Chinese President Xi Jinping at Buckingham Palace. Venison from the Queen's Balmoral estate, west of Scotland Turbot, lobster mousse and 1977 vintage port were some of the items on the menu at the royal state banquet - with callous disregard for the thousands of steelworkers' families who meantime face the prospect of not being able to put a meal on the family table if these closures are not resisted and defeated.

Steel Town - Not Ghost Town

Lanarkshire used to be one of the world centres of steel production, with highly skilled, proud workers, who fought through their unions to conquer relatively good conditions.

Ravenscraig was once the biggest hot-strip steel producer in Europe. Now it does not exist. And plans to build a new town on its former site have been abandoned, but only after £230m was spent on the first phase!

The Dalzell Steel and Iron Works opened in Motherwell in 1872. Clydebridge steelworks in Cambuslang has been there since 1887, and produced steel plates for many of the Clyde-built ships of fame.

They were once part of the nationalized British Steel Corporation, which Thatcher's government targeted in their early crusade to smash the unions and privatize public property for the benefit of the profiteering class. First Corus, then Indian-based Tata Steel took over the plants now facing closure. At their peak, 12,000 workers produced vital supplies and profits in the two plants; as one worker told journalists, they used to allow 15 minutes at either end of the shift to get to and from their place of work in the plant, such was the crowd. Now the remaining 270 have been given 45 days' notice of closure.

A Desert in the Making

These workers and their families face the devastation of lost jobs, in an area turned into an industrial desert by the conscious destruction of manufacturing by Thatcher's pro-finance capitalist regime, added to by this week's announcement of 1,100 council job losses in North Lanarkshire. These two jobs slaughters combined threaten to double the numbers unemployed in the Motherwell district. 

But the area, and indeed the whole of Scotland, also faces the danger of losing the accumulated skills of these workers, in a nation already suffering a skills shortage of monumental proportions.

So it is crucial to the next generation - and this one - that a determined fight is waged to save every job, save the skills, and save production at the steelworks. The SSP will do everything in our powers to combine with the unions and anyone else willing to fight to 'save our steel'.

Steel Glut - Crisis of Overproduction 

The capitalist rich and their Tory puppets spout all the usual platitudes about sympathy for the workforces, whilst excusing the closures. 

Cameron took a break from banqueting the Chinese dictator to crush hopes of a UK government rescue by spelling out that there's a world glut of steel production. According to the figures he used, the surplus global supply of steel is 50 times larger than the UK's entire steel production. 

That explains the catastrophic collapse of steel prices on the world market, to half their previous levels. And that of course is a central feature of the system Cameron and his likes defends to the hilt - capitalism. Because it's a system based on competition between rival capitalist corporations battling for the biggest possible share of the market at the highest possible levels of profit for each of them, the system goes through a phase of massive production, until it goes beyond what can be sold. A crisis of overproduction. 

The current steel crisis is a classic example of this rotten, unplanned system, where the private profits of a few owners comes first and always - whilst workers, families, communities and whole nations are thrown to the wolves.

Rigging the Market

Other specific factors have added to the catastrophe facing steelworkers in this country. The massive growth of the Chinese economy includes huge output of steel. As part of their drive to become the biggest economic world power, their steel corporations are quite prepared to dump dirt-cheap imports on competing nations, including at prices below production costs, so as to win greater world market domination. 

And Chinese steel companies have pulled off tax-avoidance tricks by adding alloying elements to their steel reinforcement bar, such as boron and chromium, despite boron being notorious for causing severe welding failure, but providing no benefits to the rebar. Why do they do this? Because it earns these companies a tax rebate of 9-13% from the Chinese government. 

Chinese Workers not to Blame

That of course is not the fault of Chinese workers. Chinese workers have as much right to jobs as anyone else on the planet. It's the fault of the system. It's the very nature of capitalism. It's part of the DNA of profit-seeking, tax-dodging corporations the wide world over, not just in China. As is the ruthless exploitation of Chinese workers by their employers.

Additionally, the British state has done precious little to support its own steel industry, refusing for example to match the subsidies for energy costs issued to energy-intensive sectors by the governments of other European competitors. The steel union, Community, for example is demanding that the UK government fast-tracks the £220m per annum fund they have for this subsidy.

Tasks for Steel Task Force

The Scottish government has swiftly set up a Scottish Steel Task Force. Nicola Stugeon has repeatedly pledged that the SNP administration "will leave no stone unturned" in their efforts to save Scottish steel, a phrase imitated in every comment by every SNP Minister since. The SNP government is focusing on finding "a new commercial owner". 

As the STUC rightly said, it would be totally unacceptable if the Task Force was deployed to just find alternative jobs for redundant steel workers. It must instead pursue ways to save the industry and the skills of the workforce. 

