Scrap GCSEs & A-Levels, say 2000 Headteachers

TODAY on the Lockdown Sceptic's website edited by Toby Young, reported:

As night follows day, headteachers are now demanding that GCSEs and A-levels be scrapped again this year. Why? To protect their staff from being infected with a virus that, if you’re under-70 and healthy, is less deadly than seasonal flu....

Head teachers have warned that GCSE and A-level exams cannot go ahead this summer after plans for reopening schools for the spring term were thrown into chaos.

Most primary schools in England are due to open tomorrow, followed by a phased start for secondary schools a week later with GCSE and A-level pupils returning first. The Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, still insists that teenagers must sit the national exams.

However, a network of 2,000 head teachers in 80 local authorities will today insist that teachers, pupils and parents should not be put at risk of contracting COVID-19 in order to protect the GCSE and A-level timetables.

“Wider public health, pupil and staff safety should be prioritised ahead of examinations,” said the head teachers from the WorthLess? campaign group.

“Public safety should not be risked or driven by an inflexible pursuit of GCSE and A-levels.”

Surely Toby Young, the editor of the Lockdown Sceptic's website, should support this downgrading of A-levels given his own historic poor performance when doing them years ago?

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Harold Evans: a Northern Campaigner Dies!

HAROLD EVANS who started his career on independently-owned Tameside Reporter, which was first published in 1855 died last week at the age of 92. The 157-year-old title was known as the Ashton-under-Lyne Weekly Reporter when future Sunday Times editor Sir Harold started there as a 16-year-old school leaver in the 1940s.

Harold Evans, was the Patricroft, Eccles born journalist who was widely regarded as the greatest newspaper editor of our times.

He was famous for his work on the Sunday Times, particularly for his long battle to get compensation for victims of the Thalidomide drug.

In 1944, in a bomb-ravaged city, he was just another 16-year-old who got on his bike and pedalled from his home in Newton Heath to the offices of the Ashton-under-Lyne Reporter. He was to be paid just £1 a week on a three-month trial, about half of what his mates were earning working in factories. He was one of a number of schoolboy reporters, filling in for men fighting the war.

Perhaps his most remarkable campaign concerned Timothy Evans (no relation) who had been hanged for murdering his wife and child at 10 Rillington Place in London in 1950. Evans would be regarded now as a vulnerable adult, and it later transpired that mass murderer John Christie had been living, and indeed killing, in the flat beneath. Christie was, in all probability, guilty of murdering Evans’ family, yet the unfortunate man, unable to mount his own defence, had hanged.

As editor he campaigned to have his namesake pardoned, and when Home Secretary Roy Jenkins granted it in 1966, it effectively ended the death sentence for all but high treason.

When Evans arrived at the Northern Echo, it was deeply rooted in its community but hadn't done much campaigning for decades. 'A rocket needs a solid base and The Northern Echo was deeply rooted in the region,' he once said. 'All I had to do was put some fuel in the engine…'

He modernised the Echo so that it sounded like a newspaper for the 1960s. He channelled the 'vigour and bluntness' which he found in the North-East cultural scene through writers like Sid Chaplin and artists like the pitman painter Norman Cornish to create a sharp and punchy paper.

He gained a national fame by presenting What the Papers Say on Granada Television, and left the Echo to edit the Sunday Times where he ultimately won compensation for victims of the thalidomide morning sickness drug.

Since 1984 Sir Harold has been living, writing and editing in New York, with his second wife, Tina Brown. He founded Conde Nast Traveler magazine and served as president and publisher of Random House from 1990 to 1997, and was Reuters' editor-at-large.

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More Whingeing from Alphabet Soup Brigade

By Les May

INSTEAD of standing her ground Jenni Murray, a presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, has spinelessly pulled out of a talk at Oxford University, following an accusation of transphobia.

The accusation came from the Oxford University LGBTQ Society, the Oxford SU LGBTQ Campaign and the Oxford SU Women's Society, who have excavated an article from the Sunday Times Magazine which appeared in 2017 in which Murray had written "Be trans, be proud - but don't call yourself a 'real woman'."

