Schools must fight to defend freedom of expression

Editor's note: Much has been writteen about the Batley Grammar School teachers who have been victimized for allegedly showing cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad, from a copy of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Below is one account from The Critic website by Ella Whelan which challenges the current fashion for 'cancel culture'. When we tackled it on the NV Blog at the time of the troubles at which an Islamic Charity put one of the teacher's names into the public domain a Unite branch of Bury binmen and Tameside Trade Union Council attempted to move an emergency motion at the then online forthcoming National Conference of trade union councils in June this year. It was not accepted onto the agenda, as the TUCJCC were concerned that the Tameside Trades Council had not they claimed 'consulted with NEU', the union with the lead industrial interest.

Meanwhile, a member of the TUC-JCC also assures us:

'Kevin Courtney [the National Education Union General Secretary who gave his advice to get the Tameside TUC motion calling for solidarity for the victimized teachers rejected] is one of the best General Secretaries, ... and that they are doing he best they can in a difficult situation.'

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Ella Whelan on the 30 March, 2021 on THE CRITIC WEBSITE wrote the following essay:

The cowardice of senior staff at Batley Grammar should be a lesson to all educationalists about the importance of defending open discussion

One of my favourite cheesy films is Mona Lisa Smile. Julia Roberts plays an enlightened, feminist-y teacher pushing the boundaries of a socially conservative, private women’s college in Massachusetts. The moral of the story is that Roberts’ art classes and an emphasis on open debate inspire her students to realise that the world is bigger and more exciting than the four walls of their dormitories. In being shocked by the things their teacher tells them, the students gain the confidence to form their own opinions about what their futures will look like.

The events of last week show just how far cancel culture has expanded.

While Roberts’ fictional teacher gives up her job in favour of travelling Europe when the college attempts to restrict what she can and can’t teach, real-life scenarios rarely have Hollywood endings. A teacher at Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire has been forced to go into hiding after protesters at the school demanded he be sacked and prosecuted. His crime? Showing his class cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad, allegedly from a copy of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Accurate information about what actually happened is still unclear, but it is alleged that students were shown a caricature with “Islamophobic tropes” during a discussion about blasphemy in a religion class. In fact, the only information that has found its way out has been the teacher’s name — a frightening prospect given the fact that the French teacher Samuel Party was beheaded in broad daylight just five months ago for showing students similar images.

The events of last week [at Batlet Grammar School] show just how far cancel culture has expanded, from online spats and campus politics to the world of everyday life. Without taking a breath, the headteacher of Batley Grammar, Gary Kibble, suspended the teacher and issued an “unequivocal” apology to the crowd of angry parents at the school gates. A police officer even had to read the school’s statement to the crowd, who had caused such a fuss that the school was forced to close. But Kibble’s grovelling sacrifice of his staff member hasn’t dented the protesters’ demands — some have told the press that “he should never teach again”, supported by a local Imam who demanded that “serious action [be] taken”.

It seems the only people at the school who have some courage to stand up for freedom of expression are the suspended teacher’s own cohort. “Against all odds, students wish to make a statement and reinstate him back as a teacher in Batley Grammar School due to his pure intentions”, says a petition, allegedly written by Batley Grammar’s pupils. It’s incredibly poignant that the adults both working in the school building and shouting from the school gates have been shown up by the students who know and love their teacher. The petition has since hit over 66,000 signatures from people across the country. “This is our repayment to that RS Teacher”, it says, “and if he sees this, we have a simple message for him. We thank you for everything you’ve done for us.”

Parents should not be able to bring a school to a halt because they don’t like the content of a class Where are this teacher’s colleagues? Where are the teacher’s unions? Where are the authorities, who are supposed to protect citizens from intimidation and threats? The fact that the only people supporting the teacher’s right to “teach” kids difficult things like blasphemy, offence and free speech are the kids themselves tells you a lot about the state of education today. The fact that angry parents are calling for the teacher’s head (this time metaphorically, unlike the tragic murder of Paty) shows how flimsy the boundaries between school and home life have become. Parents should not be able to bring a school to a halt because they don’t like the content of a class. Those claiming this is a principled stance against islamophobia are being wilfully ignorant to the context in which the images were shown. Anyone who has sat through a whiney PTA meeting knows how irritating complaining parents can be — these protests are no different. But instead of teachers rolling their eyes, the protesters have been emboldened by the school caving in to their censorious demands

.

The cowardice of senior staff at Batley Grammar should be a lesson to all educationalists about the importance of defending open discussion. Schools should defend the idea that children are not there to have their own prejudices or beliefs cosseted, but to be educated — an experience that can often be difficult, challenging and sometimes upsetting. Many of us will remember a time when the assumptions we had about life were challenged by listening to views and opinions that were new to us. Part of a comprehensive religious education is to learn about the fact that the world is full of people with different beliefs (and none). If a student can’t handle the idea that there are some people who will mock and ridicule beliefs that they hold dear, sometimes in overtly offensive ways, there’s no hope of them being able to survive the world outside the school gates.

A precautionary, patronising approach to education has long been the view of the British education system.

There is no merit in upsetting students for the sake of it — especially when it comes to personal feelings like religious beliefs. But, according to the students’ petition, this is not what the teacher was doing — “we have watched our RS teacher defend the integrity of all religions within classes”, it says, “and we do not and will not believe he is racist in any way”. Instead of balancing the worth of the lesson against the complaints made by some students, the school seems to have jumped to the conclusion that all students are too soft to handle controversial subjects in any context. This safety-first attitude should come as a surprise to no one. A precautionary, patronising approach to education has long been the view of the British education system — from bans on red pens in marking and calls to cancel exams to combat “stress”, students are no longer expected to be pushed outside of their comfort zone.

What the crowd at Batley Grammar’s gates and the cowards in the headteacher’s office have in common is their inability to act like adults. We are all supposed to be children now — constantly in need of protection from hurt feelings or differing views, screaming for attention when things happen that we don’t like. The students don’t want to be infantilised in this way — their petition makes clear that they want to

“educate the future generations”

by not shying away from tricky subjects or uncomfortable views. What these kids understand (that their parents and teachers seem to have forgotten) is that education is about taking risks. Here’s hoping Batley Grammar sees sense and issues an apology to the one person who really deserves it.

