Anthropology of British Hypocrisy continued

Did Rochdalian Duffy Duff-up politics?

LAST SATURDAY, Shakespeare's shortest play The Comedy of Errors was performed before a packed audience of hundreds at Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre, while over in Peace Square a May Day Rally of all of a hundred and odd, assembled in the sun beneath a sprinkling of red flags to hear someone called Ian Allenson, and a few others, tell us how awful the Tories and the BNP are. The play is about the chaotic consequences that occur when two pairs of twins are brought together: the politics of today is about what happens when you get political triplets in suits with only different coloured ties to distinguish them.

On Sunday, in The Observer, Nick Cohen, after asking Douglas Alexander and Ed Balls, 'why left-of-centre voters should stick with Labour rather than vote Liberal-democrat' was told: 'Well, if you vote Liberal Democrat you could let the Tories take power.' Nick Cohen went on to write: 'No appeal to idealism. No vision of the future, or offer of hope. No assertion that Labour had the vitality to govern Britain for another five years, and possessed better ideas and stronger morals than the superficially plausible Mr Clegg.' This morning, both Peter Hain and Ed Balls, two leading Labour strategists, have now come out and asked voters to vote tactically to keep the Tories out.

Damage limitation is all that seems to matter now, together with sound-bites and spin, and avoidance of gaffes. Principles, standards, ideas and ideals are not being given the time of day.

Two blokes I respect at the Manchester May Day Rally, last Saturday, told me that bumbler Brown made a mistake when he apologised to Gillian Duffy for describing her as a 'bigot'. Can they have read what she said?

Gillian Duffy from up Healey in Rochdale declared: 'The three main things what I had drummed in when I was a child was education, health service and looking after people who are vulnerable. But there are too many people now who aren't vulnerable but they can claim, and people who are vulnerable can't claim, can't get it.'


Gordon Brown responded: 'but they shouldn't be doing that, there is no life on the dole for people any more. If you are unemployed you've got to work.'

Gillian Duffy: 'You can't say anything about the immigrants because you're saying that you're ... but all these eastern Europeans what are coming in, where are they flocking from?'

Since these words were uttered I've spoken to local women on the 471 & 17 buses that run between Bury and Manchester to Rochdale, and they have insisted that Mrs Duffy 'is only saying what others round here are thinking' or words to that effect.

Yet once in the 'privacy' of his car Gordon Brown's aide asked: 'What did she [Mrs Duffy] say?', to which Mr Brown replied: 'Everything, she was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to vote Labour.'

But it turns out that Mrs Duffy wasn't so much offended by being called a 'bigot', as when Mr Brown referred to her as 'that woman'. To the middle-classes 'bigot' is an ugly word of French origin, but 'that woman' is a categorisation device which the English white working-classes in the North of England feel profoundly, because it puts them down or as Mrs Duffy has it: 'It's as if I'm to be brushed away.' 'BRUSHED AWAY', that is what has happened to the white working-classes in the North in recent decades. The word 'bigot' is just an insult and English workers are use to insults, they insult each other all the time with great glee: yet, 'that woman' does something fundamental by packaging her and reducing Mrs Duffy to a category to be disposed of, and in the same way, as a boy, I soon learned that women up North don't like being referred to as 'she' - they will say 'Who's She? The Cat's Mother?' Mr Brown is the son of a Presbyterian minister and those kind of middle-class people with their wagging fingers often refer to others in the third-person: it gives them a sense of superiority and control. One aspect of this is those fashionable political correct people on the left who say as one bloke, who I also respect in many ways, did recently that Northern Voices by publishing a portrait of a nude by the Rochdale artist Walter Kershaw on our current front cover was, in some way, exploiting women. He didn't say we were exploiting 'a woman' - in this case Heather Brown, the artist's model at Bury Art School - he said 'exploiting women': a category. The middle-classes use these kind of devices with blind abandon and in so doing 'brush away' others who they see as essentially inferior and beneath them.

Spanish Protests for Garzon & Victims of Franco

LAST SATURDAY, tens of thousands of protesters turned out on the streets of 21 Spanish towns and cities in support of Judge Baltasar Garzon, who faces suspension from the Spanish bench for having called for the opening of more than a dozen graves of people who were presumed to be Franco's victims, and for demanding the investigation of the 'crimes' of the Franco regime. By breaching the terms of a 1977 amnesty created during the transition to democracy, some magistrates argue that he overstepped his judicial mandate: in English law this would mean he acted ultra vires - beyond his powers.

Garzon's supporters claim he is being pursued by a right-wing gang, including member of the 'Fascist' Falange party and 'Manos Limpias' - a pseudo-sindicato (trade union), that have taken out writs against him. It was Garzon who, some years ago, forced the British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, to act against Pinochet in this country. His actions on behalf of the victims of Franco has divided the Spaniards. The Spanish judges are highly political, and Garzon is no exception. Last Saturday, many of the demonstrators were calling for 'Mas juces como Garzon' ('More Judges like Garzon') and 'Garzon amigo, Espanaesta contigo!' (Garzon old mate, Spain is with you!').

Famous actors and actresses, like Juan Diego Botto, Jose Sacristan, Pilar Bardem and Charo Lopez, world famous film director Pedro Almodovar, and singer, Miguel Rios, backed the protest.

This is happening at a time when the Tameside Arts & Events Department in Greater Manchester, has recently 'deferred indefinitely' an application from Tameside Trade Union Council for a commemoration for James Keogh, a local youth who was killed in Spain by Italian troops supporting General Franco over 70 years ago, while fighting in the International brigade for freedom and democracy for the Spanish people [see Northern Voices 11]. This week, the English Judge, Lord Bingham said on Radio 4's 'Start the Week' that, in his view, the best judges are those that are unknown to the public. This shows us the difference between the Spanish mentality and that of the English: the Spaniard generally is more forthright, blunter and more open than his English counterpart; the English are more reserved, hypocritical and more restrained in the way they go about things. This thought possibly encouraged Christopher Caldwell in the FT to write: 'For all its impressive progress over the past three decades, Spain remains a country with an unsettled - and, by western standards of non-partisanship and impartiality, unimpressive - judicial tradition.' And referring to Garzon, he writes: 'It is no gain for international peace when a freelancer operating in such a system is permitted to make foreign policy for a dozen European countries, all of which have a better human rights record than Spain's over the last 60 years, as Garzon was permitted to do in the Pinochet case.'

Anthropology of British Hypocrisy

ROCHDALE EXPOSES BIGOTRY against White Working Class:

Folk on the streets of Rochdale are talking about yesterday's confrontation between Gordon Brown and Gillian Duffy over immigration and bigotry. Seldom has the clash between the white working class and the lower middle class political elite been displayed so vividly. Seldom has political hypocrisy been put so bluntly.

This morning's International Herald Tribune described it thus: 'The encounter began mildly enough when Mr Brown, who has been told by his advisors to get out and do a better job of meeting ordinary people, went walkabout among voters in the depressed community of Rochdale, outside Manchester.' But el Bruto Brown is not safe to out on the streets! Hence, guided by his handlers, he was led to meet 66-year-old Gillian Duffy, who challenged him on immigration, the main worry of the white workers of the North. Brown buttered her up before the cameras, then jumped into a waiting car to be sped away only to moan: 'That was a disaster', saying that his aides 'should never have put me with that woman ...' Whereupon, he claimed that Mrs Duffy was 'just a sort of a bigoted woman ...'