Now as a man I might just take exception to her opening gambit "Can someone who has lived as a man, with all the privilege that entails, really lay claim to womanhood?" I might for example ask just what privileges most men actually have? When I see the jobs that many men do it is certainly not obvious to me that they are more privileged than Murray. It’s also the case that Murray seems to be more privileged than many women I know.

The Oxford SU LGBTQ Campaign wrote in a statement which has appeared on Facebook; “Her views, which clearly reflect a lack of engagement with the vast majority of actual trans people, and are in sum deeply harmful to trans women and trans feminine people, contributing to and exacerbating the harassment, marginalisation, discrimination, and violence that they already face.”

Quite how you engage with a bunch of people who have already decided that they are victims of harassment, marginalisation, discrimination and violence, I don’t know. Murray has simply expressed an opinion which is open to challenge. I’ve previously expressed the opinion that the crux of the matter for me is whether a man who decides to transition to being a woman is willing to lose his wedding tackle.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2018/10/ask-about-wedding-tackle.html

If what I have written offends you, feel free to be offended. But first you might like to scan the web pages at

http://www.transstudent.org/definitions/

which include the comment; ‘Terms are always changing in the LGBTQ+ community. This list will be updated as often as possible to keep up with the rapid proliferation of queer and trans language.’

These pages look like an exercise in narcissism, one aspect of which is an excessive desire to be admired and an excessive need for affirmation. You really know when you are accepted when people ignore you.

************

Unite Chief & Anonymous 'Smear' Tactics

Len McCluskey says 'Unite members deserve better'

LAST week, Len McCluskey, the current General Secretary of Unite the Union, dispatched a letter to the members of the Unite union complaining about an 'anonymous' communication which he described as 'abusing and smearing both the name of our great union and myself'.

Mr.McCluskey claims: 

'Clearly, this mailing is connected with the election for General Secretary presently under way and is part of a campaign to attack Unite for its fighting back approach to defending our members.  The “articles” contained within it recycle smears from newspapers which are not merely hostile to myself, but to trade unionism.'

The anonymous document is a re-print of stories in the press from the MailOnline; The Times and The Sunday Times.  The claims, which Mr. McCluskey describes as 'lies' including claims about a 'cut-rate £90,000' loan and other lurid stories..

McCluskey argues that the 'ruling establishment, both in the media and political circles, have ,,, an absolute interest in both undermining myself as your General Secretary and your union as the leading democratic force fighting to defend and advance the interests of working people across our nations.'

It is suggested that the anonymous communication seems to be 'a breach of Unite's data security' and Gail Cartmail, the Acting General Secretary of Unite is presently investigating the matter.

Up to now two other members of Unite have declared their intention to fight for the top job in Unite:  Ian Allinson, from Higher Blackley in Manchester, the chair of Unite's UK combine in Fujitsu, and Gerard Coyne, a full-time officer from the West Midlands.

Everyday Life from The Archers to Danczuks!

by Les May

I GAVE up listening to ‘The Archers’ in 2002, so I have absolutely no knowledge of the ‘Trial’.  I don’t much like fictional series which take it upon themselves to tackle ‘issues’ not least because it is difficult to present any complex and controversial issue in a sufficiently nuanced way which will not leave some listener or viewer from feeling that their ‘side’ has been misrepresented.  Far from changing minds it seems more likely that it will reinforce prejudice. 

So last Tuesday I found myself wondering was it prejudice or oversight which led the ‘i’ newspaper to devote half the space of its letters column to the fictional ‘Helen’  but could not find space for a story about a real life Helen who had been involved in a ‘domestic’ which resulted in her death.  The Metro managed just over half a page on the story and the Daily Mail almost a whole page. 

Helen Nicholl hanged herself on the June 4 last year.  Not unreasonably the police arrested her husband Stephen Nicoll on suspicion of her murder. But after two interviews the Detective Chief Inspector who led the investigation released him without charge and went on to say 'I believe that Stephen Nicoll was probably of a victim of domestic violence.' 

