Blacklist Solicitor Quizes Labour MP on Complicity

Imran Khan QC, acting on behalf of the Blacklist Support Group, has written a letter (attached) to John Spellar MP, asking the former minister in the Blair government to clarify his involvement in secret meetings that took place between Norman Tebbit and leaders of the Electric, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (EETPU). Lord Tebbit told a parliamentary Zoom meeting last week that such meetings took place during his time as Secretary of State for Employment in the Thatcher government, claiming that the meetings were held to discuss how to deal with 'left-wing' members of the union. Tebbit later confirmed the meetings took place in a interview for The Times, which states:

“I got briefings from Special Branch on what some of the hard-left, communist-style leaders were up to, yes,” Tebbit, who was employment secretary from 1981 to 1983, said this morning. “But I got far more briefings from my friends who were trade union leaders.” Describing secret audiences with unions including the Electric, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union, he added: “Friends of mine who were trade union leaders would come to see me at the Department of Employment by arrangement. They would drive, be admitted straight into the underground car park and take the lift straight to my office, so that nobody would know that they had seen me.”

Before entering parliament, John Spellar was the EETPU Political Officer (1969-1992) which included the period during the 1980s when the union was expelled from the TUC because of what were referred to as 'sweetheart deals' with employers, including supporting Rupert Murdoch during the year long Wapping dispute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spellar

Blacklist Support Group represents construction workers who were blacklisted for their union activities by major building contractors, including many members of the EETPU. Dozens of the unlawful blacklist files include the entry "EETPU says NO". An internal police investigation called Operation Reuben, has admitted that the police infiltrated trade unions to spy on activists, and that Special Branch and the Security Services provided information to the illegal blacklisting organisations; the Consulting Association and the Economic League. Given that Lord Tebbit revealed that while Employment minister he received briefings about union members from Special Branch, the secret meetings between the Conservative Minister and the EETPU may be relevant to the public inquiry into undercover policing being chaired by Sir John Mitting.

To ascertain whether John Spellar MP had any involvement in the meetings, Imran Khan QC has asked the following questions:

In your position as the EETPU political officer:

1. What was your role in setting up the meetings between EETPU and Norman Tebbit?

2. Did you attend these or any other any meetings between the union and Norman Tebbit?

3. Are you aware of any documentation relating to the meetings; such as but not restricted to invitations, emails, minutes, meeting notes, diary entries, reports to the EETPU Executive, or any other records kept by yourself or the union?

4. Did you arrange any similar meetings with Conservative government Ministers, especially during the time when EETPU was expelled from the TUC?

Note:

The EETPU only ever had two General Secretaries, Lord Frank Chapple (1968-1984) and Eric Hammond OBE (1984-1992).

Following various union mergers, EETPU is now part of UNITE the Union, which in 2019 set up an independent investigation into allegations of collusion by union officials in blacklisting of union members.

'Wild West' Approach to Apprenticeships in the UK

by Brian Bamford

CAMILLA CAVENDISH writing in the FT on 4th, October, wrote: 'The gulf between academic and vocational education in the UK has depressed productivity and exacerbated skills shortages.' She added that: 'Many of the largest shortages reported by employers are in sectors such as construction, health and IT.'

Meanwhile, in the UK only one one in ten adults hold a higher technical qualification as their highest qualification compared to about one in five in Germany and one in three in Canada. Camilla Cavendish estimates that 'as much as 20% of the UK workforce will be significantly under-skilled for their jobs by 2030'.

In this country the government wants to bridge the gap, and according to Ms. Cavendish 'create a "world-class, German-style further education system".' The government has promised a 'lifetime skills guarantee' with the offer of free further education courses to adults without A-levels or the equivalent. Yet Ms. Cavendish insists 'The challenge [for the government] is to make them good enough ans to offer people who didn't enjoy school something better the second time around' and she says: 'Until now, the UK has not done this well.' And she argues that in the 'UK ministers must fight their urge to centralise'.

The trouble is that anyone in the UK can set-up as a joiner without any qualifications. Yet in Germany you can't be a carpenter or plumber unless you have mastered a trade doing an apprenticeship of about three years, often followed by evening classes. The handwerk curriculum is also guided by master craftsmen who know the job, and not what Ms. Cavendish calls: 'pseudo-academics'.

She viciously compares the two systems saying: 'In contrast, vocational training in the UK is a Wild West. There are a bewildering array of more than 12,000 different qualifications. Students are often jammed through courses in which "competition", not actual learning, commands the fee. Sub-contracting is rife, making it hard to monitor quality. There are some excellent courses; but also mis-selling. Good further education courses have also been denuded of funding with their teachers paid less, on average, than their counterparts in schools.'

It may be argued that the German guild system is a bit 'inflexible', and it could opperate a bit like closed shops. Also in the rapidly shifting situation even a gold standard apprenticeship may not last a lifetime. Yet surely it offers a better set-up than we've got now with all kinds of chancers and scallwags passing themselves-off as tradesmen in this country. This decline in workmanship was brought forward with Margaret Thatcher's attack on the trade unions in the 1970s and 80s, and the replacement of the one-to-one traing on the job with the 'pseudo-academics' and the prioritisation of classroom learning.

The 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was clearly aware of this vast gulf between practical know-how on the job and speculative classroom efforts to solve problems when he remarked to his student Maurice Drury: 'You think philosophy is difficult enough but I can tell you it is nothing to the difficulty of being a good architect. When I was building the house for for my sister in Vienna I was so completely exhausted at the end of the day that all I could do was go out to a "flick" every night.'