My dictionary says a 'bigot' is 'a person of strong conviction or prejudice, especially in matters of religion, race or politics, who is intolerant of those who differ from him.' Judging from Mr Brown's reaction, once in the car, that would seem to sum up his attitude and moreover, it would appear to reflect the spirit of the British political class as a whole, because politics in this country is dominated by the middle classes. They all, including much of the British left, look down on the likes of the Mrs Duffy's of this world, if the truth be known. Does the prejudice of these British middle class politicians know no bounds that they need to belittle Lancashire people and their opinions thus? God help us from the pseudo-tolerance of these educated middle class politicians.

Unite Union

The Unite Unions decision to bankroll the Labour Party to the tune of 11 million pounds in my view is the final straw. I have torn up my union card in utter revulsion at the behaviour of the Union leadership and urge all anarchists and anarcho syndicalists to evaluate the role of trade unions as a bulwark of capitalism. What conceivable purpose can be served by continuing to remain or work within such morally and politically bankrupt organisations. The time has surely come for all radicals to consider alternative forms of grass roots organisation. The trade union movement in Britain is moribund and offers no prospect of transforming society.

Barry

UNITE UNION THROWS '£4 Million' at LABOUR PARTY

LAST NIGHT, at a meeting at Rochdale's Catholic Club on Ann Street, addressed by Jerry Hicks - a candidate for general secretary of Unite the Union - discussing the forthcoming General Election and the plight of the trade unions, the blacklisted electrician Colin Trousdale, member of Unite, said that he had not paid his political levy for 10 years. It also emerged that it was suspected that Unite had recently paid out an estimated '£4 million' of their members' money to the Labour Party. This has not been confirmed but it is clear the union is investing millions in the Labour Party.

Jerry Hicks stated that though he did not favour disaffiliation of the union from the Labour Party, he thought the Unite should be more discriminating to whom the money was paid. MPs sympathetic to the unions should get the money. Others at the meeting, some former members, expressed disappointment in the way the Labour Party was evolving and felt that it was beyond repair: beyond saving. Concern was expressed about the lack of support from Derek Simpson, the current Unite general secretary, for the British Airways' workers, the Vestas dispute on the Isle of Wight and the conflict at Lindsey Oil Refinery last year.

Others were angry about the failure of Unite to launch an internal investigation given the clear evidence of collaboration by officers of Amicus (now merged into Unite with the T&G) in the enforcement of the blacklist in the building trade and in the identification of militants. Jerry Hicks argued that: 'The union is run like a business, not a service', claiming 'there's a massive divide between the union leadership and members.'

It was also revealed by one at the meeting that the current general secretary of Unite, Derek Simpson, a former fitter from Sheffield, had developed a taste for the good life. Not only was he ensconced with a lady, a former director of legal services for Unite, in a grace & favour home at Gerrald's Cross, but he had taken to staying at the Waldolf Hotel when in London. While there on one occassion it was reported that he complained about the towels being 'too hard' and had had them changed for something softer on the skin.

LIVING IN HOPES

The political agenda & the unions

A LETTER yesterday from the joint general secretaries of the UNITE union, Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley, to their members states: 'This general election is the most important since 1997', but that it is 'not a referendum on 13 years of a Labour government.' They say: 'the only choice for the union at this election is to back Labour.' They claim: 'The Tories will attack the unions on our ability to organise, our right to take industrial action and our rights at work ...' Nowhere here is there any suggestion that a Labour government will reinstate the trade union rights and freedoms that existed before Thatcher removed them in the 1980s and 90s.

Yet, two months ago in the Feb/March issue of UNITE's 'workplace Reporter', these same joint general secretaries admitted that 'Gradually [under Labour governments], the right to strike is being eroded, removing from employees one of the few weapons they have to make the bad employers see sense.' They further speculate: 'We know the Tories will do nothing to change this.' They urge: 'With Labour back in office Unite will certainly be pushing to have industrial relations taken out of the hands of the judges, and for unions to have their rights restored.'

There is no promise of restoring trade union rights in the Labour manifesto and all Simpson and Woodley could say in February was 'We believe that Labour's manifesto will offer them [positive reasons to support Labour] and will make a shift towards the values of traditional social democracy.' Gosh! At least Tony Blair had the grace to offer us something 'New' in 'New Labour'; all these general secretaries are promising is something old and 'traditional'.

The biggest weakness of the British left today is its conservatism. They who stop while society moves on will be trampled. Trade union bosses, like Simpson and Woodley, and the left in general, display a kind of wishful thinking. A recent critic of the subservience of 15 trade unions, representing 4.45 million workers, who are still affiliated to Labour has written: 'rather than take the attitude of "better the devil you know", or supporting the party whose cuts will be least, the unions together could have influenced the entire political agenda by moving the centre of gravity away from neo-liberalism ...'

Where, in all this, is any serious program for change? Where's any vision? Or any alternative agenda?

Last night's debate between the main political leaders on SKY TV sounded like a squabble between bosses over how to run a firm. Today's political leaders no longer have an ideal to work for. They are merely living on the accomplishments of their ancestors, and all that raises our spirits now is a hatred of politics and politicians. Today's trade unions [and Unite is the biggest] have a membership of about 7 million, bigger than any other voluntary organisations, but what they have in quantity they lack in quality and intellectual gravitas. Consequently, all the likes of Simpson and Woodley and others in the trade union movement can do is to live in hopes.

Purnell & Mandelson accused of a stitch-up in Stalybridge!

Since being selected as the Labour prospective parliamentary candidate for Stalybridge and Hyde (Surprise, Surprise,) Jonny Reynolds, a 29-year-old trainee solicitor, has been busily trying to put some distance between himself and his former pal James Purnell MP, who is standing down at the next election.

As we reported previously, Mr Reynolds, was initially dumped by a Labour NEC special selection panel and was not put on the original shortlist of candidates after it was claimed that he'd 'performed poorly.' Although the rules do not allow for an appeal once the panel had decided the shortlist, Lord Mandelson and Purnell demanded that Reynolds be put back on the shortlist. This has now led to charges of a stitch-up and threats of resignation from leading local Labour Party activists.

Earlier this week, Tribune quoted a local activist (who asked not to be named) as saying: "The whole process stank so much that many would-be voters wanted no part in the proceedings. Worse still, several local members plan to resign from the party following the election whatever the result. One calling the selection of Reynolds 'an absolute disgrace', says he does not want to be in a party 'led by Peter Mandleson' who many blame for forcing Reynolds on them." Tribune also reported that CLP Secretary, David Moore, is also considering his position after 25 years in the Labour Party.

'Can tha' keep a Secret?' - An old Yorkshire tale of class war, conspiracy, murder …and a nice day out! by Chris Draper

(Due to an editing error in the latest issue of Northern Voices, we've accidentally 'cropped' an article by valued contributor Chris Draper. We hope we can make up for this mistake - to both Chris and our readers - by reproducing the article in full on the blog. The introduction follows and the rest of the article can be read after the 'read more' link below)

In February 1812 at the Shears Inn, Hightown, West Yorkshire a secret meeting of working men took place in an upstairs room. The talk was of desperate measures, how could croppers defend themselves, their families and their community from the destitution wrought by the cloth masters? The men determined to stop the new shearing machines being imported into the Spen Valley. They planned an all out campaign of direct action. A campaign that would climax with an armed assault on Rawfolds Mill and a notorious attempt by the local vicar to force an injured Luddite to reveal the names of his fellow conspirators…

Northern Voices 11 - now available

The long awaited 11th issue of Northern Voices is now available. Contents include:

'Villains & Victims' - the contrasting fortunes of villainous Northern MPs (including James Purnell, Hazel Blears, Tom Levitt & Phil Woolas) and their victims such as 'regenerated' communities in Derker and Toxteth, Blacklisted workers Keaveney & Anderson & agency binmen in Bury.