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Stuart Christie: an insider's study of an authentic classical anarchist by Brian Bamford - Part Two

ANARCHISM IS not a very well understood doctrine in British politics. I realised this when Tameside Trade Union Council first published a booklet commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War in 2006 with Durruti on the cover. The then delegates of the Greater Manchester County Association of Trade Union Council clearly didn't appreciate the publication at the time, but during the meeting a large party of French trade unionists from the CGT [communist] happened to be present and while many of the local English trade unionists held back the French delegation waded-in to buy up most of the commemorative booklets we had to hand, and even later following me to the toilets to get extra copies.

It struck us at the time how utterly frigid the English trade unionists were compared to their French 'communist' CGT comrades.

This thought occurs to me now as I now with sadness write my friend and comrade, Stuart Christie's obituary. I remember that sometime after Stuart wrote the first volume of his autobiography 'GRANNY MADE ME AN ANARCHIST', I wrote a critique of it entitled 'God Help the Anarchist movement that Needs Heroes'. This in turn led to a bitter altercation between me and Stuart on the website 'Libcom' in which I believe he labelled me 'an arsehole'. However, in 2006, it was a measure of Stuart's nobility that when I invited him to write an introduction to Tameside TUC's Spanish commemorative booklet he had no hesitation in agreeing to do the job.

He probably did it because he knew me from when I first met him in Paris in August 1964, when he was about to go on to embrace the risky venture in his ill-fated journey to Madrid and ultimately to a Spanish jail for his part in a proposed attempt to assassinate General Franco. At that time we were all staying in a 'safe house' with Germinal Garcia at his apartment near Place de la République*. My wife Joan and I were returning from Spain, having first worked in Denia, Alicante throughout 1963, and later on in early 1964 moved on to La Linea on the border with Gibraltar where I worked for the MOD at the Gibraltar airport. While in Denia my eldest lad was born at the clinica there in September 1963. While in Spain and later Gib. we had taken photos of the conditions in the shanty towns in Barcelona and we sent back reports on working conditions over there for the FIJL publication Nueva Senda. At that time we were being debriefed, and thought Stuart may have been on a similar mission to us, but soon found out that they had other plans for him. At one stage he asked for our advice and was naturally interested in our own experiences.

Stuart was still in Carabanchel jail [Madrid] when my family again returned to Spain in early 1967 on our way to work in Gibraltar having had difficulties working as an electrician in Rochdale following my involvement supporting the national engineering apprentice strikes in November 1964 and February 1964. Having been blacklisted by the British MOD and throughout Gibraltar with private companies with contracts with the MOD and other contracts with the British authorities the only place on the Rock that I had a serious chance of work was with the Gibraltar City Council, supported by the Transport & General Worker's Union and Albert Risso who had close links with Sir Joshua Hassan the Chief Minister.

The anarchists on Gibraltar at that time were active within the Transport & General Workers Union and were basically anarcho-syndicalists. Stuart identified with the syndicalists, and had fallen under the influence of Bobby Lynn who he says 'had become the backbone of the Glasgow anarchist movement'. I'd stayed with Bobby Lynn in the Gorbals in 1961 and he gave me his copy of 'The Sexual Revolution' by Wilhelm Reich. Bobby was a member of the Syndicalist Worker's Federation when I stayed with him in 1961. As news leaked of Stuart's arrest Peter Turner [FREEDOM EDITOR] had contacted Bobby Lynn in Glasgow and up there they had assured him that Stuart was so dedicated to the peace movement and that it was not likely that he was guilty as claimed by the Spanish authorities. This may have influenced the report in the syndicalist Direct Action which took the line that he must be innocent, and Wynford Hicks on behalf of the anarchists argued on TV news that he was probably the victim of an 'agent-provocateur'. Another Freedom editor Vernon Richards argued more sensibly that it mattered little whether Stuart was innocent or guilty the anarchist position should be to support him.

For my part I knew what had taken place, but anticipating returning to work in Spain and expecting to continue to help the group of young Spanish exiles of the FIJL involved with the failed attempt, I decided to remain silent. Stuart himself had not been prudent before his departure for Spain and had actually participated in a BBC2 program entitled 'Let Me Speak' hosted by Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge, who had been a friend of George Orwell, had often identified morally and intellectually with Tolstoy and anarchism.

In his autobiography 'MY GRANNY MADE ME AN ANARCHIST'[2004] Stuart documents the sequence of events in the summer of 1964: 'In mid-July Salvador and Bernado [Gurucharri] told me I should be ready to leave for Paris by the end of the month. Everything was now in hand for my trip to Spain. Shortly before I left... I was invited to appear on what later turned out to be, for me, an almost disastrous chat show called Let Me Speak, on ...BBC2. Having a small spectrum of anarchists, with me and another young lad called Vincent Johnson representing the "revolutionary anarchists" Muggeridge asked me if I was sincere in my revolutionary aims...would I, for instance, given the opportunity, assassinate Franco?" It was an unlucky shot in the dark, for that was pretty damn close to what I was hoping to do. What could I say but yes?.'

It is an extraordinary admission for a revolutionary anarchist to make! I doubt that the Spaniards I knew in Paris or in Spain in the 1960s would have made such a confession on the BBC or before going on a mission such as Stuart anticipated. It's almost as if he had a death wish or secretly wanted to get caught. When we knew him in Paris in August 1964 he was hopelessly naive and clearly knew little of the reality of everyday Spanish life or working conditions. He struggled to pronounce the Spanish word for 'workers'.

On page 107 of his autobiography he writes: 'I may not have been wise or competent in what I did or the way I went about it, but I did not have the benefit of hindsight'.

Never mind 'hindsight' given what he had done did he have the benefit of foresight or even a glimpse of common sense? I say this knowing, as Stuart did, that other people suffered as a consequence of what he did and the mistakes that he and his handlers made at the time. I also say this as a friend of Stuart who exchanged correspondence with him regularly over the last few years, and had documented and detailed our differences in my earlier pamphlet. One thing that troubles me is not that he wore a kilt, but that he sported a war resister badge of a broken rifle on his chest while walking around Paris in 1964 as he carried our one-year-old son Deon. He told us that he'd visited Paris the year before in the Spring; it was more 'romantic' than in August. Being romantic was probably what attracted most people to Stuart as it was part on his charm.