This issue has a history in previous closure situations. For example, when Motorola shut down its West Lothian plant, instead of finding ways to integrate the expertise of these electronics workers in a government industrial strategy, they were instead 'supported' by a Task Force in pursuit of other job vacancies outwith electronics. As the SSP's Colin Fox often tells me, the next time he met the Motorola workers' representative (they didn't have an actual trade union) he was sweeping the forecourt in Harthill service station. 

Another Private Owner?

No socialist or trade unionist would hesitate to warmly welcome a new buyer for the Tata steelworks, provided they kept every worker in a job, with no loss of pay, terms and conditions. It has now emerged that in their desperation to hold onto their jobs, workers offered to accept pay cuts and reduced conditions to Tata Steel. But why should workers pay the price of a crisis in steel that is not of their making? 

However, putting the entire focus of a rescue mission on attracting another capitalist firm is fraught with pitfalls, to put it mildly. If that's all the Scottish government and its Task Force looked at for the remainder of the 45 days consultation period, it could end in a slow death for the industry and its skilled workers, if no such buyer steps forward. 

This health warning is necessary, because such a buyer wouldn't be investing in the steel plants as an act of charity; in keeping with every capitalist firm, they'd be doing so on the calculation of making a hefty profit. 

And if the world steel glut cuts off the path to such profiteering, what private sector buyer is likely to emerge? Already, Scottish billionaire Jim McColl, who took over Ferguson's shipyard in Port Glasgow when it faced closure last year, has ruled out buying the steelworks. He made the point that if a major outfit like Tata Steel couldn't make it work, he sees no scope for "smaller entrepreneurial Scottish involvement".

Nationalise Steelworks!

The human, social and symbolic importance of saving the steelworks demands urgent, radical action by the government. Whilst pounding the Westminster cabal to save our steel is right to do, the unions and communities affected shouldn't store much faith in that producing favorable action. 

But in contrast to Cameron's government of, by and for the rich, the Scottish government has a sweeping mandate to 'stand up for Scotland'. When the First Minister promises to 'leave no stone unturned' there is one glaring exception so far: the option of the government stepping in and taking ownership of the Tata Steel plants is one 'stone left unturned', at least so far. Yet that is the key and most practical solution.

They did so with Prestwick airport, buying it for a penny. If, as I heard one economist on the BBC object, Tata Steel wasn't inclined to sell the Lanarkshire plants for the token penny, so what! 

They've profited as a capitalist enterprise long enough, with virtually no publicity over the fact that in the quarter up to June 2015, Tata Steel Ltd doubled their profits compared to the same quarter in 2014 - to £76.6million. But now they want to up sticks and run, leaving an industrial desert behind in Lanarkshire.

So the Scottish government should take ownership of the steelworks, as a public asset, with public ownership rather than public funding of the profits of another profiteering capitalist 'entrepreneur' - even if one that is interested actually exists!

A Plan of Production

In turn that throws up the issue of how the steelworks could survive, as a public asset, if the globe is flooded with a glut of steel, a capitalist crisis of overproduction. 

I don't pretend to be a steel technologist! But surely the expertise of the workers involved, their trade union, plus industry experts could be urgently pulled together to devise a plan of production? Surely the Scottish government could use the Task Force to fully involve workers and unions in drafting a plan of what types of steel products the existing technology and skills set of the workforce could be used to link up with a wider industrial strategy? 

Options for Socially Useful Production 

For instance, to produce steel for a desperately needed public sector house-building programme, to tackle the crime of 157,000 families in Scotland being stuck on the housing waiting list? Or production of equipment for flood barriers? Or marine engineering equipment, as part of developing a huge public sector green industry? Or steel products to build the fleets and infrastructure for a vastly expanded public transport system?

Nationalisation of Scotland's steel industry, with a plan of production for local, socially useful need, would help bypass the obstacles of the global glut of steel, created by a system that produces purely for maximum profit.

Energy Profiteering 

Wider questions also arise from this catastrophic situation, including the socialist case for democratic public ownership of not just steel, or the construction industry, or transport - but also the energy industry, renewables included. One of Tata Steel's excuses for closure is high electricity prices - which in turn is largely caused by the profiteering of private capitalist ownership of energy supply. So the longer-term solutions to the human tragedy of workers being chucked on the scrapheap - when it suits the balance sheets of capitalist employers -would require democratic planning of industry, energy and services - something only possible with democratic public ownership.

Solidarity and Socialism 

We need to rally round the workers, their families and the communities faced with ruination by the threatened wipeout of an industry with over 150 years' history in Scotland. 

And the best contribution those of us not directly employed can make is to help popularise the rational alternative of nationalisation to save all steel jobs, skills and production - and put pressure on the elected government to wield the powers and authority they have been invested with by voters to carry out this measure before the furnaces cool and die.