'On the banks of the River Roch, Jacky Brook, Healey Dell in Rochdale & the Cheonggyecheon in Seoul' by Brian Bamford

'Leeds: Royal Park School - More Municipal Vandalism by Stealth' by John Lawrence

'Six o' Best: Northern Tea Time Treats' by Chris Draper - featuring Eccles Cakes from Salford or maybe, Hebden Bridge; Fat Rascals from Harrogate; Sad Cakes from Burnley; Chorley Cakes from North Lancs.; Bakewell Tarts from Derbyshire; Curd Tarts from the West Riding of Yorkshire; Singing Hinnies from Newcastle and Yorkshire Parkin.

'Glossop North End go to Wembley on a shoestring' by Richard Holland

'Can tha' keep a secret?: An old Yorkshire tale of class war, conspiracy, murder' by Christopher Draper; a history of Ned Ludd in the West Riding of Yorkshire (which can be read in full here).

'The Golden Days of Municipal Motoring' by Chris the Clippy on the disappearance of the North's regional buses and their unique colour schemes.

...plus much more. Also included are the usual local columns (Salford Spy, Tameside Eye), plus restaurant reviews (Sam's Chop House in Manchester and The Plate @ Backridge in the Forest of Bowland), exhibition reviews, the lively letters page, plus an obituary for Pedro Cuadrado, a Bolton local of Spanish origin, involved in the Spanish Civil War and imprisoned by the Nazis, Americans and the British in turn.

Price £1.50 [£2.00 post included] cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' obtainable from c/o 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.

And on sale at a large number of newsagents in Greater Manchester, Rochdale, Tameside, Salford, Swinton, Eccles, Burnley and bookshops in other areas such as News From Nowhere in Liverpool, Bob's Bookshop in Oldham and Bookcase in Hebden Bridge, as well as The Cornerhouse and People's History Museum in Manchester. Northern Voices is also on sale in Glossop at Bay Tree Books, George Street Books and Bestsellers in the Market Arcade.

Hegel or Wittgenstein: The Patria Chica & its enemies

NORTHERN VOICES 11, out next week, features a clash involving Eccles Cakes, Curd Tarts & Yorkshire Rascals over a philosophical point made by Ludwig Wittgenstein who said to his friend Maurice Drury (see Ray Monk's autobiography: 'Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius') that 'Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same ... Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different.' Wittgenstien was, like Tolstoy a critic of Shakespeare, yet he was considering embellishing one of his philosophical books with the motto taken from a phrase the Earl of Kent uses in 'King Lear' (Act 1, scene iv): 'I will teach you differences'. Ray Monk writes of Wittgenstein: 'His concern was to stress life's irreducible variety'. The opening editorial in Northern Voices 1 backed Wittgenstein's view over that of Hegel.

In a letter to NV10 our Midland correspondent, Rachel Whittaker wrote: 'Do we not seek to exploit the common thread of humanity or is our idea of equality based on the idea that some geographical locations make you more friendly, more reserved, or even more anarchist, than others?' Well, if Rachel is right to argue against geographical locations and the variety of human peculiarities that go with them, then how do we explain the flowering of something so anthropologically strange as anarchism occurring in Andalucia or anarcho-syndicalism in Barcelona and Catalonia in the 20th Century? How do we explain Makhno and Zapata in the Ukraine and Mexico? All of these movements had strong elements of the patria chica, and the cultural and regional diversity that goes with it.

One solution may be thought to be Colin Ward's analysis of universal anarchism suggesting that anarchism, far from being anthropologically strange, is really commonplace and can be found all over the show in many social settings, as the seed beneath the snow. And yet, even this doesn't necessarily support the homogenious 'common thread' position as proposed by Rachel Whittaker, because examples of Colin Ward's micro-anarchism, just as much as the macro-anarchism of Spain, Mexico and the Ukraine, all have their own diversity and 'irreducible variety'.

With these things in mind NV11 goes in search of the NORTHERN STOMACH as represented in Chris Draper's 'Six O' Best Northern Tea Time Treats', asking how for instance, does it differ from a Spanish Stomach or a Southern Stomach, and are we betraying our northern souls as well as our stomachs by enjoying ethnic cuisine and foreign food?

BRADFORD ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR

TODAY the Bradford bookfair took place at the 1-in-12, with about seven stalls including Bob Jones' Northern Herald Books; the Cunningham Amendment & Anarchist Voices; AK Press; SolFed; AF; Antifa; Northern Voices & Northern Anarchist Network. A good response and atmosphere: sales bucked-up in the afternoon with NV going well and the Spanish memorabilia doing best. A flyer was distributed advertising the prospect of a forthcoming NAN at the 1-in-12 in June.

Who ordered bin men back to Bradley Fold?

Binmen escape from unsafe waggon - the photos here are of a Bury MBC bin waggon that burnt out on Wednesday 23rd, March on Stand Street in Radcliffe, while returning to the Bradley Fold Depot in Bury. It was staffed by a team of 3 agency workers who had been ordered to return to the Depot despite a dangerous oil leak on the vehicle. The driver noticed the oil leak while at the Salford tip & contacted the Bradley Fold Depot several times for advice. It is said that at that stage the oil was running onto the exhaust pipe. None-the-less the driver was instructed to return to Bradley Fold at least 10 miles away: a garage that has done repairs on Bury MBC vehicles is situated near the Salford tip.

On the way back, it seems the brakes failed while in Radcliffe apparently because of damage due to the leak: the driver did the best he could and swerved so that the wheels rubbed against the kerb and the waggon slowed down so that the 3 men in the cab were able to jump clear before the vehicle burst into flame. It is not known why the agency workers were told to drive back to base, but members of the UNITE union suspect that pressure is being put on both employees and their supervisors to rush to finish their work. This means serious risks are being taken.

Last week, Bury MBC told the Bury Times that an investigation is being conducted into the incident.

NAN Conference

The NAN Conference held in Burnley on March 27 was particularly successful with a good geographical spread from Wellington in Shropshire to York. The discussions were both stimulating and far reaching covering a range of issues including electoral politics and freedom of speech.

It was also agreed that the NAN and the newly formed Yorkshire Anarchist Group should hold a joint conference at the 1 in 12 Club in June. There is clear evidence that the anarchist movement in the North is growing in strength with 2 further anarchist bookfairs planned in Bradford and Sheffield.

Barry Woodling

NEC Dumps Reynolds!

The contest to find a replacement for Tory boy James Purnell MP, has led to a bitter row within the higher echelons of the Labour Party. On 17th March, 'The Times' reported that a national executive selection panel, had dumped Jonny Reynolds from the list of candidates hoping to replace Purnell as the MP for the constituency of Stalybridge & Hyde.

The selection panel which met on 15th March, had been set up to conduct interviews and to decide on a final shortlist. Amongst the members of the panel, were former minister Keith Vaz, Paddy Lillis, deputy general secretary of USDAW and Tom Watson, Downing Street`s nominee on the panel. A source who was 'familiar with the discussion' told the newspaper that Reynolds 'had performed poorly' and... 'had not even defended the MP (James Purnell) effectively when asked about questions over his expenses.' It was also claimed that another candidate, Peter Wheeler, who is sponsored by UNITE, 'gave an impressive performance.'

Despite the fact that the NEC special selection panel has 'full delegatory authority to make decisions which cannot be overturned', the newspaper reported that Purnell, with the aid of Lord Peter (Mandy) Mandleson, had forced the leadership to reopen the shortlist so that his 'preferred successor', Jonny Reynolds, was included.