Based on his own building site experiences and observations, Wittgenstein noted the language games employed by building workers giving orders and obeying them in building a wall: such as for example shouting 'brick' and not 'bring me a brick' and so forth to his mate (see his Philosophical Investigations). Classroom learning creates a completely different language game which somehow lacks the quality of the practical situation. In Wittgenstein's terms they are two distinct 'forms of life' and two different 'language games'.

The snobbery of the middle class will naturally continue to prefer the full time graduate degree as the ideal. But it will still not help when we want to get the roof fixed.

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

The ‘Tyranny’ Of Social Obligation

By Les May

‘There is no such thing as society must be one of the best known comments by Margaret Thatcher . For her critics it became shorthand for a crassly individualistic world view that prized selfishness and the trashing of social obligations. For her acolytes this crude shorthand became an excuse for the policies which have come to be known, and despised by people like me, as ‘Thatcherism’. Now it appears that this crude version is alive and prospering in the minds of those protesting against the ‘tyranny’ of being told they should wear a mask in public places and practice physical distancing.

In fact Thatcher was saying something a little more nuanced than is immediately apparent in the well known version of the quote. Her point was that the state cannot solve all our problems, we have to accept some level of personal responsibility. As a democratic socialist I believe that only the state can ensure that we all have access to decent housing, lifelong healthcare and education irrespective of our income, because the so called ‘free market’amplifies and exploits inequality.

Even people who do not share my political stance readily slip into the belief that when they are ill it is the job of the NHS to restore them to health and I doubt that the protesters are any exception. If they shake off the tyranny of having to physically distance themselves and by chance meet someone who, like them, refuses to wear a mask in public and so become infected with Covid19, which of course some of their compatriots think does not exist anyhow, and go on to require hospitalisation, it is NHS staff who will risk their lives nursing them.

Wearing a mask in public places and maintaining physical distance isn’t about what the law requires it is about each of us accepting that we have a responsibility to avoid infecting others. Perhaps these demonstrators who prize selfishness above all else and reject the notion of social obligations have never known anyone who has been infected with the virus. I know three, two of them in my family and one a nearby neighbour. None of them reported it as ‘a little flu’.

Who is now 'The Left' and what about the workers?

beware long angry rant

by Dave Douglass
  
David Douglass worked as a coalminer in the coalfields of Durham and South Yorkshire, and was NUM Branch Delegate for Hatfield Colliery from 1979.  He appears in the documentary The Miner's Campaign Tapes to discuss the role of the popular media in the strike of 1984–85. In 1994–95 he was Branch Secretary at Hatfield Main, but after the pit was privatised the NUM no longer had any recognition there.  Dave was also until the 12th, August 2019 a Friend of Freedom Press, the anarchist publisher.   
*************************

SINCE Thatcher and Major decimated Britain's industrial base there has been a seismic change in 'left' perceptions, and who exactly speaks for 'the left'.  Consistently the working class itself, self-consciously advancing its own interests not only embraced the politics of social change, anti-capitalism, and socialism, it determined for itself the how and what of strategy, tactics and general social outlooks.  The middle class 'left' the liberals the paper sellers in general stood in awe at the mighty columns of organised labour and respected 'the workers' as people who knew what was best for the class but knew who the class was and how it thought.  All other struggles and oppressions and individual hardships suffered by this or that specific, sexism or racism as symptoms of capitalism not necessarily overthrown by the end of capitalism were nonetheless subsumed into the overall class struggle, that being the struggle of the working class itself.

Some tectonic plates however have shifted, and we find now on issue after issue 'the left' is not by enlarge represented by horny handed sons and daughters of labour, nor yet the mass of intellectual or technical white-collar workers.  Almost at every stage 'the left' now confronts the opinions and politics of the working class , by 'the working class'  I am not talking figuratively here, I mean literally the folk who labour by hand and by brain , the working class communities, though mostly these are now post-industrial centers of unemployment and social deprivation.  These are the heartland of the working-class traditions with conscious class struggle halls of fame.  The left now isn’t us, not these people, the left is now the army of middle-class liberal leftists who deem to speak on our behalf and know what’s best for us. In order to do this they have of course to confront our own attitudes and outlooks and conclusions, so consistently over the last twenty years 'the left' has defacto become 'anti the working class' at least how we express our opinions and outlooks and conclusions.  

Any collection of normal working-class folk expressing opposition to what currently passes as left politics, is likely to be designated 'far right' or any of the numerous 'isms' which separate us out from the shining paths of liberal agendas.   Often the aspiration of the 'left' is synonymous with that of the state itself, on issues such as remain or leave the EU, or racism, transism, censorship, safe spaces etc.  So often the 'left' has become the cheerleader of the state singing off the same hymn sheet and forgetting the most fundamental principle of class warfare, to keep an independent identity from the state and its interests. The bleating of the 'left' over social distancing, scooting folk out of the parks or beaches, crying for harsher and longer curfews and abandoning any notion of civil liberties and social freedoms.