Yet, when we had visited Ken Hawkes, then secretary of the Syndicalist Workers Fed., and his wife before we went to Spain in February 1963, the worst winter since 1947, they treated us to a bottle of Champagne as we'd just got married and reminded us to remove our Ban the Bomb badges before we left their house on Parliament Hill for Spain. I wonder why none of us thought to urged Stuart Christie to take off his tell-tale War resister badge?

I suppose that in August 1964, we were all a bit intoxicated by the atmosphere of a time in which Franco had just celebrated 25-years of peace, and a pale-faced Salvador Gurucharri and others had just been released from jail. In Paris, at that time, we were all in high spirits as things seemed to be moving in the right direction.

While there Stuart met other major figures in the exiled Spanish anarchist movement, the organised FIJL [Fed. of young libertarians] around the Internal Defence (DI), and including militants of long standing like Octavio Alberola* and Luis Andres Edo.

In his autobiography he describes what he did as 'the act of an adolescent' and he quotes a verse from Longfellow:

'A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' [page 120]

On reflection he goes on to admit: 'Now it will seem like to many a foolish, naive, impulsive act...'

and 'I cannot claim, either, that it was entirely altruistic - my motives were certainly in part a desire for excitement and adventure.'

On reflection he goes on to admit: 'Now it will seem like to many a foolish, naive, impulsive act...'

Essentially he was doing what we had done a year earlier when we went to Spain to escape from what then seemed like dreary Manchester; he was he says not satisfied with what would now be called 'gesture politics' of petitions and protests, and sought to engage directly with a struggle in Spain. Foresight or prudence would make cowards of us all; it was not part of his engaging personality at that time. It set Stuart outside the smelly little left wing orthodoxies which he left behind. Yet it led him to get a 'GO TO JAIL' card to a Madrid prison cell, and was for him a life changing event.

Once in Paris Stuart had made contact with the action groups of the exiled Spanish anarchist movement, organised around Internal Defence (DI) and involving militants of long standing like Octavio Alberola and Luis Andres Edo. As such during his disastrous mission he was later arrested in Madrid and charged with the possession of explosives. These were intended for an attempt on Franco’s life and he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Thanks to a continuing international pressure he was freed after 3 years.

Why was General Franco and the Francoist regime so susceptible to international public opinion in the 1960s?

I think it was in his book 'The Face of Spain' [1950] that Gerald Brenan tried to explain the mellowing of the Franco regime. In that book he explained how the Falange and those who adhered to Franco began invest in real estate and escape the relative poverty of the 1940s and 1950s. We too quickly forget that it was not just the Spanish working-class that suffered after the Civil War, but the Spanish middle-classes experienced insecurity also. My boss Senor Such told me of how in the 1940s everyone in the fishing village where I lived and worked in 1963-4 had suffered depravation after the war and some had to eat cats. Later on it had become possible to make some progress and by the time we got there in the early 1960s things were looking up as the tourists began to arrive and with the development building work on the costas things were much more prosperous for many including the low-level Falangists. This allowed some softening of the regime which may some helped Stuart Christie escape with what turned out to be a relatively short sentence of 3-years in the end. Had he been arrested some ten years earlier for the same offence it may have been an altogether different story, but by the mid-1960s the supporters of the Franco regime felt much more secure than they had been during the Second World War or in its aftermath when to some extent Spain had been isolated internationally.

* FOOTNOTE: In the early hours of 11 May 2011, 86-year-old Germinal García, a militant of the Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL) and the Paris Local Federation of the CNT in the 1950s and 1960s, passed away (in Paris). At the end of the Spanish Civil War, 13-year old Germinal had been interned in Argeles-sur-Mer concentration camp where an unknown English woman, to whom he was ever grateful, cared for him. Stowing away on a Danish freighter, the Kitty Skov, from the port of Barcelona, he escaped to the United States, where he remained for a time in New York, passing himself off as a French citizen, returning later to France to became active in the anti-Francoist struggle. Shunning the limelight, but always in the background with his strong sense of solidarity, Germinal’s apartment in the Rue Lancry was a safe haven for comrades who had escaped from Franco’s Spain — and for guerrillas such as Quico Sabaté whenever he was in Paris (it was also used by Stuart Christie prior to his trip to Spain in 1964). For that and for his ongoing service to the libertarian movement, Germinal won the respect and friendship of all who knew him. With his passing, we have the satisfying memories and the privilege of having known the friendship of a good comrade. Germinal’s remains were cremated in Paris on 17 May 2011.

Octavio Alberola, May 12, 2011 SEE ALSO https://www.facebook.com/TheOrwellSociety The Orwell Society - Home | Facebook The Orwell Society. 1.4K likes. The Orwell Society aims to promote the understanding and appreciation of the life and work of George Orwell. Join here:... www.facebook.com

FEEDING CARILLION CONTRACTS

by Brian Bamford

LAST November, the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, Sir Vince Cable, expressed his anxiety that the Tory government was 'feeding' contracts to the blacklisting company Carillion.  iIn a speech at the Construction News Summit Sir Vince said that he was worried the troubled contractor was seen as 'too big to fail'.

This statement followed a claim by the public accounts committee chair, Meg Hillier, who had announced to The Times that any failure at Carillion would be 'catastrophic' for some government projects.

Last week, Kate Burgess, in the Financial Times wrote:
'If Carillion was a bricks n’mortar building rather than a bricks n’mortar business employing 43,000 workers it would be rubble by now.  It is a miracle of engineering that Carillion still stands. Its debt — close to £900m — plus a £590m pension deficit tower over equity.  The shares have fallen from above 200p a year ago to 17p, valuing the group at £75m, and it has only just averted breaching its banking covenants.'