In a statement issued to The Times, Tom Watson, said: "I was not aware that there was an appeals process. But I have been told that Peter Mandleson and James Purnell have demanded that Mr Reynolds be placed on the shortlist. I know of no rule that allows for an appeal once the panel has decided the shortlist." He later quoted guidance from the NEC which stated that the special selection panel had full authority to make decisions which cannot be overturned.

Following the decision to put Reynolds back on the shortlist, two other candidates, Barbara Roche and Floyd Millen, withdrew from the race. We also understand that another candidate, the former Greater Manchester East MEP Glyn Ford, (who failed to make the shortlist despite being endorsed by the UNITE North West Region), has also demanded that he be given the same right of appeal.

Review: La Buena Nueva (The Good News)

YESTERDAY, the Cornerhouse in Manchester showed the Spanish film 'La Buena Nueva' (The Good News), the true story of the trials of a young sincere priest who is sent to a poor village in Navarra, bordering the Basque region, but in 1936 the centre of traditional right-wing Carlist politics and religion. On his arrival the socialist mayor and his party are about to be overthrown by a group of Falange fighters and incomers, who are sent to unite with the local Carlists to take over the village. Several socialists who take to the hills to escape are shot by the Falange. Others are thrown in a pit.

The priest trys to maintain some sort of neutrality for the Church and adopt a prudent postion helping some of the widows of the victims. But tensions develop, not just between the priest and the Falangist incomers, but also between the Carlists and the Falange. Conflicts between differing approaches to the Church and religion of the conquerering parties are lightly touch upon. More interesting is the priest threat to the boss of the Falange that one day he would have to pay for the killings. The implication throughout the film is the underlying suggestion that some day the bodies will be discovered, making the film a harbinger of what is now happening in so far as there is a recuperation of historical memory and a recovery of the bodies of Spanish Civil War victims all over Spain. Writers in Spain are already turning out novels about the civil war and no doubt there will be many more films on similar subjects.

NAN Theme: Social Democracy on its last legs?

NAN Conference at Central Methodist Hall, Hargreaves St., Central Burnley: Saturday 27th, March, starting at 11.30am:

Long time Burnley anarchist, John Simpkin, told Northern Voices last night that this Saturday he intended to address the Burnley NAN Conference on what he called 'The collapse of Social Democracy in the UK'. Dealing with the forthcoming election he said he was asking: 'Is Parliamentary politics any longer relevant to ordinary people?' He will speak at 2pm.

Jim Petty, a well known local anarchist, will consider the relevance of the General Strike and its historical conception from the English Civil war through the 19th Century and the notion of the National Holiday, to the experience of the general strike in the 20th Century. Speaks 12 o'clock.

Brian Bamford, of the Northern Voices affinity group, will address the issues of middle class influences in British politics including anarchism; the failure of the left to provide a vision or strategy owing to its cultural fragmentation, and the current problem of party political funding.

Neil & Graham, from Wellington, Shropshire, will describe the history of the struggle against open-cast mining in the Wrekin Forest and discuss the the issue of the climate camp in a Shropshire area of natural beauty.

Spanish Civil War talk at Working Class Movement Library, Wednesday 24th March 2010

This wednesday 24th March 2pm, a local historian Chris Carson will give a talk at the Working Class Movement Library on local participation in the Spanish Civil War. Hopefully he will make reference to Anthony Beevor's excellent book on the the war entitled "The Battle for Spain".

There is a section on the International Brigades which makes extensive references to the Moscow Archives and is a devastating critique of the role of the Communist leadership of the Brigades alluding to the hundreds of executions of brigade members and the concentration camp at Camp Lukacs.

Northern Anarchist Network (NAN) Conference Agenda

BURNLEY NAN CONFERENCE

on Saturday 27th, March 2010
hosted by Burnley Anarchists:
at Central Methodist Church Hall,
on Hargreaves Street,
near main Post Office and shopping centre:

Revised AGENDA:

Start:

11.30 ................................. Group Reports.

12.00 ................................. Jim Petty on the General Strike.

1pm to 2pm ...................... Lunch: plenty of local pubs, cafes & shops.

2pm to 3 pm ..................... John Simpkin: anarchists & the General Election.

3pm ................................. Brian Bamford: Workers' Next Step & Party Funding.

4pm .................................. Neil & Graham: Combating Open Cast Mining.

5pm .................................. Close of meeting.

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT, DEREK?

Is it dumber & dumber Derek or will it be Lord Simpson of Stalybridge?

WITH the UNITE union giving £11 million to the Labour Party since 2007, last Monday on Radio 4 it was astonishing to hear Derek Simpson, one of the joint UNITE General Secretaries, declare that the recent attacks of Gordon Brown on the union's decision to launch a strike at British Airways - only goes to show the Government is not in the union's pocket or words to that effect. £11,000,000 of UNITE member's money going to the Labour Party and nowt to draw?

Some say this money is allowing UNITE, through its Political Director and Downing Street groupie, Charlie Whelan, to place UNITE candidates in constituencies such as Stalybridge & Hyde; where the Labour Party is looking for a successor for James Purnell, former Work & Pensions' Minister. On Wednesday, Nick Robinson, the BBC's political correspondent on Radio 4, drew attention to UNITE's role in the struggle going on in that constituency Labour Party association. Purnell's entry in the Register of Member's Interests shows the Stalybridge & Hyde Constituency Labour Party got £2,000 from the UNITE union - or rather, from the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers as it then was, in 2001: it is not clear if this record is up to date and Purnell's local Party didn't receive anything after that date (see Northern Voices 11 - out shortly). At least one UNITE Branch Secretary in the North West has been seeking information about details of political payments from the union to regional MPs like Purnell and their constituency associations. Mr Purnell had displayed some wrongheadedness in his MP's expenses claims: most notoriously hundreds of pounds for some fridge magnets. As yet, this Branch Secretary has only been told that UNITE pays money to the Labour Party constituency associations, not the Labour MPs.

In the February/March issue of UNITE's 'The Workplace Reporter', the joint UNITE general secretaries, Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley, say: 'The Tories will do nothing to help hard pressed communities.' What would those Northern folk who are right now having their houses bulldozed by New Labour's HMR Pathfinder Project in Derker, near Oldham, and in Toxteth, Liverpool, on the famous 'Welsh Streets' (see below and in Northern Voices 11, out this month), have to say about that? Then our dynamic duo, Simpson and Woodley, say hopefully: 'Of course, we also need positive reasons to back a fourth Labour term.' Then comes their act of faith: 'We believe that Labour's manifesto will offer them, and will make a shift towards the values of traditional social democracy.' One might like traditional furniture, or traditional music or even traditional food, but 'traditional social democracy' - well I don't know about you, Derek, but I can take it or leave it?

They'd be better off saying nowt, as to call upon us to fight for something as devoid of meaning as traditional social democracy. So why does UNITE keep throwing its member's money at the Labour Party? It can't be idealism or ideology; when it just amounts to managing and engineering social democracy. And the BA dispute seems to show that it's not about furthering our member's interests: after over 12 years in power the Labour Government shows no sign of getting rid of, what Simpson and Woodley admit, are 'the most restrictive anti-trade union laws in Europe ...' Perhaps, in the end, it is nothing less than another case of 'cash-for-honours': Arise: Lord Simpson of Stalybridge! Don't forget that predecessor of yours - Lord Scanlon, who went from being a communist party fellow-traveller in Manchester to playing golf with the bosses on the South Coast of England.