The Trade Union movement now that the big militant industrial unions like the miners and shipyard and heavy engineering proletariat have gone and construction workers and car and others have paled into insignificance, it is the white collar and professional unions which dominate.  Not that the nature of the work union members do, or even our opinions matter too much.  The unions and the TUC are now dominated by middle class liberal agenda's, re-education classes, PC speak schools, and making policy fit the liberal middle class left agenda is now the dominant 'culture' of the TUC. it is doubtful how far workers are actually allowed to express their opinions on subject like Brexit with unions like UNITE and GMB swinging in behind leave agenda's despite their rank and file's opinions (RMT and ASLEF were exceptions).  The passing of anti-radical feminist policies denying the existence of women as a biological sex, even in the Women’s Commission of the TUC is a case in PC point.  You could cite almost any major issue over the last twenty years and the so-called left will have drawn the opposite conclusion to the bulk of the actual working class and particularly the traditional working class, postindustrial communities and regions.  Brexit comes to mind, but then also the degree of hysteria and anti-industrialization in response to climate change is another, the remain position of the PLP and NEC and host of bright young mainly southern middle class liberals in the Labour Party itself, Identity politics and the trans impositions, and oddly the lock down and attitudes to withdraw of civil liberties and rights . There is now a miss match between those who see themselves as the left leaders of the working class and the working class itself.  The attitude of the current left tends be one of 'fuck em' if they won’t do as we tell them, they are all Tory, racist, xenophobic, sexist, transphobic, fascists anyway.  They appear to find the working class and engaging with our politics at large, entirely superfluous. In one way, it was this contempt for the opinions of the working class communities which led to the surprising victory of the Tories, the belief that Brexit- committed communities in the rust belts who were the heartlands of Labour support would never vote Tory and could therefore be ignored.  Actually I was one who swore they would never vote Tory too I knew they were never going to vote for Labour on a remain anti-industry program, but the degree of their anger transcended for the space of time it took to put the cross on their deep hatred of the Tories over generations of struggles.  The left is now expert at painting the working class into corners charging us with racism, and empire loyalism monarchism and patriotism and other such absurdities.

The statue toppling hysteria sweeping the nation, no I understand not many are being knocked over by groups of Simon pure iconoclasts, but the fear that they will and the fear of being regarded as reactionary, or racist has panicked City Councils into the pre-emptively felling them themselves. Let’s be clear I have no attachment to any of the victim statues thus far and I doubt that I will shed any tears for any on the secret hit list. What rattles us is that someone else has come along and imposed these judgements upon us, that without public discussion and debate a group of unelected vigilantes can decide what is 'appropriate' for us to continue to view.  

Cities are being scoured.for offending masonry and brass and any obscure imperialist lackey can now pay the price. This is an attempt to sanitize history it is an attempt to make the nasty history go away and remove memory of it, when clearly we should be doing the opposite. They were erected within a social and political context and thankfully that context has now changed , the statue though is a reminder of social attitudes and politics of the past , as long as there is adequate information boards alongside there is no reason why they need to be removed.  The statue of Nelson in Trafalgar Square is a case in point, was Nelson a distinctive character of history who served the state and the cause of his country as he would have seen it at the time?  Obviously, nobody today including the ruling class would aspire to empire building and defense and colonialism which they did at the time, almost anyone with a brain cell knows this is a historical monument in a historical context.  Actually it is quite interesting from a social history point of view, walk round the base plinth and look at the images of the seafarers in the height of the battle, look at the racial composition of the crew and the ages of the lads running through bombardments with gun powder for the guns, there is a clear presence of black seamen and boys, volunteers earning their freedom from slavery serving 'their' country.  Statues and plaques are interesting platforms for discussing history and understanding it.  Following the logic of the liberal iconoclast would surely see the pyramids fall and the colosseum?   There are already moves afoot to move the statue of the emperor Constantine from York, it appears the guardians have suddenly found out Roman Society was based on slavery, there noo !   I think most of us knew that, it really doesn’t make us want to run through the country uprooting all the many Roman monuments and remains for fear we upset.  Well who exactly?

Churchill and the miners existed in mutual hatred and class warfare, as miners children right through the post war period and before we were raised on stories not so much of Goldilocks and three bears, but Churchill and Tonypandy, and 26, and his hatred toward us.  Was he due his distinctive Mohican grass haircut and spray-paint during the class war protest of a few years ago?  Of course, he was.  Was he a distinguished member of the British ruling class and a memorable character from history, of course he was.  A statue of him in the coalfields would be blown to kingdom come, but outside parliament is fine by me, of course when we the miners pass it, our tale our history in regard to him is somewhat different than the ones told by the tour guides (incidentally see:  'The Day Britain Said No' a more clear sighted history of Churchill) and dauntless any demonstration by the working class or radical movements will find expressions of class war on the statue and plinth, no problem here.

Can I warn against allowing a simple 'hit list' of statues and monuments and plaques as this will always favour those opposed to and rarely those who defend, not least because the defenders won’t know whether or not they need to do any defending or whether someone is attacking something they think is valuable. Can I also warn against taking at face value accusations against particular historic figures, these may well come down to poor research or a particular political or cultural or class interpretation.  Scratching around for something to link Tyneside and the river and the region with the Slave Trade in order that we too might be suitably contrite and consumed with self-guilt, on the day of the first, BLM demonstration in Newcastle,  Look North focused on Blackett Street.  Repeating a poorly researched piece in I think the Journal, talking about Newcastle and the slave trade, the author firstly couldn’t even spell Fredrick Douglass's name right ! But then went on to talk about Blackett having made his fortune in an offshoot of the slave trade by importing Rum.  A totally misguided image was thus conjured up enough that now the name Blackett Street is now on some hit lists. Let’s be clear Blackett was a Liverpudlian , Liverpool being certainly a center of the slave trade though also strongly working class opponent of it. Blackett had started as a young merchant apprentice to his Cousin who did make his fortune in slaves, but he himself didn’t. The fortune and business and wealth of the river, city and region was coal not slaves. Of course, at this time boy miners from six years old worked in the mines, bonded to the coal owners and not allowed to run away or be employed elsewhere on pain of imprisonment the blacklist and starvation. This is the wrong sort of slavery of course, since these children who happened to be sometimes white, if they found time between the 18 hour shifts to get bathed and eat and sleep.  Doubtless some middle-class liberal PC wit will tell us they had 'white privilege' although I’ve never discovered just what that was.  It’s almost certainly true Blackett would have received cases or barrels of rum from his cousin, all rum consumed worldwide was based on the slave trade , as was tea, and cotton and much else, but this wasn’t how fortunes were made on the Tyne or Newcastle which were NOT part of the slave trade other than living in a country and state which overall was.  We had no specific connection and the penitents ought to stop scraping the bottom of (rum) barrels to find one.