But the picture which emerged at the coroner’s inquest was not simply one of a wife assaulting her husband, but of a woman who also tried to control her grown up daughters, assaulting one of them leading to a police investigation and becoming estranged from the other, and of a family in which during rows with their mother, her daughters referred to her as ‘council estate scum' and 'Liverpool scum'.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article for Northern Voices, ‘Danczuk, Feminism & Family Violence’, in which I referred to the work of Erin Pizzey.  Pizzey distinguished between 'genuine battered women' and 'violence-prone women'. The former she defined as 'the unwilling and innocent victim of his or her partner's violence' and the latter she defined as 'the unwilling victim of his or her own violence.'  Helen Nicholl was such a woman and in hanging herself was the victim of her own violence. But whilst she may have been the one who used physical violence towards her daughters and her husband, what for want of a better word I will call verbal violence, does not seem to have been far below the surface. 

It appears in this case that physical abuse by the mother was reciprocated by the daughters in the form of verbal abuse;  a kind of mutuality of domestic violence such as Erin Pizzey had identified. 

Feminist campaigners seek to persuade us that because men are more likely than women to resort to violence outside the home that this is also the case within the home.  But the empirical evidence suggests that this assumption is untrue. 

About one in eight of adults, i.e. both men and women, in an intimate relationship admit to low level physical violence towards their partner.  As about 50% of inter-partner violence is reciprocal it is possible these people somehow attract each other or learn and later reciprocate the behaviour.  At higher levels of physical violence where significant injury is caused, men are about six times more likely to be the perpetrator, i.e. about one in seven cases of significant injury during a violent domestic dispute are caused by women. 

Conflict is a part of life.  We all have some desire to pursue our own self interest even in intimate relationships.  What matters Is how we resolve that conflict of interests.  Conflict becomes pathological when one or both of the parties resort to coercion, whether that coercion is applied emotionally, verbally or physically.  All too often coercion continues to be applied even after the relationship breaks down and the parties separate, though in such cases it is usually given a gloss of respectability through the courts in the form of so called ‘contact’ orders. 

As the Helen Nicholl case shows simply equating ‘domestic’ violence with ‘male’ violence is misleading and in the long run counterproductive because it offers no opportunity to think how the existing level of abuse in intimate relationships can be reduced or how conflict situations can be prevented from escalating to the point where one of the people involved suffers significant injury.  As noted above this is more likely to be the woman than the man.  Nor does it take into account that abuse can and does take place in intimate same sex relationships. 

It is perhaps understandable that feminists who see domestic violence being synonymous with male violence will ignore the empirical evidence that women are just as likely as men to resort to low level assault in conflict situations but focus entirely on escalated conflicts where the woman is injured, and ignore the work of Erin Pizzey and tragic women like Helen Nicholl who was the victim of her own violence.  To do otherwise would undermine their world view. 

But I find it inconceivable that the women who usually have so much to say about ‘male violence’ have failed to comment upon what some four weeks ago happened to Karen Danczuk as a result of the actions of her ex-husband Simon.  Are we perhaps seeing middle class snobbery at work here? 

We are already beginning to see this incident the subject of ‘spin’ seemingly intended to minimise the severity of the incident.  Whilst a month ago Karen was happy to tell the world, ‘I feared he was going to kill me’ and ‘Violent row left me paralysed with fear’ and have Simon’s behaviour described as ‘Wild MP yelled and kicked in glass door’, a recent Daily Mail article included the line that ‘Karen was taken by ambulance to a local hospital where she was treated for the cut which officers said she sustained in a fall’.  Perhaps she ‘walked into a floor’ because it must have been some fall if it required 40 stitches. 

A month ago the story was that she was standing behind a thick glass door when an enraged Simon kicked at it until it came crashing down on her knocking her to the floor. 

According to the Daily Mirror her story now is:

'What happened is, he kicked a door in and it hit me - it wasn't anything Simon physically did to me' and "I have some scars now on my hand but I didn't press charges because it wasn't an intentional act.

'Unfortunately, yes, the foot hit me but it wasn't intentional and so it doesn't seem right to press charges."  No mention here of it being a glass door or the 40 stitches for the wound in her chest and upper right breast.