I`m being harassed says Parker-Perry!

The question of who smeared Councillor Jonny Reynolds is becoming more intriguing by the hour. As we reported on 14 March, someone using the nom de guerre 'Sam Smith' has being sending e-mails to the website 'Tameside Eye' in order to smear Councillor Jonny Reynolds who is seeking to replace James Purnell as the MP for Stalybridge & Hyde.

In one e-mail to Tameside Eye, Sam Smith alleges that Councillor Reynolds (who worked in the constituency office of Purnell) continued to receive £500 pm from the taxpayer, in a secret deal to pay his mortgage, despite never attending the constituency office or doing any work for almost 12 months. He then adds that this can be checked by cross referencing his (Reynolds) start date at University with the MP`s staff payroll. Sam Smith then says: "You will not receive any reply to this e-mail address. Keep it secret and there is more to come."

Whoever Sam Smith is still remains something of a mystery. But as we pointed out previously, the computer used by Smith was located to the offices of Tameside Council. Likewise, it also appears that Councillor Sean Parker-Perry has being using the same IP address as Sam Smith. Liam Billington, the Tory blogger who runs the website Tameside Eye, says: "I used the service 'Did they Read It' to trace if Parker-Perry had read the e-mail that I sent. He opened the e-mail under the same IP address as Sam Smith - 81.149.96.144. The source code for this e-mail confirms this."

It appears that when Billington confronted Parker-Perry with this evidence, he reacted angrily saying: " I question both the source and motivation of the editor of this website. Since being expelled from the Conservative Party, spending time in police captivity and his close relations with the Tory PPC, Billington has continued to harrass(sic)me. I have categorically denied this allegation that I have e-mailed Billington and I believe Billington struggles to grasp the technological intelligence to make these statements...I have instructed solicitors to deal with Billington and his accusations, a matter that could once again involve the Police."

Readers of Northern Voices magazine (see NV 10) will be aware that this is not the first time that Councill Parker-Perry has alleged that he is being harassed by Billington. In 2008 he made a complaint to the police alleging harassment. On that occasion the Manchester CPS refused to bring a prosecution against Billington although he did spend 7 hours banged up at Ashton police station.

We would also point out that while Parker-Perry denies having e-mailed Billington, a perusal of the website (Tameside Eye) will show that on Feb 26 a Sean Parker-Perry sent not just one, but two e-mails to Billington - see website for further details.

Who smeared Councillor Jonny Reynolds?

In Tameside the local Labour Party is affectionately known to some as Zanu-Labour. This is due in part to the fact that its leader, Cllr Samuel Roy Oldham, has now been in power longer than Robert Mugabe who leads Zanu PF in Zimbabwe. It also refers to the corrupt and incestuous nature of politics in the One Party State of Tameside. Recently there have been moves to oust Oldham as leader of the council and to replace him with Kieran Quinn, the cabinet deputy for Economic Services. Though Roy Oldham announced last year that he was 'minded' to step down as leader, he now says that this challenge to his leadership is like a 'slap in the face'. The contest to replace James Purnell as MP for the constituency of Stalybridge & Hyde is also becoming sleazy, with one candidate already being smeared with a view to undermining his candidacy.

We have learned that a certain 'Sam Smith' has been spreading vile and damning rumours about Cllr Jonny Reynolds who hopes to replace Purnell as the MP for Stalybridge & Hyde. In an e-mail sent to the Tory blogger, Liam Billington, the falsely named Sam Smith says of Mr. Reynolds: 'Who ordered the infamous James Purnell fridge magnets from the LFI connected company in Israel?' 'Who continued to receive £500 per month from the taxpayer, in a secret deal to pay his mortgage at 86 Broadbottom Road, despite never attending the constituency office or doing any work for almost 12 months?' 'Who announced he would stand as MP within hours of James Purnell's resignation in a 'done deal'. In a further e-mail, Smith says: "Reynolds left in July before Doherty (who formerly worked for Purnell) was sacked. He was still paid for 12 months after that date. If you want to cause damage you will need to release this on your website (Tameside Eye) on Monday morning."

Councillor Sean Parker-Perry (married to Fiona Pendry, daughter of the former Stalybridge & Hyde MP, now Lord Pendry) has confirmed that he will be seeking selection as the PPC for Stalybridge & Hyde. From an analysis of the various e-mails (IP addresses) undertaken by Tameside Eye, it appears that the computer used by Sam Smith to smear Jonny Reynolds, was located within Tameside council offices. Furthermore, it appears that when Parker-Perry opened an e-mail using the IP address 81.149.96.144, this was the same e-mail address as used by Sam Smith. As they say, the plot thickens. Watch this space for further developments!

Licence to Blacklist: Blacklist Support Group Comments on Tribunal case

The written judgement from the first full-merits Employment Tribunal (Dooley v Balfour Beatty) today found in favour of the company.

This is despite written documentary evidence showing that Balfour Beatty supplied information to a secret blacklist database complied by the notorious Consulting Association being shown to the Tribunal (which the judge Mr. B T Charlton described as "ghastly" in court).

The blacklisting evidence was not disputed by Balfour Beatty, as it was the company themselves who provided the blacklist file as part of their bundle of documents arguing that the information on the file was justification for a dismissal in the early 1990s.

The decision turned on the question of employee status and found that Mr. Dooley (an ex-bricklayer, now a UCATT full-time official) was not an employee of Balfour Beatty, and only "employees" are covered by the legislation. In an industry where sub-contracting and agency labour is widespread, this effectively allows the major multi-nationals such as Balfour Beatty, Sir Robert Mc Alpine, Skanska and Costain to blacklist workers who complain about safety or unpaid wages with impunity (as almost all labour is sub-contracted out).

Coming only a few days after the newly introduced Blacklists Regulations were condemned by Human Rights Experts for :

• failing to comply with even the minimum requirements of the Eurpoean Convention on Human Rights
• failing to make blacklisting a criminal offence
• continuing to allow blacklisting for issues such as environmental or peace activists
• not making any compensation for proven victims of the current blacklisting scandal

Professor Keith Ewing - Kings College London (author of Ruined Lives Report by the Institute of Employment Rights into blacklisting in the UK construction Industry) said of the new regulations:

"the blacklisting of construction workers because of their trade union activities is a vile practice, to which the current government has to its eternal shame done next to nothing to eradicate, and even less to compensate the victims."

A spokesperson for the Blacklist Support Group said today:

"The secret database and Invoices exposed by the Information Commissioners Office following their raid on the Consulting Association provides overwhelming documentary evidence that 44 UK building companies have been systematically blacklisting trade unionists in the construction industry for nearly 2 decades. The firms involved are multi-national household names and have publicly accepted that their senior Industrial Relations managers were part of the blacklisting operation. If the companies concerned had any sense of decency or corporate responsibility, they would come clean and offer to make recompense to those workers who have suffered over many years.

The Dooley decision and the new Blacklisting Regulations are basically a get out of jail free card for the major contractors. The blacklisters can hide behind the fact that they sub-contract most of the labour on major projects to escape any kind of legal responsibility. The new regulations will not make an ounce of difference to the likelihood of success for any blacklisted building worker seeking legal redress. If the new Regulations fail to make any difference for workers who can prove they have been blacklisted, what is their purpose?

The Consulting Association conspiracy is a clear breach of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Blacklist Support Group send out an unambiguous message today: if our human rights cannot be upheld in the UK courts or from UK Regulations, then we will be taking our claims to the European Court of Human Rights. We have suffered for many years: we are prepared to fight all the way."