The problem with a witch hunt is once you start looking, the world is full of witches.  All Judeo-Christian traditions including Islam have condoned slavery.  Neither Mohamad or Jesus condemned it or banned it or spoke or instructed against it, the bible euphemistically refers to master’s 'servants' rather than the slaves they actually were.  Paul went further and instructed the slaves not to disobey their masters and work hard for them.  This means all religious statues, churches, temples in that tradition Islam, Judaism, and Christianity could be charged with complicity and excusing slavery worldwide and therefore should be removed and shut down.

Modern morality imposes strict age limitations on sexual relationships, courtship and marriage, all sorts of outrage and repudiation is heaped upon those who breach the law or the consensus, but history had no restrictions especially on kings and queens.  If the trend is to take modern values and mores back into ancient history regardless of context and understanding of past society, the censorship of past artifacts could be unlimited.  How many kings and queens have been under 16 or were not even teenagers when they married,?  How many preteens and even on occasion babies, were married?  The whole of European history as it is represented could be shut down.

So, buildings, paintings and statues and books and even the history of such times could be banned and removed from view or knowledge.  The young comrades of the Chinese Red Guard during the so called 'cultural revolution' in their enthusiasm for change, destroyed swathes of ancient Chinese heritage believing it was keeping China in the past. it wasn’t of course, as the miner’s slogan says 'the past we inherit the future we build'.

 We have to acknowledge that Britain was a long time Imperialist and colonialist state, it invaded other countries, it imposed empires it suppressed other cultures and peoples, throughout that long period of the 'empire of which the sun never set' statutes and heroes of the time were built and commemorated. If the attempt is to be allowed to remove all markers to these people and any attempt to see them in historic context then essentially any appreciation of history will be impossible. All statues of Victoria and all other imperial monarchs, generals, wars , must be removed, Lord Collinwood springs to mind, certainly no Mr Nice Guy to his crews. Baden Powell the founder of the scout movement, unsurprisingly an imperialist empire loyalist, was not put up for that reason, but for founding the international scouting movement.  Shock horror they now discover he condemned homosexuality, but society condemned homosexuality, it was highly illegal and poor souls rotten in jails, were beaten and murdered for the offence, that was the injustice of the period in which he lived. Also as man trying to found an organization of little boys would hardly be a public advocate of same sex relationships would he ?, pedophilia being synonymous with homosexuality in those days.

A controversial figure in history, not particular Mr Nice Guy might well still be important corner stones of history and events and worthy of marking. I would expect that if Adolf Hitler had been born on Pilgrim Street Newcastle a plaque at least would mark this fact, that would simply be a historic marker and not some celebration or badge of honour.

The miners have particular reason to remember our slavery and oppression and see in the character of Lord Londonderry in Durham City Centre a monument worthy of removal, but how would that serve our history?  That statue allows us to tell that story, and to demonstrate that the same history can have at least two versions and two sets of facts.  I use it often given on the stump lectures.

 ******************************

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

BREXIT CONSIDERED by Vernon Bogdanor

ON June 23, 2016, British voters decided by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent that the United Kingdom should leave the European Union.  Since then, British politics has been convulsed by the referendum’s repercussions. Some Remainers do not accept the finality of the vote.  The margin, they argue, was too narrow to provide a mandate for fundamental change, while some of the arguments that persuaded voters to support Leave were mendacious.  The hope that Britain could, in the words of then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, have its cake and eat it has proved misplaced.

The hope that Britain could, in the words of then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, have its cake and eat it has proved misplaced.

If, to alter the metaphor, one leaves a tennis club because one does not wish to pay the subscription and does not like the rules, one will not be able to continue to use the tennis courts on the same basis as the members. Therefore, some Remainers conclude, there should be a second referendum, to discover whether the British people still wish to leave the European Union.

The European issue is difficult for Parliament to resolve for two reasons. The first is that May’s government holds only a minority of seats—317 out of the 650—in the House of Commons, meaning it must rely for its narrow majority on the 10 members of parliament from the vehemently pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland. But, perhaps even more important, both the Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party are internally divided between Remainers and Brexiteers. That division reflects a geographical and cultural division in the country.

The large cities, together with Scotland and Northern Ireland, welcome globalization and are relaxed about the EU’s principle of freedom of movement. They voted to remain. But smaller towns and older manufacturing areas, in which many feel left behind, are hostile to globalization and freedom of movement, which, they argue, have kept wages down and put undue pressure on public services. These areas supported the Leave campaign.

Parliament has enacted that Britain will leave the EU on March 29. After long and tortuous negotiations, Prime Minister Theresa May in November 2018 secured a deal with the EU. That deal comprises a legally binding withdrawal agreement providing for a transition period until December 2020, during which Britain will remain bound by EU rules while negotiating the final relationship. The pattern of that relationship is outlined in a nonbinding political declaration that hints at an outcome in which Britain could negotiate independent trade agreements, while also providing it with some degree of frictionless trade with the EU.

May’s cabinet, despite internal tensions between Remainers and Brexiteers, accepted the deal. But the Tories’ DUP allies were fiercely opposed to it, as they claimed that it might separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom by preventing a hard border with the Irish Republic and potentially creating a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The deal was also opposed both by Brexiteers in the Conservative Party, who claimed that it tied Britain too closely to the EU, and by Remainers—primarily Labour, but also Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists—who argued that it allowed for too many barriers to the export of goods and services to the EU. This coalition of incompatibles imposed a crushing defeat on the government motion to accept the deal on Jan. 15. Just 202 MPs supported it, while 432 rejected it.