What's interesting is that the now deceased chair of the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, Councillor Kieran Quinn, in September last year called for 'direct relationship with our contractors'.  At that time Coucillor Quinn juggled the job as Pension Fund Chair with his position as Labour leader of Tameside local council.   Significantly, Council Quinn had formed a close municipal partnership with Carillion in Tameside providing contracts for the troubled company at least since 2010.  When it was
pointed out to him by Tameside Trade Union Council that the company had long been up to its neck in the blacklisting of trade unionists in the British building trade - reply came there none!
{see www.alanwainwright.blogspot.com/2017/07/carillion-lies.html  }

Councillor Kieran Quinn died on Christmas Day, it remains to be seen who will replace him in his many jobs.

The Financial Times journalist Kate Burgess has written of Carillion’s current predicament:

‘Some may hope that Andrew Davies, who replaces Mr Howson as chief steeplejack this month, can repair the group’s stock market rating from his boatswain’s chair.  They will be lucky.  The group has staved off its lenders for a bit. But a debt-for-equity swap is on the cards.  The banks now in charge of Carillion will be slow to call in the demolition team. The group is, after all, one of the UK government’s biggest contractors, employs thousands of sub-contractors and is entwined with rivals in joint ventures.  Unravelling the cross-guarantees and insurance bonds would take time and skill. But when necessary, lenders are as adept as any demolition expert at causing unstable skyscrapers to implode and minimising the damage to surrounding buildings.  Note to investors, it takes months to prepare sites, but a building can fall in on itself in less than 10 seconds.' 

There is a saying that before the house falls in, one always hears the crack!

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Conference on Bullying & Blacklisting

by Brian Bamford

ON my way to the University of Greenwich for the conference organised by the Blacklist Support Group, I picked up a copy of the Morning Star with a leading story about an undercover policeman who had used the alias Carlo Neri, who had successfully seduced three women to infiltrate the RMT  trade union and other leftist organisations in the early years of the 21^st century.  When I got to the conference a lass he targeted who used the name 'Andrea' described how he won her over with his plausible Italian personality. 

More revelations of the involvement of the security services and the police in the practice of blacklisting trade unionists and spying on radical organisations have been documented in the 2^nd  edition of 'Blacklisted:  The Secret War Between Big Business & Union Activists' authored by Dave Smith and the journalist Phil Chamberlain.

The Blacklisting conference itself which lasted for two days last weekend, was attended by well over 200.  The Conference Programme was populated by many academics like Pro. Sian Moore (University of Greenwich), Dr. Jack Fawbert (Anglia Ruskin University), Pro. Keith Ewing (Kings College London) and Pro. Phil Taylor (Strathclyde University); trade union leaders like Gail Cartmail of Unite, Amanda Brown (Assistant General Secretary of the NUT), Roger McKenzie (Unison) and Matt Wrack of the FBU; legal advisers like the barrister David Renton and Shamik Dutta; and activists like Helen Steel of the 'McDonald Two' and a participant in the Pitchford Enquiry.

Issues such as bullying at work; the tragedy of modern performance management and its consequences for the workforce; Edna's Law; protection for whistle-blowers; the campaign opposing police surveillance; 'Angry Women' and the Pitchford Enquiry were all discussed at the conference.  All in all I told Dave Smith in the interval that this was another triumph for the London based Blacklist Support Group, and as a proud northerner I don't give my praise to Cockneys that easily.

www.northernvoicesmag.blogspot.comFreedom Collective Statement!  on this blog 09/08/2016

'Boys on the Blacklist'

 THE Tameside TUC book 'Boys on the Blacklist', sponsored by the North West TUC, and credited by Dave Smith as being a complimentary document alongside the Blacklist Support Group's own book 'Blacklisted: The secret war between big business and union activists' is still on sale.     The first edition of 'Boys on the Blacklist' sold out in just over a month and it is now on its 3rd print- run.

 A presentation of the Tameside TUC book 'Boys on the Blacklist'
was done at the TUC Annual General Meeting at the Manchester Mechanics Institute on the 22nd, November 2014.  The book was also on sale the same night at the Lantern Theatre in Sheffield, at the showing of the play about the Shrewsbury pickets:  'UNITED WE STAND'.  In January 2015, there was a presentation by Tameside TUC and one of the blacklisted electricians at a meeting of Liverpool TUC.  Further launches of the Tameside TUC book followed at the Barnsley performance of 'United We Stand'; at the Moston Miners Arts Club; at the Bury Met.; at Leeds Carriage Theatre; at the St Michael's Irish Centre in Liverpool; and at the Harrogate NUT Conference in April. 

  Tameside TUC's in-depth Report & Study of Blacklisting in the British building trade

OUT now is Tameside TUC's study of blacklisting in the British building trade.  This unique 52-page A5 book concludes our research into blacklisting stretching back for over a decade of struggle by a group of Manchester contracting electricians.  This book illustrates a special investigation by two officers of Tameside TUC focusing on cover-ups, collaboration, and complicity by major British construction companies affiliated to the now defunct Consulting Association.  We consider the behaviour of local authorities in providing contracts to companies that blacklist workers in the British building trade; especially those in the Greater Manchester area such as Tameside MBC, Salford and Manchester City Council.  The book also asks questions as to who else was involved besides:  what did the unions do to expose what was going on for decades; who were the whistle-blowers who helped to bring out the truth; what part did the police and special security services play in the history of blacklisting that goes back beyond the days of the Economic League?

Copies of 'Boys on the Blacklist' available by postal subscription:
£3.53 for one copy (post included).

Make cheque payable to 'Tameside TUC' and send to:
46, Kingsland Road, Rochdale, Lancs.  OL11  3HQ.

Bundles of 5 copies - £16.60p a package (post included).

Tel.:  01706 861793.
e-mail:  northernvoices@hotmail.com 

Putting Tameside TUC in its Place!

Manchester TUC: They Know Their Swedish Meatballs!

LAST June, in a posting on this Blog, Blanco Posnet  wrote:
‘… a former Public and Commercial Services Union (P.C.S) representative, John Pearson, was confronted by an angry Jobcentre worker outside Ashton Jobcentre, who rebuked him for displaying a P.C.S placard while protesting against benefit sanctions. Although the P.C.S union have called on their members to support groups campaigning against the Tory Government's sanctioning regime, the member of staff, (who we understand to be the P.C.S union rep at Ashton Jobcentre), denied any knowledge of this.'