Blacklist Support Group

Michael Foot: A political class that outlived its mission

Sunset for Socialism?

Michael Foot, former Labour Party leader [1980-83], who died last Wednesday [3rd, March] reflected the fundamental folly of the tradition of parliamentary socialism. He is a better example of this parliamentary foolishness than the much abused northern MP James Purnell [see previous post]. In Michael Foot we have had what appears to be a sincere socialist parliamentarian, who I saw in the late 1950s at a Labour Party Conference in Blackpool with his finger wagging from the rostrum at Hugh Gaitskell and the Labour leadership on the platform, denouncing their retreats in the socialist program. He was for decades the star orator of the left-wing rebels in parliament and a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; a rebel who argued that 'You can take a horse to water, but you can't make him drink!' In the end Foot, the Honorary Member for Ebbw Vale (or Blaenau Gwent) from 1960, accepted first his appointment as Secretary of State for Employment in the government of Harold Wilson in 1974 and during the Falklands war, as leader of the Labour Party, he seemed to dither between first calling for resistance to Argentine aggression then emphasising the need to work for a peace settlement with the Junta.

James Purnell, MP for Hyde & Stalybridge and former Minister for Work & Pensions, as we now know is standing down at the coming General Election [see previous post] and, like Michael Foot, has been a bit of a career politician. The 40-year-old Purnell has said he does not want to spend all his life in 'front line politics'. Over two weeks ago, following Purnell's decision to stand down, The Financial Times in an editorial regretted this saying he had been unusual in that he had been a Minister 'interested in ideas'. He may well be 'interested in ideas' but in his utterances it's hard to find any coherent philosophy. In his looks there is something of the hotel bedroom about him: something rootless and slightly insincere.

But is there a contrast between a 'sincere' Michael Foot and James Purnell MP, who some see as an opportunist; is it right to portray this as a distinction between left and right-wing Labour? I remember Foot in the late 1980s, in a Radio4 talk with AJP Taylor, the historian, and the broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge, and at the time a keen Foot fan said to me: 'Thatcher could never fit in with such company'. Maybe not, and Purnell, or even Tony Blair, would always seem like Cheap Jacks when measured against the intellectual skills of a Michael Foot. Yet George Orwell in a letter the novelist Julian Symons in 1948, wrote, commenting on the Labour party paper Tribune that: 'The evil genius of the paper has I think been Crossman, who influences it through Foot & Fyvel.' Orwell then went on to argue that: 'I really think I prefer the Zilliacus lot, since after all they do have a policy, i.e. to appease Russia.' Orwell's point here is to suggest that the Labour left, including Michael Foot, were really rather mealy-mouthed opportunists willing to make anti-American squeals on Foreign Policy to appeal to the far left, while in essence supporting the Labour Government on major matters such as conscription.

In retrospect it seems to me that Blair by inventing the concept of 'New Labour' in the 1990s performed a work of genius at a time when in reality the Labour Party was well past its sell-by date. Consider a movement like the Labour Party that began with the likes of Keir Hardy only to end up with prominent men such as Peter Mandelson and James Purnell. Progressive movements often start off with fresh dynamic characters such as Sun Yat Sen or Gandhi and conclude with something less savoury. Remember the words of Tony Blair on the first day of his election win in 1997: 'A New Dawn has broken!' He could only use that kind of terminology in the context of a virtual reality trick that portrayed 'New Labour' as something actually 'new'. In reality it was nothing of the sort but more a sordid sham to cover up the fact that, in terms of the Labour Party, we are not at the dawn of something but rather at its sunset. It seems to me that we are looking at a political class that has increasingly outlived its mission and this description of the political arena may go beyond the Labour Party.

Doing Away With Derker!!!

The Massacre of the North by Labour Party Loons & Ambitious Academics

This was in the most recent Sunday Times - another indictment of the demolition of Derker, Toxteth, Edge Hill, Bootle, Anfield, etc. Please distribute and comment (and don't forget to click 'recommend')

From The Sunday Times: February 21, 2010

LIVES are being bulldozed and no one listens Charles Clover Elijah Debnam is a plucky 89-year-old who served in the Royal Engineers in Gibraltar, Normandy and Germany during the war. He haslived in the same house in Derker, Oldham, since 1954. He loves his house, which was built in 1937 and which holds memories of his deadwife, Alice. The house has central heating and a garden where he can sit in the sun. Elijah would like to die in it. But now it looks as if that is not to be.

Elijah used to drive bulldozers when he was in the army: now the bulldozers are coming for him. His home and the terrace of five houses like it are to be knocked down, even though all of them are in perfectly good condition. He is to be removed from his neighbourhood and the network of neighbours who look after him. It is unlikely to do him any good.

Oldham borough council won a battle in the High Court just before Christmas to impose compulsory purchase orders to sweep away Elijah’s home and 467 others for a “pathfinder” scheme where private developers are given land that was once someone else’s to build on. The theory behind the pathfinders is that this will “renew the housing market”, make the remaining homes more valuable and make more people want to live in the area.

Unfortunately, the recession means no developer is likely to want to build, free land or not, so the areas the council has cleared so far are being grassed over and planted with cherry trees. So in a country which has run out of money and where housing is in short supply, good houses are being knocked down and not replaced at public expense. It’s a disgrace, but nobody’s listening.

If this had been a Tory government sponsoring private developers to chuck people out of their homes across the Midlands and the north of England, instead of a gigantic piece of social engineering dreamt up by left-wing academics and implemented by a Labour government with the aid of Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors and housing associations, you can be fairly sure you would have heard more about it on the BBC. There would have been talk of the vulnerable, their rights and about the people — there are dozens — who have died during the years of distress and bureaucratic intimidation by threat of compulsory purchase.

The other day I watched a film by Nick Broomfield, the documentary director, called Who Cares (1971). You can find it on YouTube. Broomfield filmed the felling of Liverpool’s elegant Georgian terraces and the forced removal of the people who lived in them to a brave new World of tower blocks where they lost touch with friends and neighbours. Nearly everyone in the political class today would regard what happened to town centres in the 1970s as a tragic mistake. So you wonder how the whole thing could happen again.

An as-yet-unpublished account by David Webb, a Newcastle academic, explains what happened and it goes back to Liverpool. There, a group of housing academics called the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS), based at Birmingham University, were trying to explain what to do about the depopulation of the late 1990s, which resulted in boarded-up homes. The group, led by Brendan Nevin, formulated a theory, based on Liverpool, called housing market renewal. This said that 400,000 homes across the north of England needed to be demolished if northern towns were to be revived again.

CURS sold the idea to John Prescott’s sprawling department. Nevin was brought in as an adviser. Parliament and press were never properly consulted — otherwise there would have been an outcry. The idea was buried in a paragraph in Prescott’s 2002 Communities Plan. Prescottgot the money from Ed Balls at the Treasury, whose wife, Yvette Cooper, came to preside over the 12 pathfinders as housing minister.

Nevin is now acting chief executive of New Heartlands, the pathfinder which is ripping the heart out of Bootle and Edge Hill and is about to start on the lovely “Welsh streets” in Toxteth, where Ringo Starr was born. But his ideas are increasingly under fire. The theory of housing market renewal identifies the cheapest housing as a problem requiring state intervention. It ignores the welfare of the people affected, the quality of their houses or how well they fit into the cityscape, the environmental impact of demolishing them and the blight that the threat of demolition imposes on an area.

