So the results are in and barring major government climb downs, we will be on strike on the 30th June.
I thought it was just worth reiterating the reasons why we'll be out.
We are being asked to work longer, pay more and get less. I won't be able to retire until I reach 68, I will have to pay at least an extra £100 out of my pension every month, and I'll receive a minimum of £168,000 less when I do retire.
There is no crisis in the pension fund. It is self-sustaining and there is no shortfall.
The proposed move from a final salary to average salary will hurt many teachers but particularly women - if you take time off to have children, your pension will suffer as a result.
Our pension money is being used for the purposes of deficit reduction. Workers are being asked to pay for this crisis. I feel like a stuck record at this point, but this crisis was not of our making. This deficit was not of our making. This was a crisis created entirely by the capitalist class and this is an attempt to make the rest of us pay. To borrow a slogan that tells us more than the ConDems are comfortable with, We Won't Pay for Their Crisis.
As a corollary to that, do not forget: this is class war. The tories are using the deficit as cover to hit our communities and hit them hard. This is a concerted bid to destroy the public sphere in whatever ways they can. The attacks on the NHS, the academies acceleration and the universities show us this. Do not be deceived: they are attacking us and if we do not resist now, our ability to withstand attacks in future will be weakened too. This is capitalism: continual class war, waged by the haves against the have nots and the have lesses. Only a fight back can halt their advances. Only socialism can end the war.
Given the disastrous victory for the Nazis last night, I think we can safely say that anti-fascist action wasn't enough.
Everywhere on the web in the run up to these elections we've seen anti-fascists win the arguments and humiliating the lying racist bastards. There's been fairly vigorous anti-fascist action on the streets too, especially in the NW where the fuhrer is setting up shop. But it wasn't enough.
I think it's pretty obvious that the fractured, fragmented left vote is responsible here. Low turnout and the lack of a single left alternative has made these elections the most right-wing I've ever seen in this country. I even found myself counting a victory for the Greens as somehow 'left' just to keep snatching at straws.
We have to do something. I suppose that the three main parties are centre-right themselves is something that it's almost easy to overlook, precisely because it is so prevalent, but when you take the victories of UKIP and Nazis into account it is clear that a right-wing narrative underpins most of the vote in the UK. The left have virtually no space left in public.
Wiser heads than mine will no doubt be providing a fuller analysis as the day goes on, but surely it shows just how desperately we on the left need to form a broad front electoral coalition that unites us.
The problem is that I genuinely can't see where the momentum for a new coalition can come from. My party has something of an image problem amongst parts of the left, although I've never really been sure why. Labour clearly can't tear itself away from The Project and most people I speak to have never even heard of John McDonnell. No2EU never really stood a chance at the Euro elections and nor did the SLP - polling made that pretty clear.
We are stuck. We can't tear down our existing organisations in favour of a new one - to take my party as an example, if we restricted ourselves to an electoral position we would destroy the very point of the party - so we need a coalition. I always thought RESPECT was perceived as too single-issue to make it very far as a permanent electoral entity, and the same with No2EU this time. We need to have a party which can put forward a genuine socialist alternative at the ballot box.
Of course, that gives us a hugely difficult problem in itself - agreeing on a programme. How far will the various groups go to compromise? I don't think any such programme should be overly calculated on concerns of 'electability' oddly enough. I think that left-wing ideas are perfectly electable, if they're put across with conviction and given the space to be explained - and besides, putting 'electability' ahead of ideology will only break apart any coalition worthy of the name before it gets started, or mean that it isn't a left-wing organisation if it does get somewhere.
But any such coalition needs resources as well as a programme. If we build one, we can expect significant party time will be taken away from other issues, like anti-fascist activity. And to get any media time at all it needs to be able to bring into it the union bureaucracy and as much of the Labour left as can be torn away from the party, which still, even now, seems like a Sysephean effort. And we'd need to be able to incorporate what electoral socialist organisations do exist into any coalition - which I can't imagine will be popular with the SLP or the SPGB.