Then on the 6^th, August, Blanco Posnet  posted something entitled ‘Are Ashton Jobcentre acting like NAZI's?’, which included the following:
‘… only last week a meeting took place in Ashton between P.C.S. union representatives and two invited activists who have been campaigning against the governments iniquitous sanctions regime outside Ashton Jobcentre, for the past 12 months.  The meeting was initiated by Annette Wright (pictured above) a union official of the P.C.S union and President of Manchester Trades Council, and Evan Pritchard, a lay branch official from the Greater Manchester Unite Community Union.’
After a meeting today of the Greater Manchester County Association, the union officer, Annette Wright, was asked by a Northern Voices’ journalist as to what was the constitutional status of the meeting referred to above which was held at Ikea, famous for its Swedish meatballs, in Ashton-under-Lyne.  She said that it was convened as a joint meeting of the PCS, and the Unite Greater Manchester Community Branch.
Blanco Posnet had also written, last August: 
‘… it seems that much of the time [at this meeting] was taken up in admonishing Charlotte Hughes, a leading figure in the campaign…. [and that] Ms. Hughes, a “hardworking” single-mother with four children, who runs a blog – ‘The Poor Side of Life’, a weekly diary of events outside Ashton Jobcentre – was asked to remove items from her blog concerning Ashton Jobcentre and the P.C.S. union.’  When this was raised today by the Tameside delegate in his report at the Greater Manchester County Association of Trade Union Councils, Ms. Wright became flushed in the face and her colleague from Manchester TUC, John Clegg,(bottom right of picture), was heard to utter a four-letter word, and both began hectoring the Tameside delegate.  Even the Northern Voices' Blog was mentioned in their excitable ejaculations. 
Oh dear! 
Both Mr Clegg, and Ms. Wright insisted that the matter had been resolved, and said that it was not a matter for the Trade Councils of Greater Manchester.  Ms. Wright claimed that Charlotte Hughes had not complained of her treatment, and that everything was amicable.  The duo then went on to lambaste Tameside TUC, which has helped to finance the campaign against unfair benefit sanctions in Tameside.  
After the meeting was over,  Ms. Wright was asked when she was going to put in an appearance on the picket outside the Ashton Jobcentre. 
To which, reply came there none!

Ethical Procurement's Never-Never-Land

Unite Casa Branch: 'Liverpool Council "Reneges" on promise'!

LIVERPOOL Casa branch of Unite has now joined Bury Unite Commercial Branch, the Greater Manchester Construction Branch,  and Tameside Trade Union Council in expressing its disappointment in the readiness of Municipal councils to impose ethical procurement on companies tendering for contracts.  A branch report in the Unite the Union North West Region Regional Committee record from the North west co-ordinator, Sheila Coleman, stated: 

'The branch is very disappointed that Liverpool City Council has reneged on previous agreement to implement an ethical procurement policy (EEP) in respect of companies tendering for contracts.'

This represents the latest set-back in the activist campaign, supported by the Blacklist Support Group and unions like the GMB, to get local authorities to adopt an ethical policy for awarding public contracts and to scrutinise companies that may previously have been affiliated to the Consulting Association and possibly have been involved in blacklisting of construction workers and trade unionists.

Liverpool City Council has argued that while it is 'dedicated to complying with ethical procurement for its own workforce, it cannot impose this on outside contracts'.  

 

Bury Councillor Nick Parnell

This seemed to be the reasoning used by the Bury Labour councillor, Nick Parnell (see photo), when, at the Local Authority Risc meeting on the 5^th,March 2015, he appeared to opposed a similar motion on Ethical Procurement presented by my Bury Unite Commercial Branch: it now turns out that Bury MBC has a contract with Carillion (see post on this Blog 'Get me Mr. Toasty').  While at Tameside MBC, a long-time Labour Council, and its leader Kieran Quinn, has been in the forefront of awarding contracts to companies that have been accused of blacklisting like Carillion.  Labour leader, Mr Quinn, is also prominent on the Greater Manchester Pension Fund which is also in awarding contracts to these companies.

Trade unionists in the North West are concerned about what is happening, and the Liverpool Casa Branch is planning to host an ethical procurement conference in the near future.  Some, however, seem to object to us publicising this failure of local authorities to process ethical procurement policies against companies that have been accused blacklisting, and at present one of the administrators on our Northern Voices' Blog is the subject of an investigation.  

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?

Funeral of Tony Cooney: Manchester Electrician

YESTERDAY, over 100 people turned out at Dukinfield Crematorium in the Dukinfield drizzle for the funeral of Tony Cooney, aged 50-years.  Tony was a contracting electrician who had long been associated with the campaign against the blacklist and had been a member of the Greater Manchester Contracting Branch.  For a time he had been a delegate for the branch on Tameside Trade Union Council, and in that capacity he attended the unveiling of the blue plaque for James Keogh on the 25th, November 2011, and he is credited on the inside cover of Tameside TUC's book 'Boys on the Blacklist'. 

The person giving the eulogy at the funeral described Big Tony as 'a wind-up merchant', and said that he liked a drink.  On top of Tony's coffin was a Manchester United scarf and a copy of the Racing Post.  The speaker said that everyone, including the many electricians present - some of whom had come from as far afield as Liverpool and London, was invited to the Unicorn pub on Church Street, Manchester after the funeral.  Two of his relatives read a poem by Kipling in memory of Big Tony.

Afterwards in the car on the way to the Unicorn in central Manchester the lads joked about his cavalier spirit and carefree feel for life, and how after he became ill, he never let it stand in the way of him having a good time.  The Blacklist Support Group was represented at the funeral, as was the Greater Manchester Contracting Branch, many of the regional branches in the North West region and Tameside TUC.

A whip-rouind at the Unicorn pub after the funeral produced £1,500 which was given to Tony's widow.

Liverpool TUC & the Blacklist

Unite's Gail Cartmail & the Northern Narative!