The theory may be discredited but it bulldozes on through the lives of thousands of people like Elijah. Pathfinder has cost £2.2 billion to date. It has demolished four times more homes than it has built and the few homes it does build are often of worse quality than those that came down. It has also trampled our freedoms — the Homes and Communities Agency now has powers to compulsorily purchase any private property for the purpose of regeneration (undefined). There is no longer even the 1970s test that property has to be unfit, unsightly or underused.

The Tories have said they would stop unnecessary demolition and overhaul the pathfinder schemes. But I’m not sure they have fully understood the electoral opportunity, for the tinned-up houses and bulldozed wastes of Labour’s heartlands could not be a more photogenic example of broken Britain.

PURNELL QUITS!

Last weeks announcement by James Purnell MP that he`s intending to quit Parliament at the next election, will come as welcome news to many Northern Voices readers. The departure of this smug obnoxious little bastard will also be welcomed by many of his constituents, who have grown to loathe him during his time as a Member of Parliament. Elected as the Labour MP for Stalybridge & Hyde in 2001, he will be best remembered as a politician who courted contoversy.

He was once described by Mark Serwotka, the General Secretary of the PCS trade union, as the "the worst secretary of state for social security this country has ever had the misfortune of having". Though Purnell oppposed Labour`s 50 pence tax rate for all those earning over £150,000 p.a., in December 2008, he signed off a proposal to charge the poor on State benefits 26.8% interest on a social fund loan which had been interest free. Though he was accused of lining his own pockets at the tax payers expense, he believed in being tough with benefit claimants. He favoured lie detector tests to tackle benefit fraud and introduced welfare-to-work schemes which failed to deliver jobs but forced the unemployed to work for their benefits.

While Chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, a post he held for two years, he often accused critics of Israel of being anti-semites and he was a staunch supporter of the war against Iraq. His resignation from the Cabinet in June 2008, came at a time when he was embroiled in the expenses scandal. He was exposed as a profligate claimer who was was prepared to milk the system to its fullest extent. Although at the time of his resignation he called for the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to step down, he recently wrote in the Guardian that he considered Gordon Brown, to be a 'remarkable man' who would lead Labour into the next election.

In his maiden speech to Parliament in 2001, Purnell, referred to a speech made by Hugh Gaitskell in Stalybridge in 1952, when he attacked the Bevanites for being communist fellow travellers. He told the House that most of the Labour Party hated the speech and he hoped that the party would remember the lessons of those events adding: "there should be no place in our party for talk of counter-insurrections or coups; nor should we forget the importance of unity of purpose that got us where we are today". It seems that Purnell could never learn that lesson for himself and was always prepared to put his own interests first.

Did Unite legal team contact Information Commissioner's Office?

RECENTLY, sources close to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) suggest that people claiming to be from the Unite union legal team have asked that the ICO only present 'semi-unredacted files', when the Information Commissioner appears before the Employment Tribunal. It must be emphasised that this has not yet been confirmed, but, if true, it would mean that any reference to the names of union officers in the files found at the officers of the 'blacklister', Ian Kerr, would be blacked out.

If true, then the legal reasoning may be that as the cases of the union members are directed against the companies alleged to have been paying Mr Kerr, operating the blacklist and perpetuating victimisation's, then any reference in the files to the involvement of the union or its officers would not be relevant to the proceedings. This can only be true in the narrowest sense, because some of the evidence seems to show, as in the DAF case, that the presence of a union official at management deliberations about the suitability of employees lent an air of respectability to what was happening and thus a sub-contractor, like the managers of DAF, could be influenced to act against their better judgement.

Protest Picket at Fiddler's Ferry - Terrorism Act threat to Northern Voices Photographer

'If you want to be done under the Terrorism Act just keep taking photographs!' exclaimed a Security Guard at the Fiddler's Ferry Protest Picket today. This exchange, between an anxious security official and an NV photographer, occurred as some 30 supporters of blacklisted electrician Steve Acheson assembled beneath the cooling towers of Scottish & Southern Power Station just off the M62 near Widnes. The company representatives seemed taken aback as dawn broke and the multi-coloured banners of the demonstrators began to decorate the wire fences facing the plant.

It was special turn out because a week or so previously the company's security guards had seized the banners denouncing the blacklisting of construction workers on grounds that they were defamitory. On that occassion the female police officer on duty had looked on while a female head of security had ordered the removal of the banners. Those reporting the event of that morning suggest that both the police officer and the Company boss of security addressed each other using their own Christian names as if they were pals.

Today the male police officers who presented themselves were very diplomatic and reasonable, even suggesting how the protesters might seek to regain their banners from the company. Today their were dozens of banners including Warrington Trade Union Council; the RMT union of railway workers; the Right to Roam ramblers; Unite the Union; the Socialist Party and loads of independent and do-it-yourself flags manufactured by the blacklisted electricians themselves. Later a company representative asked Steve Acheson to take down a couple of banners on their fence: one saying 'Scottish & Southern sold our banners' and the other an elaborate flag calling for 'Justice for the Shrewsbury Pickets'. Following this the protesters took the banners outside the gates were they gave out leaflets explaining their case.

It seems clear that Scottish & Southern PLC are determined to collect evidence to go to the County Court to get some kind of restraining order against these recurring protest pickets. Today, the Security Guards were themselves taking photos of the demonstrators as the sun shone on the nothing new.

Fiddler's Ferry Rally to support Steve Acheson

Following the mugging of Steve Acheson's banners by company security guards last week, with police looking on, a rally has been planned to take place at Fiddler's Ferry Power Station on Tuesday 16th, February at 7am.

The Power Station is situated between Widnes & Warrington just off the A49.

To Warrington Trades Council contacts:
Dear All,

Manchester Campaign Agaist Blacklisting have called for a peaceful protest at Fiddlers Ferry next Tuesday morning from 7 a.m. to support Steve Acheson against the latest (probably illegal) actions from the power station security in taking down Steve's banners, then taking them from him - all under police protection. We now have legal advice from a lawyer specialising in human rights law that they had no right to take down the banners; as they were tied on the fence there was no criminal damage, and although the power station Head of Security said they were defamatory, that is a civil not a criminal matter. Also to take someone's property like that is a form of theft, even if supervised by a police officer. So 7 a.m. at Fiddlers Ferry, Tuesday 16th Feb. Best to park in the pub car park rather than the lay by.

AndyWarrington: Trades Council

County Court Writ served & banners snatched at Fiddler's Ferry picket

Editorial comment: Steve Acheson has been on picket at Fiddler's Ferry since he was made redundant in dodgy circumstances almost two years ago. In an attempt to stop this picket last October, the Power & Energy Company at Fiddler's, issued a writ for him to appear the Royal High Court of Justices in London. This was what is called a 'super injunction' and is normally only used in extreme circumstances: it was rejected by the High Court Judge as an application by the company 'bordering on the edge of paranoia'. Now, it seems, the company is again trying to return to the Courts: below Andy from Warrington TUC reports on the events of Monday the 8th, February:

Steve's [Acheson] banners taken by security at Fiddlers Ferry. Police in support of security guards. Had a phone call from Steve today - a police officer came down to the protest today, went into the power station for 2 minutes, then came out with 4 security, one with a video camera, and the Head of Security as well. They told Steve to take down his banners, when he refused they said that they would remove them from the fences. As Steve told them to leave his property alone, the police officer told him that if he stopped them, he would be arrested for a breach of the peace. Security proceeded to remove the banners, and take them inside the power station. Steve asked where they were going with his property, Head of Security said if he writes to them to ask they will see. Steve asked the police officer what was she going to do as this was theft, however she took no action. They also served Steve with a writ for the County Court, again no date, time or place is on the court papers. The whole time apparently they were filming, must have been hoping to provoke him and get an arrest.