And what was Danczuk’s response to all this?  He told the Sunday Times that there had been absolutely no physical violence, adding: 'Karen didn't report any violence. The police made assumptions.' 

It seems some Rochdale MPs lead charmed lives.  In 1979 Rochdale’s Alternative Paper (RAP)revealed details of then MP Cyril Smith’s antics at Cambridge House.  The lack of interest by the mainstream media meant that ‘he got away with it’.  This subtly different retelling of the story of what recently happened in Spain between the Danczuk’s and the silence of the usually very vocal feminists will lead some people once again to think ‘he got away with it’.   

I can hardly say that I am disappointed by the response of feminists to this incident between the Danczuks as I have never thought much of them anyhow. But the saddest thing about this episode is the complete lack of self-awareness on Simon Danczuk’s part. 

At the end of January this year, his website was crowing that he welcomed a £115,500 grant from Comic Relief to a local charity enabling it to run a ‘dedicated male perpetrator programme’ to tackle domestic violence in Rochdale (my emphasis). 

His exact words were:  'Domestic violence is a serious problem in every community and I have seen from my weekly surgeries what a devastating impact it can have on families’. and “I am delighted they have received this funding which will be used to tackle domestic violence by challenging the perpetrators on their behaviour giving them the support the need to reform.' 

Now contrary to Mr D.  I do consider kicking in a glass door is an act of violence and especially so if we are to believe Karen’s original story together with the need for hospital treatment.  A few inches higher and the glass which caused the injuries to Karen’s chest and upper right breast could have severed a major blood vessel.  A bit of contrition (and a quiet prayer of thanks for a narrow escape from potentially much more serious injury) would seem to be in order here. 

As a well known MP, Simon could have used this experience to draw attention to what can happen in a domestic situation when a row is allowed to escalate into violence, even when that violence is not deliberately directed at a partner, and the importance of making sure that disagreements do not reach this stage.  He failed to do so which in my view makes him doubly culpable. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3785630/Dentist-hung-emotionally-abused-children-husband.html 

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/danczuk-feminism-family-violence.html 

http://www.fact.on.ca/Info/dom/george94.htm

http://www.fact.on.ca/Info/dom/martinfi.pdf

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-humbug-of-professional-feminism.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1646861/karen-danczuk-says-shes-scarred-for-life-after-mp-hubby-simon-kicked-in-glass-door-during-crazed-bust-up-on-family-holiday/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3790555/Karen-Danczuk-s-forgiven-ex-husband-Simon-sake-children.html 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/karen-danczuk-reveals-wants-ex-8848431

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/PHDCN/wave-1-instruments/13583-ctsp.pdf

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/PHDCN/wave-2-instruments/13642-pas.pdf

http://www.simondanczuk.com/simon_danczuk_welcomes_charity_cash_for_domestic_violence_scheme

Does the Sunday Times stink?

GEORGE Orwell once wrote:

'I really don't know which is more stinking, the Sunday Times or The Observer. I go from one to the other like an invalid turning from side to side in bed and getting no comfort which ever way he turns.' (George Orwell, quoted, Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life, p. 233, Penguin Books, 1992)

The competition remains fierce, but the Sunday Times edged marginally ahead with a recent front-page exclusive that stank to truly celestial heights. As we noted in our previous alert, the Sunday Times dramatically claimed that Russia and China had 'cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden'. The 'exclusive story' contained precisely no evidence for its anonymous claims, no challenges to the assertions made and no journalistic balance. In a CNN interview the same day, lead reporter Tom Harper trashed his own credibility, and that of his paper, when he blurted:

'We just publish what we believe to be the position of the British government.'

One of our readers, William Douglas, emailed a powerful criticism of Harper's claims direct to Sunday Times editor Martin Ivens, asking him to explain why anyone should take the article seriously. Douglas sent a blog piece by Craig Murray, the former British diplomat, who had offered five reasons for thinking the MI6 story was 'a lie'. Ivens' reply was astonishing:

'I think you should address your remarks to 10 Downing St. If you think they have lied to us then so be it.'