'Boys on the Blacklist' talk given by

Brian Bamford, Secretary of Tameside TUC,

to Liverpool TUC on the 19th, January 2015:

 

I first met the 'Boys on the Blacklist' in Manchester's Piccadilly Square one afternoon on a picket during the DAF DISPUTE in 2003.  

At that time I was on a mission to give them a cheque for all of £10 from Tameside TUC.
I didn't know then, what we all know now, that this would lead the most significant industrial struggles of this century so far.   

The battle against the blacklist in the BRITISH building trade began in there Manchester Piccadilly, in 2003.   There in 2003, in both Manchester Piccadilly and later on in the pickets in Crown Square near the Law courts was where it all began. 

 

None of us knew where all this would end up!

 Soon after these early pickets was when at the Manchester Employment Tribunal that Michael Fahey, a manager for the sub-contractor DAF Electricial Contractors PLC, famously declared:

'AMICUS IS OUR UNION!'

 

 Bringing the natural response from the union barrister:

'YOUR UNION, MR FAHEY?'

 'YES' ,  he says, 'We pay the union dues!'

 Thus  the boss of DAF Electrical Contractors PLC pays the union affiliations for his own workforce on site.
 

When Michael Fahey said:  'IT'S OUR UNION'   

 That was a signal, the vital signal that something is anmiss in the culture of labour relations on the British building sites.  

Sometime in 2004, on a picket in Crown Square, while standing with the electrician Sean Keaveney I took a photo of Dave Fahey, the senior boss or managing director of DAF. 

 

The photo I took of Mr. Fahey was later to appear in this small booklet entitled 'Locked-Out Manchester Electricians' published by Tameside TUC.  This pamphlet was financially backed by the Greater Manchester Fire Brigades Union; Tameside TUC; Manchester Social Forum; Oldham Trades Council; the North West TUC, the Greater Manchester County Associatioon of TUCs and the regional journal Northern Voices.

In this booklet over a decade ago we stated that: 
'it aims  to capture the essence of /// a small but important dispute:    The Manchester Lockout of the DAF electricians.'
and in our conclusion, at that time in 2004, we stated an analysis that was very different from that that we are proposing today in the 'Boys on the Blacklist'. 

 

'it aims to capture the essence of ///  a small but important dispute':  /// 

In the 'Locked-out Electricians' we simply concluded that the dispute was '...important because it reflects a decline in the standards of workmanship in Britain by bringing in semi-skilled workers to do skilled work [producing] a willingness to run risks with safety at work through cutting corners and casualisation.'
 

What has happened here is, that in just over a decade, a dispute that kicked-off with health and safety issues on the British building sites, and cheap labour on British building sites, has clearly moved on to something much more significant.

With this new book I think that we have now come to realise that we're up against something very much more radical; and fundemental than health and safety or cheap labour however important these issues are.  Now in this later book the 'Boys on the Blacklist' I think we now know that we're up against something more serious, and that in dealing with the affiliates of the Consulting Assocaition we have seen a culture, a spirit of capital, that both red raw in tooth and claw.

There are two areas of serious concern which are alluded to in both these books - the 'Manchester Locked-out Electricians' and the 'Boys on the Blacklist'.  Both deal with what are for all of us trade unionists two serious matters, but neither resolve the two problems:

PROBLEM 1.    TO WHAT EXTENT WERE FULL-TIME TRADE UNION OFFICIALS INVOLVED IN EITHER PROVIDING INTELLEGENCE OR ENFORCING THE BUILDING SITE BLACKLIST? 

This has been alleged many times by lads in the building trade & some names has been put forward.  The whistle-blower & Agency manager Jim Simms has argued that this was the case but when I met him while we were producing this book he didn't provide us with a smoking gun.

In our earlier book 'The Lock-out Electricians' an academic Dave White, then working at Leeds University wrote:

'In the Manchester DAF dispute, workers have evidence that Amicus officials sanctioned their sacking in order to preserve good relations with management.'

At the time of the Manchester Employment Tribunal hearing in 2003, I believe one Amicus official was named as being present at meetings that excluded certain electricians from the CROWN SQUARE site.

PROBLEM 2.   WHAT ABOUT THE CLAIM // THAT AMICUS WAS /// FOR YEARS INREIPT OF UNION DUES FROM THE CONTRACTING COMPANIES?

Over this there has been strong evidence and convincing claims from another whistle-blower called Alan Wainwright:  I think he told Gail Cartmail, Deputy General Secretary of UNite, that the company Carillion paid AMICU £100,000 a year in union dues. 

When, while researching this latest pamphlet we came to read GAIL CARTMAIL'S own report on blacklisting produced for UNITE in 2011; we found that she hadn't even interviewed  ALAN WAINWRIGHT//

We naturally asked her while producing this book  WHY SHE HADN'T BOTHERED to interview such an important witness:  We are still waiting for her answer.

 

BUT GAIL CARTMAIL HAS FOUND TIME TO E-MAIL SOME OF HER COLLEAGUES and

ON THE 5^th, November 2014, about 2 weeks after the 'BOYS ON THE BLACKLIST' went on sale.  GAIL CARTMAIL an e-mail to the Unite head of legal services, Howard Becket, and several of her senior colleagues.  This e-mail was leaked to us at tameside TUC and reads as follows: 

'Colleagues, 

'PLEASE BE AWARE MATERIAL IN THIS PUBLICATION WAS PUBLISHED WITHOUT AGREEMENT and I BELIEVE BREACHES THE TUC POLICY ON FUNDING TRADES COUNCIL PROJECTS.   

'WE HAVE REITERATED THAT ONLY AN INDEPENDENT PUBLIC INQUIRY INTO BLACKLISTING WITH THE POWER TO FORENSICALLY ANALYSIS EVIDENCE & TAKE WITNESS STATEMENTS & CROSS EXAMINE UNDER OATH WILL REVEAL THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SCANDAL OF BLACKLISTING - LABOUR HAS COMMITTED TO THIS  & IN THE MEANTIME, WELL INTENTIONED BUT AMATEUR EFFORTS ARE JUST THAT,   AMATEUR & POTENTIALLY SELF-DEFEATING. 

CONTACT ME IF YOU WISH TO DISCUSS.   