A defeat of this magnitude is unparalleled in Britain’s parliamentary history. No fewer than 118 Conservatives, mostly hard Brexiteers, voted against the deal, with just 196 Conservatives supporting it. And many of those who voted for it had no choice.  (Because approximately 100 Conservative MPs are ministers or on the government payroll, they were duty-bound to support May or resign.  This means that a majority of Conservative backbenchers were opposed to the deal.) May’s defeat, in what was arguably the most important parliamentary vote in Britain since World War II, creates a moment of acute danger for the prime minister, the government, the Conservative Party, and the country.

A harder Brexit to placate Conservative rebels would alienate Conservative Remainers. Conversely, a softer Brexit to win support from the opposition parties would increase the number of Conservative rebels.

The hope was that the deal could unite Brexiteers and Remainers. Instead it has driven them further apart. A harder Brexit to placate Conservative rebels would alienate Conservative Remainers. Conversely, a softer Brexit to win support from the opposition parties would increase the number of Conservative rebels. Indeed, there may be no deal that could hold the Conservative Party together; an alternative could end the cabinet truce and possibly lead to the disintegration of the minority government, with a general election to follow.

It has happened before. In 1979, the Labour minority government led by James Callaghan disintegrated in this way, in part because Labour was internally divided on the issue of devolving power to Scotland. Then, in 1951, Clement Attlee’s Labour government, which enjoyed a majority of only five, disintegrated because the party was internally divided between left and right. In both cases, long periods in the opposition followed.

The vote also creates a moment of danger for the country. Since Parliament has already approved a bill stating Brexit will occur on March 29, that is the default position. The exit date can, admittedly, be extended with the agreement of the other 27 members of the European Union. But those countries may be unwilling to agree if the only reason for extension is that MPs, 30 months after the referendum, still cannot make up their minds. In any case, an extension would only postpone the dilemma. It would not resolve it.

Unless Parliament passes new legislation—and there are now fewer than 40 sitting days before March 29—Britain will leave the EU without a deal.  That is regarded by most commentators as disastrous, since it would mean that EU customs duties and, even more disadvantageously, an intimidating host of EU regulations would be imposed on British exports.  It would no longer be as easy to send goods from London to Paris or Frankfurt as it is to send goods from London to Edinburgh.

The Jan. 15 vote showed what MPs are against. But there seems to be little agreement on what they are for. Theresa May is now seeking consensus through all-party talks, although she has not yet budged on her so-called red lines, namely that Britain should leave both the European customs union (in order to pursue an independent trade policy) and the single market (to avoid allowing free movement of people and the jurisdiction of EU courts).   And the opposition parties see no reason to help her. Labour is unwilling to allow its deep internal divisions to be publicly exposed by articulating a clear alternative policy. It seeks not consensus but a general election to remove the Conservatives from power.   The Liberal Democrats seek a second referendum, while the Scottish nationalists seek to exploit the government’s difficulties to further the case for independence.
There is no obvious resolution of the problem that could secure majority support.

There is no obvious resolution of the problem that could secure majority support.  Were Britain to remain in the EU’s customs union, it would be unable to sign independent trade agreements.  Were it to remain in the EU’s internal market, it would have to accept freedom of movement.  Yet control of immigration from the European Union was one of the main motivations behind the Brexit vote.
At this point, there seem to be just three alternatives. The first is May’s deal, perhaps in a slightly modified form.  The second is for Britain to leave the EU without a deal; even though most MPs are against a no-deal Brexit, they find themselves unable to agree on an alternative.  The third is for Parliament throw the issue back to the people in a second referendum, even though the prime minister has so far opposed such a move, and its advocates cannot agree on the question to be asked.  Finally, given that the country remains almost evenly divided, a second referendum would not necessarily resolve the conflict.

The issue of Britain’s place in (or out of) Europe has arguably destroyed five of the last six Conservative prime ministers—Harold Macmillan, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and David Cameron.  It may be about to bring down another.

Vernon Bogdanor is a professor of government at King’s College, London. His book Brexit and the Constitution will be published next year. In 2019, he will be giving the Stimson lecture at Yale University on the consequences of Brexit for Britain and the European Union.

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

Is the Corbyn Project Finished?

by Les May

THE day after Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour party on 12 September 2015 the BBC showed its filmed production of J. B. Priestley’s 1945 play An Inspector Calls which has been seen by some people as a call to British society to take more responsibility for working-class people. Certainly this is how I read the play. It is calling for a shift in attitude, but it’s not a prescription for how it can be achieved.

I grew up in the 1950s, a time when that shift in attitude had to a significant degree been achieved. My dad was in hospital and we lived on National Assistance introduced by the Atlee government in 1949. Unlike today my mum was not made to feel like a scrounger. Many of the scribblers who write the opinion pieces in our newspapers are too young to remember that world. They are ‘Thatcher’s Children’ and since her election in 1979 the centroid of politics has shifted to the Right, so they view any move away from that centroid as Left wing extremism and swallow the myth that the Social Democracy which underpinned those years was a failure. It did not fail. It was ruthlessly destroyed by Thatcher and her followers in pursuit of their own interests.

Whilst older people like me have been attracted to ‘The Corbyn Project’ because they want to see the more caring world I experienced as a child restored, other, younger people have been attracted by what they see as his willingness to break with the Blairite legacy they grew up with and promote an alternative vision of society. Labour’s ranks have been swelled by younger people joining the party and older people rejoining it. These are the people who re-elected him when, in 2016, the win in the EU referendum by the Leave campaign led to the spurious claim that he was to blame for not campaigning hard enough.