There was no attempt to respond to the challenge, or to answer Murray's serious objections; just a preposterous and insulting suggestion to contact the British government. Clearly Ivens is unaware of legendary journalist I.F. Stone's comment:

'Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.'

Ivens' response is the reality of media contempt for their supposedly valued readers, or 'partners' as the Guardian affects to call the people it deceives. The Sunday Times states heroically:

'The Sunday Times takes complaints about editorial content seriously. We aim to resolve your complaint efficiently, promptly and effectively by direct contact with you.'

Failing that, write to the government!

One might have thought that editors and journalists elsewhere would have leapt on Ivens' contemptuous response to a serious correspondent, condemning Ivens for dragging their supposedly noble 'profession' into further disrepute. But, according to our searches of the Lexis newspaper database, the email went totally unreported. 

The 'Correction'

Last Sunday, the paper printed a tiny 'correction' to their front-page story beneath an even more pressing correction about iPads not being given to babies, as had been claimed:

'The article "British spies betrayed to Russians and Chinese" (News, last week) stated that David Miranda had visited Edward Snowden in Moscow. This is incorrect and we apologise for the error.' (page 24, bottom-right)

As Glenn Greenwald had noted in his comprehensive demolition of the article, the 'outright fabrication' that David Miranda had visited Edward Snowden was the key claim underpinning the entire piece – that Snowden had files with him in Moscow. A proper 'correction' would have seen the Sunday Times withdraw the article, admit to having published government propaganda, explaining how and why it happened, and apologising for the whole sorry affair.

Alas, clearly unrepentant, the Sunday Times has since published a follow-up piece claiming that Scotland Yard had been 'urged to investigate' Snowden (behind a paywall here; full text here):

'Liam Fox, the former defence secretary, has written to Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, asking his officers to examine the "great potential damage to the national security of the United Kingdom" caused by the former analyst.'

This is the same Liam Fox who resigned as Defence Secretary in 2011 over his close personal links to lobbyist Adam Werritty. As was reported at the time: 'detailed disclosures showed Mr Werritty's activities were funded by companies and individuals that potentially stood to benefit from Government decisions.'

Moreover, Werritty had dubious intelligence connections with Israel that went unexplored by almost the entire 'mainstream' media, the Independent being a rare exception. Craig Murray added that there had been:

'a huge government cover-up in progress over the Werritty connection to Mossad and the role of British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould, and their neo-con plan to start a war with Iran.'

Glenn Greenwald acerbically challenged the hapless Tom Harper, lead reporter on the Snowden piece:

'You should go back on CNN and talk about this new story of yours. You built such credibility last time.'

The Sunday Times follow-up also repeated the smear that Snowden 'fled to Moscow to seek the protection of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president'. No matter how many times the Sunday Times repeats this false claim, it does not become true. The fact is, Snowden was on his way to Latin America via Moscow when Washington revoked his passport, leaving him stranded in Russia.

 'What Would Rupert Think?'

It is worth recalling that the Sunday Times has a long, shameful history of dubious 'journalism'. In the 1960s, the Sunday Times appointed journalist and author Tony Howard as its Whitehall correspondent, announcing:

'The job of a newspaper is to bring into public information the acts and processes of power. National security alone excepted, it is the job of newspapers to publish the secret matters of politics whether the secrets are the secrets of the Cabinet, of Parliament, or of the Civil Service.'

Media analyst Phillip Knightley reported:

'The then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was having none of that. He quickly shut Howard down. Howard remembers: "He said he understood I was only trying to do my job but he had a job to do, too, and his was more important than mine. He made it very plain that all conventional sources of information would remain shut until I was willing to return to the cosy but essentially sham game of being a political correspondent." ' (Phillip Knightley, 'Of secrets and spies', The Independent on Sunday, August 17, 2003)

Since then, there has been little call for anyone outside the Sunday Times to shut down honest reporting.  Harold Evans, a former editor working at Rupert Murdoch's newspaper, described to the Leveson inquiry how, in 1981, Murdoch rebuked him for reporting gloomy economic news and 'not doing what he [Murdoch] wants, in political terms'. Evans said that Murdoch came to his home and the two 'almost ended up in fisticuffs over a piece on the economy.'