AND BY THE WAY THERE WERE 'GIRLS' ON THE BLACKLIST TOO -  EVERYDAY SEXISM.'

THANKS,  GAIL.

 _____________________________________

So there you go comrades!  & that you know that we're 'EVERYDAY SEXISTS!'

I'll bet somebody got his or her arse chewed when Gail found out that her e-mail had been leaked to us.

What's interesting here is that Gail Cartmail didn't really want to dig the dirt on AMICUS  and full-time officials who may have been involved in the blacklist.  She just wants to hand the problem over to a future Labour Government.  The last thing she wants to do is to say the Emperor has no clothes.  Of course, Gail talks of an 'independent public inquiry' into blacklisting but how can it be genuinely independent when the biggest donor to the Labour Party is Unite the Union? 

Liverpool TUC discuss 'Boys on the Blacklist'

LIVERPOOL Trade Union Council (TUC) have invited three speakers from Tameside Trade Union Council to talk about the book  'Boys on the Blacklist'.

Liverpool TUC meeting,

at Jack Jones House,

7pm, Thursday 15th, January 2015  

(5minutes from Lime Street station).

The speakers will include the two authors of the 'Boys on the Blacklist and Graham Bowker, who is one of the lads featured in the book.   The book is an historical ethnography about five activist electricians from Greater Manchester, who by force of circumstances began to campaign against blacklisting in the British building trade over ten years ago in 2003.
 

Copies of 'Boys on the Blacklist' to will be on sale as requested by the organisers of the event.

The event is being advertised in Merseyside and Manchester.  This is a monthly delegate meeting of Liverpool TUC and is open, as always, to strikers, anti-cuts activists, students etc.
 

There will also be other items on the agenda; such as report from Liverpool Against the Cuts, which Liverpool TUC helped to set up three years ago, see motion Old Swan Against the Cuts moved. The conference proposed will be held in February and all who are fighting cuts will be welcome.

'BOYS ON THE BLACKLIST', SOLD OUT!

TAMESIDE TRADE UNION COUNCIL WISHES TO APOLOGISE TO THOSE APPLYING FOR COPIES OF OUR BOOK 'BOYS ON THE BLACKLIST' AS THE FIRST PRINTING HAS NOW SOLD OUT.  FIRST ISSUED ON THE 18th, OCTOBER IT SOLD OUT IN SIX WEEKS FLAT.  TAMESIDE TRADE'S COUNCIL NOW HAS SEVERAL BULK ORDERS AWAITING DELIVERY TO TRADE UNION BRANCHES.   THE SECOND PRINTING, WITH AN UPDATED FOOTNOTE, IS NOW AT OUR PRINTERS, AND THIS NEW ORDER SHOULD BE COMPLETED BEFORE CHRISTMAS.  WE URGE EVERYONE WHO HAS PLACED AN ORDER RECENTLY TO BE PATIENT AS WE EXPECT TO POST THESE BULK OREDERS OUT NEXT WEEK WHEN WE HAVE DELIVERY FROM OUR PRINTER.

Newcastle Rank & File Conference

LAST Saturday, the rank and file construction workers held their conference in Newcastle.  It was attended by some 80 workers in the British building trade from Scotland, Yorkshire, Liverpool, Manchester and London, as well as Newcastle.  Topics under discussion included 'Umbrella Companies'; the JIB; the blacklist; and the by-election for the position on Unite's National Executive Council, a position left vacant by the surprise resignation of John Sheridan.  Media representatives from Channel Four's Dispatches program were present and conducted interviews after the conference.   

Tameside TUC's book 'Boys on the Blacklist' was promoted and supported by many of the electricians and building workers present.  Concern was expressed by the delegate from Tameside TUC about revelations that Pluto Press, the intended publishers of the forthcoming book about blacklist by the journalist, Phil Chamberlain and the activist Dave Smith, had indicated that they were no longer willing to publish it.  This came as the Tameside TUC delegate to the conference told of a secret e-mail from a senior Unite official to the Unite legal department, in which it was stated that 'Boys on the Blacklist' had 'material in it that had not been approved (by Unite)' and effectively dismissing the book as an 'amatuer effort'.   

We were told well over a month ago by sources close to the Blacklist Support Group that at least one solicitor's letter had been sent to threaten the forthcoming book on blacklisting.   If it turns out that both the employers and some trade senior union officers are trying to hinder publication and distribution of literature about the history of blacklisting in the British building trade it is a sad day for democracy in this country.   

Meanwhile, the Rank & File conference agreed to support the forthcoming strike action in November; to promote a campaign against Laing O'Rourke; and to back Frank Morris for the vacant position on the National Executive Council.

Difficulties in getting 'Boys on the Blacklist'?

A reader recently wrote: 
'I would really like to purchase a copy of this but I don't have a chequebook.  Is there another way that I could pay for a copy?'


She was asking about buying a copy of 'Boys on the Blacklist' published by Tameside TUC and partly funded by the North West TUC as part of its grants to Trade Union Councils.  Understandably, the TUC has issued a disclaimer until it has had time to peruse and scrutinise its contents to see if its contents and conclusions meet with the policies of the TUC. At present the person charged with this is at present out of the country, and we will await her decision with interest.  Meanwhile the regional secretary of Unite the Union in the North West has placed the book on the agenda of the Finance & General Purposes Committee for its consideration.


This book has been available for almost three weeks and the first print order has now almost sold out.  We hope to reprint the book in the coming weeks.  It is selling remarkably well among trade unionists across the country, and was available on the Unite Manchester train to London for the TUC March on the 18th, October.  On that occasion Steve Acheson, who has led the campaign against the blacklist in the Manchester for over a decade, was signing copies of the book.


At the moment because casual sales are doing so well we have resisted placing copies in bookshops in the North.  Copies were being sold on the Crocodile Protest by the GMB union at G-Mex today.  However, a few outlets have taken a few copies including Housemans, Freedom Bookshop in London, Hydra the Bristol Radical History community bookshop, and Bob Jones's Northern Herald Books in Bradford.  Housemans Bookshop was mentioned by Ian Kerr before the Scottish Affairs Select Committee as the outlet in London at which he used to buy left-wing publications for his purposes of collecting intelligence and information to fill his blacklist files at the now defunct Consulting Association, which was closed down by the Information Commissioner in February 2009.