In fact he was much more successful in persuading Labour voters of the virtue of staying in the EU (60% voted Remain) than Cameron was in persuading Tory voters (60% voted Leave).

I can see much the same scenario building as we approach 29 March 2019. This is what Andrew Rawnsley had to say in The Observer last Sunday;

‘The Labour leader is not making any effort to prevent Brexit because he doesn’t want to prevent Brexit. The conclusion for Labour supporters ought to be clear. If they want another referendum, they will have to rebel against him.’

It’s not difficult to spot the non sequitur here. There is absolutely no guarantee that the result of a second referendum would be different from the first. Rawnsley wants Labour supporters who don’t want to leave the EU, and I’m one of them, to think it would. From there it’s only a short step to saying, ‘It’s Corbyn’s fault we left the EU because he did not call for a second referendum’ if we do in fact leave.

Corbyn’s unwillingness, so far at least, to call for a second referendum is a principled stance. As I have written before when I voted to Remain in the EU I assumed that result would be honoured. But I doubt that the people in the Labour party who have tried to get rid of him once will see it that way.

I think Corbyn’s unwillingness to commit Labour prematurely to a definite policy with regard to leaving the EU has been shrewd because it makes it difficult for Labour’s enemies to attack it. At some time it will have to be clarified. Or will it?

As things stand there does not look like a majority of MPs in the House of Commons who will vote to leave. If there isn’t then perhaps Theresa May will feel she has to call a second Referendum. That would let Corbyn off the hook, May would get all the flak and Jeremy would be seen as the man who respected the voters wishes. That certainly would not do him any harm in an election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inspector_Calls

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02z80kq

Who should be charged over Grenfell?

by Andrew Wastling .

ARTICLE [Public Order & Bad Taste]  raises valid points about freedom of the individual.  The burning of any effigy of another human being could be considered incitement to hate - or alternatively as a collective way of channel anger into a less destructive avenue than real violence.  I have no qualms whatsoever ,for instance , when people in mining communities burnt the effigy of Margaret Thatcher on celebratory bonfires when she died and sang ' ding dong the witches dead' in a perfectly understandable communal response to the damage Her government dealt out to the mining communities.

On the other hand I'd be much more concerned by people burning books on bonfires, conjuring up as the image does obvious Nazi imagery and symbolism.

The swiftness of the State in this incident surely exposes the sheer hypocrisy & double standards of the authorities in choosing when and when not to act as suits their own agenda when we compare the relative speed in which the lowlifes who burnt an effigy of Grenfell were arrested, when compared to the rather posher lowlifes who burnt the real Grenfell.

When will they be arrested on charges of possible corporate manslaughter I wonder?

I know which many people will regard as the greater 'hate crime'; towards people, and which is the more deserving of police action and prosecution for criminality.

***********

Dave Chapple’s MAY DAY Speech

Wells May Day 2018:

International Worker’s Day greetings from a life-long Somerset trades unionist, a school-cleaner for 11 years, a postman for 38, a shop steward for 35 of those years, to the Wells Constituency Labour Party for organising this, the first May Day March in Somerset for 24 years.

Solidarity, also, to Wells, from Somerset’s working-class capital: Bridgwater.

Bridgwater, a town where, today, 14 out of 16 town councillors; 10 out of 15 district councillors, and 2 out of 3 county councillors are Labour.

Bridgwater, home of 17 pub-based workers Carnival Clubs, which organise, at weekly meetings of 10 to 30 members, on November’s first Saturday, the greatest West Country working class cultural event, one enjoyed by 100,000 people from all over. 

 

Bridgwater:  The home of Robert Blake, Cromwell’s General at Sea, staunch republican if not a regicide, who personally inflicted some of the first Royalist casualties of the Civil War.

Bridgwater, where, after the battle of Sedgemoor in 1685, no member of the Royal Family set foot in the town for over 300 years.

Bridgwater, the town, a century later, that remembered Judge Jeffries sending 800 Monmouth rebels to Barbados sugar plantations, so well, that radicals like John Chubb organised Britain’s first ever petition against the slave trade.

Bridgwater, which, even if the town’s large factories have been replaced by warehouses, still hosts militant trade union organised workplaces, like the Unite union at Refresco-Gerber and ARGOS, who have struck for two weeks and three weeks, respectively, in the last few years. 

 

Like Hinkley Point “C” construction workers, who won back lost bad weather wages recently after a successful and illegal sit-in. 

 

Like my former workplace, the Royal Mail Delivery Office, where, still, national and regional managers are regularly thrown into panic upon rumours of yet another wildcat strike being planned by the CWU Reps and Committee;

But what of the rest of Somerset?  What of the Mendip area?  What of Wells itself? Well, it seems clear now, 33 years after the epic NUM strike of 1984/5, that Tory Governments planned, starting with the miners, to shut down whole industries in order to weaken or eliminate strong trades unions. 

 

Over the next decades, Thatcher, Major and Blair were glad to wipe out 90% of UK manufacturing, to critically wound trades unionism as a whole. So Somerset, too has been almost completely de-industrialised: we now have hardly any large factories that make things. 

 

Think at all those losses: the dozen or so Somerset Clarks shoe factories; Moorland and Bailey sheepskins; printers and packagers like Butler and Tanner, Mardon, Purnells; Cider makers like Showering; Evercreech dairy; Nutricia; St Cuthberts paper mill at Wookey; and for Wells, skilled engineers like Clares and EMI. 

 

So it wasn’t just the cities, not just the NUM: Somerset has, also, descended, within two generations, from a place where working-class people through their union could negotiate reasonable wages, conditions and pensions, to a dog-eats-dog individual race to the bottom: bullying supervisors, zero-hours, no holidays, no sick pay, no pension no rights at all.