Evans added:

'Murdoch would also haul in senior staff for meetings to tell them to alter their coverage, including the editorial line of the leader columns and telling the foreign editor to "attack the Russians more".'

David Yelland, former editor of the Murdoch-owned Sun newspaper, described how editors 'go on a journey where they end up agreeing with everything Murdoch says ... "What would Rupert think about this?" is like a mantra inside your head'.

Andrew Neil, former editor of the Sunday Times, commented:

'If you want to know what Rupert Murdoch really thinks read the editorials in the Sun and the New York Post because he is editor-in-chief of these papers. He doesn't regard himself as editor-in-chief of the Times and the Sunday Times but he does regard himself as someone who should have more influence on these papers than anyone else.'

The record is grim indeed. Four days after Baghdad 'fell' to US tanks on April 9, 2003, the Sunday Times published these remarks by the BBC's John Humphrys, presenter of the influential Today radio programme:

'So maybe it's not being too naive to think America really does want to use its position as the world's only superpower to spread freedom and democracy. The truth is, it's a question of where. Only last week James Woolsey - who once ran the CIA and has been appointed to run the new information ministry in Iraq - claimed America had been actively promoting democracy for most of the past century.' (John Humphrys, 'Bush turns a blind eye to the wars he doesn't want to fight', Sunday Times, April 13, 2003)

The newspaper supported the subsequent phoney demonstration elections installing a vicious puppet government: 'The terrorists will do all they can to destroy democratic elections', the editors noted of Iraqis trying to rid their country of a mass-murdering foreign occupation. (Leader, 'Send more troops,' Sunday Times, October 10, 2004)

The Sunday Times, of course, supported Nato's catastrophic war on Libya in 2011:

'[T]here can be no accommodation with a man like Gadaffi or any of his family who aspire to succeed him.' (Leading article, 'Allies need a rapid victory to outwit Gadaffi,' Sunday Times, March 20, 2011)

In 2014, a Sunday Times editorial reviewed the life and career of former Israeli prime minister and general Ariel Sharon:

'His Unit 101 slaughtered 69 civilians in the Jordanian town of Qibya in 1953 and as defence minister he was blamed for the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Israel's Christian Phalange allies in 1982. He was forced to resign from his post.'   (Leading article, 'The old warrior who turned to peace,' Sunday Times, January 12, 2014)

The Sunday Times editors described these atrocities as mere 'black marks'.  Otherwise, Sharon was one of Israel's 'great nation-builders' and 'a military hero'. 'He leaves an important legacy.'

Earlier this year, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed reported that the Sunday Times had planned a big exposé on the HSBC consumer credit fraud. The story was 'inexplicably dropped' at the last minute. Ahmed wrote:

'HSBC happens to be the main sponsor of a series of Sunday Times league tables published for FastTrack 100 Ltd., a "networking events company." The bank is the "title sponsor" of The Sunday Times HSBC Top Track 100, has been "title sponsor of The Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200 for all 6 years" and was previously "title sponsor of The Sunday Times Top Track 250 for 7 years."'

Other ugly examples of Sunday Times journalism include its campaign against Thames Television's 'Death on the Rock' documentary exposing the murder of three unarmed IRA men in Gibraltar by the SAS, the special forces unit of the British army; a long smear campaign against the BBC and ITV because they were regarded as obstacles to Rupert Murdoch's media domination; the fake Hitler Diaries; a character assassination of the author Salman Rushdie when he went underground following a fatwa that endangered his life; the smear claiming that former Labour leader Michael Foot was an agent of Moscow; and disgraceful coverage of the 1984-85 miners' strike that depicted the miners as the violent 'enemy within', echoing government propaganda. (For details, see John Pilger, 'Hidden Agendas', Vintage, London, 1998).

As Pilger noted almost 20 years ago:

'Once acclaimed for its journalistic and political independence, the Sunday Times was quick to reflect its master's view.' ('Hidden Agendas', p. 458)

Nothing has changed.

 

DC and DE

Crewe Conference of Trade Union Councils

Where Are The Workers?