Barcelona: Making Everywhere the Same!

Threat to our culture from globalisation 

LAST July, residents of La Barceloneta, a seaside area of Barcelona, held street protests to object about the noisy tourists hanging around, and putting-up in overcrowded and unlicensed rented appartments.  This is port suburb of the city, where when I first visited in early 1963 it had a shanty encampment of migrant workers on the beach, and I wrote an article for the FIJL (young libertarian/ anarchist) publication 'Nueva Senda' entitled 'Where the tourist never go!'.  But since 1992, when this port area was tarted-up and overhauled for the Summer Olympic Games, this area has become more fashionable and tourist friendly. 

Barcelona had a record 7.5 million visitors last year, compared with about 1.5 million visitors before 1992.  More recently with the slow removal of rent controls Barcelona has suffered from a gradual gentrification with traditional shops being priced out by multi-national stores in the older parts of the city, and this is now destroying the character of the old historic town and provoking a questioning of what's going on.  Next May, Barcelona is down to hold municipal elections, and these issues are now on the political  agenda.  

 

Ada Colau, who is expected to run for Mayor of Barcelona as the candidate of of a leftist civic platform, has said she and her family stopped going to the Gothic Quarter because it was overwhelmed by foreign tourists and global brands.  She has said:  'The main attaction of Barcelona is a certain way of living, but we are allowing this to be replaced by what I would call a fast-food model.' 

In 2005, Tameside Trade Union Council invited the Catalan town planner Edward Masjuan, who was then associated with the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist CGT (General Confederation of Labour), to Manchester, and he spoke alongside the blacklisted electrician Steve Acheson at the Friend's Meeting House.  Mr. Masjuan then told us of the difficulties the city of Barcelona was facing, including the planning failures that had forced many of the traditional residents of the city out of the centre and areas like Barceloneta.  This had led to many having to live on the outskirts of the city and created social problems.  Masjuan also said that at that time political corruption was a serious concern in the city.  

Now with many traditional shops having to close down because of the higher rents being asked many jobs are being lost and it seems that the multi-national stores are winning the battle for business.

Laughter as Militants Mock English Anarchists

'ENGLISH anarchists,' declared blacklisted electrician Colin Trousdale, 'can't organise owt!'  Comrade Trousdale was speaking at a branch meeting of the famous Greater Manchester Contracting Branch 1400/7 in the Town Hall Tavern on Tibb Lane about the attack in October 2012 of a gang of members of the so-called Anarchist Federation (AF or A.fed) on a vendor on the Northern Voices/ NAN stall at the Anarchist Bookfair, and the consequent theft of trade union literature.  To laughter from the rest of those present he suggested that the anarchists ought to invent a salad cream bomb for throwing at their enemies.  The meeting which was mostly discussing important issues such as the blacklist and the behaviour of the Unite union in attempting to negotiate separately from the Blacklist Support Group and other unions, and to engage in talks with the very companies guilty of blacklisting in the construction industry, turned to the bizarre behaviour of Nick Heath and the Anarchist Federation (AF) as a bit of light relief under Any Other Business, when the Secretary of Tameside TUC gave a report likening the behaviour of A.fed. to an organisation on the far-right of English politics.  The meeting was reluctant to give even that degree of political seriousness to an organisation like A.fed. who were likened to clowns incapable of wiping their own arses.

In a year in which Freedom, the anarchist newspaper and perhaps the oldest left-wing paper in England, died of shame having been on the its death-bed for about a decade under a variety of weak editors.  Freedom, it is noted, never reported on any of the attacks on Northern Voices and even allowed itself in its dying moment, to be bullied by the superannuated boss of A.fed the cockney Nick Heath.  The anarchists had been condemn at a another meeting of the Greater Manchester County Association of TUCs (GMCA TUCs) for their behaviour on a May Day march.  It is getting difficult to defend anarchists these days at trade union meetings such among the Manchester blacklisted electricians, simply because they behave badly in a way which lacks an English sense of humour, and there was hearty laughter at the electrician's branch when it was learned that the pretext for the attack on Northern Voices and the theft of the trade union pamphlets was provoke after NV13 carried an obituary on the late Bob Miller describing him as a 'skedaddler':  many of the blacklisted lads read Northern Voices and their branch has been affiliated to Tameside TUC for years.  Yet, few would bother to read much of the other publications on the left.   

At last night's meeting the Socialist Party and Linda Taaffe came under attack when it was suggested that the branch affiliate to the National Shop Steward's Network (NSSN).  This was agreed, but Colin Trousdale pointed out that the NSSN had never had to same clout since the split when the syndicalists and other independent socialists left, and Colin said that the biggest loss had been the departure of Dave Chapple as the Chair of the NSSN.  Dave Chapple, who is a libertarian socialist, would never call himself an 'anarchist' simply because of the kind of corny behaviour already described at the Anarchist Bookfair, where the organisers refused to intervene and challenge A.fed., the electricians expressed disbelief about this.  The Socialist Party was criticised for divisiveness, but Colin claimed that the real culprit who caused the split in the NSSN was Peter Taaffe.  It was said that the split in the NSSN was caused by the Socialist Party who wanted their own 'sovereign' anti-cuts body separate from that of the SWP and others.  The supporters of the NSSN were asked how many cuts had been prevented by the NSSN since it set up its own anti-cuts organisation, and answer came there none.  It was even suggested that Nick Clegg and Vince Cable may have in truth modified more of the cuts than the NSSN and the Socialist Party put together.   

Dave Chapple and the paper Trade Union Solidarity are organising a conference on the 'Future of Working Class Education' in August.   

The electrician's branch discussed the bankrolling of the Labour Party by Unite and Len McClusky.  One member said that the Labour Party could not be saved, and this funding was a waste of the member's money.  What is interesting in all this is how nothing ever changes the unions throw money down the political drain of the Labour Party, the English anarchists live up to their standard barn-pot caricature, and English trotskyists still seek solutions to the problems of the world through eternal point-scoring and splits.