But why, then, I am proud to announce, in the last few weeks, has Wells hosted the launch of Mendip TUC, the newest local trades union council in the UK?

Because trades unionism still exists in the Mendips, there are reps and stewards and union branch officers in every town and many villages.

Because rural trades unionism can still thrive: in every village school, every small town Royal Mail Delivery Office, every time you see a BT Openreach worker shimmying up a telegraph pole, shop in most supermarkets, try and find a job in one of the few remaining job centres, you will come across trades unionists: in the CWU, in the NEU, NASUWT, UNISON, in PCS, Unite, GMB or USDAW.

If you are a Mendip area trades unionist, join us at our next Wells meeting in the Lawrence Centre, Union St, 6pm on Monday May 21st!

What of the radical and socialist tradition in Mendip, and Wells itself?

George Howell was a bricklayer, shoemaker, and Chartist.  He was also an auto-didact, a historian, and Secretary of the TUC Parliamentary Committee in the 1870’s and 1880’s. George was born and grew up in Wrington. 

 

Fred Swift was a Writhlington coal miner, an ILP/Independent Labour Party socialist and, with the Bridgwater railwayman James Young, one of the first two socialists elected to Somerset County Council before World War One.

Arthur James Cook: AJ Cook, born at Wookey in 1883, brought up in Cheddar where he worked on Caleb Durbin’s dairy farm, became at 17 a Rhondda miner, a fiery and revolutionary syndicalist orator jailed twice, for sedition and for opposing World War One, and finally, leader of the MFGB during the General Strike and Miner’s Lockout of 1926. 

 

The General Strike, where the local Wells strike committee, led by railwaymen, ordered 200 copies of the TUC’s daily The British Worker during those epic nine days. 

 

From syndicalism to Parliamentary socialism: Only two generations ago, Labour and Tory were almost neck and neck in Wells: In the 1945 General Election, the Tory majority over Labour was reduced to only 2,465.

In 1950 Labour polled 18,000 votes to the Tories 20,600 in a turnout of 87.8%.

In 1951, Dai Llewellyn, former Welsh miner and veteran International Brigader from the Spanish Civil War, the Somerset Miner’s Agent, won 21,500 Labour votes and again came a narrow second.

It wasn’t until 1974 that the Liberals overtook Labour in Wells. 

 

You can never tell me, looking back at that astonishing working-class Labour support, in Wells, a Cathedral City for goodness sake, the “Belly of the Tory Beast” that what happened once, a long time ago, could not happen again, but better still, Labour winning Wells!

Why not? People can sometimes change very quickly! 

 

After all, 50 years ago, a fortnight before the French Revolution of May 1968, were not learned Marxist historians predicting decades of working-class subservience? 

 

To start winning, we do need to organise, campaign, show solidarity, on a Somerset county-wide basis. 

 

From Dulverton to Bath, Portishead to Chard, Burnham on Sea to Frome, Keynsham to Yeovil, Radstock to Wellington, Cheddar to Wincanton.

Poor public transport does make this difficult. 

 

You can get a bus from Clevedon or Wells to Bristol up to 10.30pm at night, yet try and get to Bridgwater from Glastonbury, or Burnham on Sea from Bridgwater, after 7pm, and this is the same First Group bus company! 

 

Reason: the Tory Somerset County Council is the only West Country county that cannot be bothered to have a County Transport Forum: then again, how many Tory Councillors have ever caught a bus? 

 

Somerset needs county-wide independent campaigns, supported by the six Somerset Trade Union Councils and all local Labour Parties:

Against Library Closures; 

Against cuts and closures to NHS Community Hospitals;

Support teaching and other education unions fighting Academy attacks on their pay and conditions;

Against Tory County Council cuts to children centres, children and adult disability learning services;

Against outsourcing of NHS District Hospital non-medical staff: 

 

The list of dismantled Somerset public services is almost endless. 

 

I suggest that, from 2019, trades unionists and socialists in every Somerset town host an event, such as a public meeting, on May 1st, but for all Somerset towns to come together in Wells, the centre of our County, to celebrate International Worker’s Day on this first May Saturday. 

 

Today, we still honour the sacrifices of those anarchist workers in Chicago who in the late 1880’s suffered state execution for fighting for the 8-hour day, but in dying for our socialist cause, they lit a torch that still, if sometimes dimly, burns.

2018 should be the year that Somerset’s workers get of their knees, learn that if you fight you can win, if you never fight you always lose.

Don’t be a drop-out! Get up, get into it, get involved! Refuse to lose! 

Three rap titles from the greatest of all popular musicians, The Godfather of Soul, the Minister of Super Heavy Funk, James Brown.

But, 2018 in Somerset, not Atlanta, Georgia: Get involved in what? Refuse to lose what? Fight for what?

I hope you don’t mind me ending with a personal point of view.

Just remember, I was a Labour Parliamentary candidate a long 31 years ago!

I have been a Somerset socialist agitator for over 40 years, but I’m not tired:

I fight for a country that is run by a radical industrial workplace democracy, that has priority over councils and parliament; 

The fundamental units: Community Assemblies (They were called Soviets);

The old and still un-achieved Chartist demand for annual elections with recallable delegates;

An anti-militarist, non-nuclear federation of the nations, where the rotor blades of Westland/Leonardo PLC really are turned into Bristol Channel wind and underwater turbine blades;

Where swords really can become ploughshares;

Where, here in Somerset and throughout the world, the long-suffering working-class, the peasants and the poor are anything but meek, are so bloody-well organised that they really can inherit the earth.

See you in Wells on our very own First May Saturday in 2019?