THE Sunday Times in an editorial following the May 2015 elections declared:

'Trade unionism is a minority cause.  The days of an economy dominated by large manufacturing industries are long past.  The proportion of private sector employees who belong to a trade union is just 14%.' 

Last weekend's Crewe Conference dramatically displayed the gulf between private sector trade unionism, and  public sector unions like the PCS.  Some eight Motions were dedicated to the attacks on trade unions and about half referred to the PCS union.  Other Motions  expressed concern about the representation of the working class following the defeat of the Labour Party in the General Election.   

A Motion 7. from Cardiff noted 'attacks by local government on union branches' and the 'clear intention of (Francis) Maude and the Tories is to destroy PCS financially by withdrawing the check-off from government departments'.  From the building trade, a UCCAT delegate questioned this domination of the public sector when things were so bad on the building sites, and the anarcho-syndicalist trade unionist Dave Chapple from Bridgewater TUC, challenged the call in Motion 17. from Merseyside TUC that the TUC should 'wave affiliation fees from [the] PCS [union]'. 

Similarly the reference to the 'blacklisting and victimisation of union reps' in Motion 7. must strike people working in the British industrial wild west of the building sites as strange, when they have suffered for donkey's years from blacklisting on a massive scale.  To a former blue collar worker like myself; the delegate from UCATT; the thousands of workers in the British building trade; and even a postman like Dave Chapple, the Secretary of Bridgewater TUC who said that his delegates 'would be displeased if the PCS delegates had their affiliation fees waved'; the plight of the PCS would seem somewhat feather-bedded.


In Spain, in the famous anarchist trade union, the CNT, there were times when the land-labourers of Andalucia had their union dues waved because of the hardship they suffered through the irregular work pattern in the field with unpredictable harvests:  the anarcho-syndicalist industrial workers in the factories of Catalonia and Barcelona were more than willing to shoulder the costs of their Andalucian brothers and sisters. 

But, comparing the English PCS union today to the Spanish trade union confederation the CNT of the 1930s is like comparing a white-collar pygmy to an industrial giant: it just doesn't bear comparison on any scale of reference. 
In 1966, I led a raid with group of Manchester anarchists on my local dole office in Rochdale to obtained a my labour exchange file.  When we examined my file compiled by Labour Exchange staff (the kind of people who are now members of the PCS) we found that it contained a section marked 'Derog' in this derogatory dossier, as part of my labour exchange record since I was involved in the national apprentice strike in 1960, there was a stream of derogatory references entered by those law abiding employees at the Rochdale Labour Exchange who had interviewed me over the years after I'd been sacked after the apprentice strike up to 1966 when we purloined my dole documents. 

It's nice to know that the people in the Labour Exchanges of the 1960s, and would now be members of the PCS union working in Job Centres, were routinely black-balling me back then and for all I know may still be blacklisting claimants now.  Yet, these people in the PCS, who operated as willing blacklisters of working people in the 1960s, are now asking me and my Trade Union Council for support because the Government, to which they have been for years the loyal  servants of the State is getting at them. 
I have a heart, but isn't this kind of cant and humbug asking rather too much of me under the circumstances?

Talk About Bullshit Baffles Brains!

NO sooner had Simon Danczuk MP won what the Rochdale Observer described as the 'Oscar of Westmister' for his sterling efforts to out one of his predecessors Cyril Smith than he was named by the Sunday Times as producing the politics book of the year. 

The Rochdale Observer says the award 'recognises several years of work uncovering the dark secrets of former Rochdale MP Sir Cyril Smith...' 

That must be 'several years of work', prudently well after Sir Cyril Smith died in 2010, and couldn't then sue our Simon Danczuk MP for Rochdale.  Our Simon is not so simple as all that!  Several years too after he was seen in Rochdale Town Square applauding the unveiling of a blue plaque to Cyril Smith in October 2011.

The report in the Observer also says;
'He was chosen by a panel of political academics, as well as Peter Kellner, president of pollsters YouGov, and the BBC's Today programme presenter Justin Webb.'

Which only goes to show to what a low level political science in this country has descended.