Frankly I'm not in a great position to do anything about this myself. I'm just a humble party hack who gives up what time I can, when I can, to go to meetings and sell papers - and I've not always been terribly good at that. But something does need to be done to bring the left into some kind of unified electoral party that can make significant efforts to recapture the elected parts of our governmental machinery. Now that the fascists have got £2m to spend I think we can assume that they will become an ever greater threat, especially at a general election next year.
Update: Check out Anton Vowl - he's excellent today. But I'd avoid Socialist Unity, unless you want to be dragged into the very factionalism and infighting that got us into this mess in the first place.*
*Although it has also got some very handy background info on former NF leader and now MEP Andrew Brons.
Update:
Update: A productive/constructive discussion about the way to respond to this clusterfuck is currently ongoing over at Len's place. So if you've got tuppennyworth to add to this, why not go somewhere frequented by slightly more than 3 people? (Although I love you all, of course.)
Although of course, if you annoy Lenin he'll probably kick you out so you'll end up back here anyway...
This story has been doing the rounds for a couple of days now, but it's still cool so I include below some info what i done got sent*:
FREE PALESTINE! ISOLATE APARTHEID ISRAEL!
COSATU and PSC (South Africa) launch Week of Action for Palestine supported by YCL and other progressive organisations Media Conference, COSATU House, 3 February 2009, 11am
In a historic development for South Africa, South African dock workers have announced their determination not to offload a ship from Israel that is scheduled to dock in Durban on Sunday, 8 February 2009. This follows the decision by COSATU to strengthen the campaign in South Africa for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Apartheid Israel.
The pledge by SATAWU members in Durban reflects the commitment by South African workers to refuse to support oppression and exploitation across the globe. Last year, Durban dock workers had refused to offload a shipment of arms that had arrived from China and was destined for Zimbabwe to prop up the Mugabe regime and to intensify the repression against the Zimbabwean people. Now, says SATAWU’s General Secretary Randall Howard, the union’s members are committing themselves to not handling Israeli goods.
SATAWU’s action on Sunday will be part of a proud history of worker resistance against apartheid. In 1963, just four years after the Anti-Apartheid Movement was formed, Danish dock workers refused to offload a ship with South African goods. When the ship docked in Sweden, Swedish workers followed suit. Dock workers in Liverpool and, later, in the San Francisco Bay Area also refused to offload South African goods.
South Africans, and the South African working class in particular, will remain forever grateful to those workers who determinedly opposed apartheid and decided that they would support the anti-apartheid struggle with their actions. Last week, Western Australian members of the Maritime Union of Australia resolved to support the campaign for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel, and have called for a boycott of all Israeli vessels and all vessels bearing goods arriving from or going to Israel.
This is the legacy and the tradition that South African dock workers have inherited, and it is a legacy they are determined to honour, by ensuring that South African ports of entry will not be used as transit points for goods bound for or emanating from certain dictatorial and oppressive states such as Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Israel.
COSATU, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Young Communist League and a range of other organisations salute the principled position taken by these workers. We also take this opportunity to salute the millions of workers all over the world who have openly condemned and taken decisive steps to isolate apartheid Israel, a step that should send shockwaves to its arrogant patrons in the United States who foot the bill for Israel’s killing machine. We call on other workers and unions to follow suit and to do all that is necessary to ensure that they boycott all goods to and from Israel until Palestine is free.
We also welcome statements by various South African Jews of conscience who have dissociated themselves from the genocide in Gaza. We call on all South Africans to ensure that none of our family members are allowed to join the Israeli Occupation Forces’ killing machine.
In celebration of the actions of SATAWU members with regard to the ship from Israel, and in pursuance of the campaign for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel, and our call on the South African government to sever diplomatic and trade relations with Israel, this coalition of organisations has declared a week of action beginning on Friday, 6 February 2009.
*Although, I don't think that the situation in Gaza amounts to genocide, in the same way that Apartheid didn't.