07707 869144 davechapple@btinternet.com

Protesting the Chop & Sheffield's Trees

Labour Council outsources tree felling to Amey / Ferrovial*

The outsource companies currently contracted to Sheffield City Council include:

• Amey manage the city's 'Streets Ahead' project including management of highways.
• Kier Sheffield maintains and repairs the social housing stock.**
• Veolia manages household waste disposal.
• Capita provides HR, payroll and IT services for council employees. ***

*       Amey, is a subsidiary of the massive Spanish company grupo Ferrovial
**     Kier is one of the seven companies that in 2015 admitted to blacklisting building workers.
***  Capita has been compared to Carillion, and its share price has plunged from around £11 to £2 in just two years and it dropped out of the FTSE 100 last March.

******

OVER 5,000 trees have been cut down in Sheffield since 2012, as part the city council's £2bn Streets Ahead project with the excuse of improving roads and footpaths in the city.

The council, which is planting sapling trees after removing existing mature ones, insists the trees earmarked for felling are either 'dangerous, dead, diseased, dying, damaging or discriminatory'.

Yet it seems many of the trees condemned by the council as 'damaging' or 'discriminatory' are healthy specimens which campaigners say should be saved.  They say that alterations should be made to surrounding pavements and roads instead.

Today an event 'Get Off Our Tree!' is being held at Sheffield City Hall.  Also playing are local artists The Everly Pregnant Brothers, lead singer of Reverend and the Makers, Jon McClure, and former Pulp drummer Nick Banks and the Compare is Jason Cocker , who was interviewed on Radio Four's 'Today' program.

These are just some of Sheffield’s tree protesters, members of local groups coordinated by the Sheffield Tree Action Groups (Stag), which are claiming that this is another example of local government gone wrong.  Stag have made it their mission to protect the trees from council-backed felling crews in what is often hailed, with more than a pinch of Yorkshire hyperbole, as Europe’s greenest city.

Labour Council's PFI Contract

The fellings are part of a 25-year, £2.2bn Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract.  Signed in 2012 between the Labour-led council and a private company, Amey, the Streets Ahead programme is intended to upgrade 'the condition of our city’s roads, pavements, streetlights, bridges …'  –  no small feat in a place that was known as 'pothole city'.

The contract has serious implications for the city’s 36,000 roadside trees, which have in effect been privatised until the late 2030s. Amey, a subsidiary of the massive Spanish company Ferrovial, has so far removed around 5,350, including oaks, elms and limes. Alison Teal, a local Green party councillor, believes she knows why many were chosen:  'I can only assume that because it’s a 25-year contract, they’re felling mature trees because they are more expensive. They cause pavement and road disruption and a hell of a lot of leaves fall off them.'

Loose and wonky kerbstones and cracked pavements owing to tree roots are among the reasons given for the fellings.  But there is a belief among the Sheffield protesters that the 14 alternatives priced into Amey’s contract – from flexible paving to root pruning and pollarding – are being underused.

The council says it only resorts to removing trees if they are 'dangerous, dying, diseased, dead, damaging or discriminatory' (meaning that they damage pavements and potentially obstruct disabled residents).  Of the eight mature limes destroyed on Rustlings Road, however, the council’s own independent tree panel found that seven were in good condition with a good life expectancy.

The heavy redaction of the contract between Amey and Sheffield council doesn’t help clarify things.  With many details kept from the public in the name of 'commercial confidentiality', there is no way of verifying, for instance, the council’s warnings of “catastrophic financial consequences” if the fellings are delayed.  The gaps leave room for conjecture about why the PFI deal isn’t being called off, or its terms renegotiated.  Protesters think they have found legal reasons that would allow the council to annul the contract – a recent petition focuses on Amey’s alleged failure to disclose a 2011 health and safety conviction following the death of an employee.  A council spokesperson said it was aware of the death before the contract was awarded, but it failed to provide written evidence of that knowledge in response to Freedom of Information requests made by campaigners.

 Thatcherite Law Used by Labour Council

Many cite “the battle for Rustlings Road” as a turning point – following a pre-dawn raid and scenes that the former local MP Nick Clegg described as “something you’d expect in Putin’s Russia”, pensioners were arrested for peacefully protesting. Eight trees were chopped down.
It has been a long and gnarly road to today’s situation, with frustrations running high.  In 2016, arrests of peaceful protesters started under the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations Act, which criminalises anyone who persistently stops someone from carrying out lawful work – in this case, tree surgeons contracted by Amey.

'We have the harsh irony of Thatcherite anti-union law being used by a Labour council against its own citizens,' says Ian Rotherham, professor of environmental geography at Sheffield Hallam university.  'Only about 30 years on from Orgreave, our local councillors seem to not see the bitter twist in all this.'

We have the harsh irony of Thatcherite anti-union law being used by a Labour council against its own citizens.

None of those arrested have ever been prosecuted, however, with the Crown Prosecution Service saying there was insufficient evidence.  Then, last summer, the council brought an injunction against nine named protesters – including the Greens Alison Teal, and Brook, as well as 'persons unknown'.   It prohibits protesters from entering safety zones around condemned trees, or encouraging others to do so, either on social media or in person.

Labour's 'One Party State' !

In Ms. Teal’s opinion of local democracy is low – and no wonder, after a year in which the council on which she sits took her to court for breaking the injunction, only for the case to be thrown out.  'This is a one-party state,' she says. 'Sheffield has 84 councillors; 56 are Labour.  They can’t be outvoted.'  She mentions Nasima Akther, a Labour councillor who defied the whip to abstain on a vote about the fellings.  'For her courage she was suspended from the party.  It’s bullying and she subsequently resigned.'

******