Andy: Warrington Trades Council

Syndicalists Speak at Right to Work Rally

Manchester is a city with one cathedral; two serious socialist parties - the Socialist Workers' Party and the Socialist Party; three universities - Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan and Salford University; a handful of veteran anarchist adherents to the Solidarity Federation, the Anarchist Federation and the Northern Anarchist Network; not to mention umpteen local anarcho-climate activists. So many worthy, well meaning people, it is the ideal spot to stage a Right to Work rally like that held last weekend on Oldham Street, Manchester.

Some 600 folk gathered in 'resistance & solidarity' to protect us from all manner of wickedness in this world. A Rag-Bag Rally of remarkable pretension and proportions endeavouring to gee-up those of us who're still either very young, ideologically drunk or incurably naive. A Conference 'of Resistance & Solidarity': proclaiming 'The Only Solution is Revolution' with minor celebrities on the platform and undergraduates in the audience all loaded with more than a little vain expectations.

Jerry Hicks, unemployed since he was sacked 4 years ago, ran a workshop labelled 'Stopping the Jobs Massacre' which might help him advance his campaign for the General Secretary's job in our biggest trade union: Unite the Union. Will he get it? If he does will he change the union or will the union change him? We must wait and see. In the meantime Jerry offers us a few syndicalist amendments to the status quo: 'all union officers must be elected'; 'the union must serve the members not the other way round'; 'union leaders must lead from the front, as I did on the Staythorpe power station picket last year, when the police broke my leg' or 'the solution is workers' control and revolution'. Stirring stuff delivered in a strained, strangled, shouting bellow to a roomful of about 30. Colin Trousdale, a Manchester electrician and typical English syndicalist, spoke about the blacklist in the building trade and the way the Unite union bosses were dragging their feet rather than fighting the victimisations.

The SWP bosses, who were running the rally, don't much like Jerry Hicks since he left their party - hence this workshop was in the equivalent of outer-Mongolia at the Mechanics Institute, well away from the main conference venue on Oldham Street. Because of this I missed the 7 minute speech delivered by Dave Chapple, who alongside Dave Douglass, is probably the most important revolutionary syndicalist in the country. Dave Chapple who was on the platform as President of the National Shop Stewards' Network and according to reports hammered home an attacked on ballot box politics referring to Wobblies of the American IWW like Bill Heywood, and dismissing the left-wing giddiness associated with the coming General Election; telling the Conference that these days he only bothered to vote in union elections.

The rally produced a 'wish-list' and voted to set up a 'Rank & File' movement, which will stand in contrast to the NSSN that is based in the existing unions. In the end it is likely that the 'rank & file' project will render itself to be little more than a fart in a bottle. The SWP organisers are good at rallies but not so clever when it comes to following through: soon the novelty will wear off and they will be off on some other campaign or venture. We should note the headline in the current Socialist Worker: 'Be Part of the New Wave of Resistance'. Well it's part of the DNA of the British left to be always 'in resistance' and never to make serious practical proposals for change. The Government and the bosses set the agenda and the trade unions and the left react to it as best they can. This more than anything displays the primitive and immature [if not feeble-minded] state we are in as a political movement.

The Blacklist & Our Part in its downfall: Colin Trousdale's perspective

To whom it may concern:

Following on from my recent protestations about the need to organise the Media City project, it is with some regret that I have to report that myself, Graham Bowker and Gary Littler are currently on enforced paid leave following an attempt by management to dismiss us on Friday 22nd under false redundancy . This follows a series of meetings with management where the three of us have raised Health & Safety issues and the fact that the New Year pay rise has not been implemented and our refusal to work Saturdays for single time. There are seven of us working for an agency alongside seven full-timers (not cards in) none of which are in the union , two of the agency lads are non union and have no desire to join despite my best efforts so if we formed a shop it would comprise of only five lads in a workforce of fourteen . However as I have previously stated the full site has 300-350 men who are traditionally UNITE members amongst a workforce of 1800. These men are completely unorganised and most are lapsed members due to the abolition of the check off . There is a full-time UCATT convenor on site who is trying to help our lads on an almost daily basis. I recently advised him on three cases:

1. an apprentice plumber (member) being paid over £3 p/hr below the rate for his age and qualifications.
2. a group of cards in sparks (lapsed members who feel UNITE has done nothing to sign them back up after check off ) accused of falsifying their time sheets although management fill their sheets for them and just give them to the lads to sign? 
3. a sub-contractor paying well below the rate for sparks . It is his opinion (and one which I share) that we should be organising the workforce putting stewards & safety reps in place with all the sub-contractors and having a convenor splitting his time between working for one of the main M&E contractors and co-ordinating the efforts of the stewards & sorting out industrial relations problems amongst the subbies. 

The trend on site at the moment amongst the M&E companies is to see who can get agency labour the cheapest with no thought for National Agreements or ratios of skilled to unskilled labour. I myself am approached on a daily basis to advise on some problem or another - something that has not gone unnoticed by management- and on Friday 15th, January 2010, I was called to a meeting with our project manager at which he said he had been made aware of the alleged BLACKLIST. My reply was that we now had irrefutable proof of it, and although this meeting was minuted he is refusing to give me a copy of the minutes but has sent them to head office and my agency. I feel this meeting was the catalyst that led to the attempt to remove the three of us from site . If we do not organise this site soon we will not be the only three victims of this witch hunt . WE MUST DEFEND OUR MEMBERS & AGREEMENTS. YOU MUST ASSIST IN THIS. This could be another D.A.F. or Manchester Royal Infirmary brewing.

Yours in Unity, Colin

The Blacklist & My Part In Its Downfall by Brian Bamford, Secretary of Tameside TUC

Overshadowed by the DAF dispute and the findings of the Manchester Employment Tribunal; in 2005, at the National Conference of Trade Union Councils (TUCs) in Liverpool, Alec McFadden, North West Rep. of the TUC Joint Consultative Committee, moved an emergency motion against the blacklist, which he argued was mainly being perpetuated by employers in the private sector. I, as the delegate of Tameside Trade Union Council, seconded this motion pointing out that one of the DAF managers, Michael Fahey, had stated under oath to the Tribunal that an officer in what was then Amicus had been involved in deliberations about the blacklisting of certain Manchester electricians. These were subsequently dismissed and took part in a picket against DAF in Piccadilly and later in Crown Square. The motion before the National Conference was overwhelmingly supported and it was referred to the Trade Union Congress in London for its consideration.

At the next National Conference of TUCs in Torquay, in 2006, the Trade Union Congress replied, as I recall, to the effect that since evidence for a blacklist in the UK was only 'anecdotal' the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI), as it then was, would not act. About that time in 2006, Alan Wainwright, a former manager in the British building trade who had by then become a whistle-blower, had published a blog showing over a thousand names of individuals in UK construction, who, he claimed, had been on a national blacklist. Construction News had just run a front page article on the issue Mr Wainwright had exposed. Late Pat McFadden, of BERR which replaced the DTI, was to argue in a letter to a MP for one of the blacklisted Manchester electricians that though the Government was aware of Mr Wainwright's allegations and his use of the list to exclude people from employment, it seemed that he couldn't define the criteria used to by the firms to put people on the list. Hence nothing further was done.

It was only this year, with the raid of the Information Commissioner in February, that Ian Kerr was caught with a smoking gun and a list of 3,213 names on an illegal database held by the Consulting Association that things started to happen. Confronted with this evidence the Government at last had to act and Lord Mandelson issued a statement to this effect soon afterwards. Last Wednesday (2nd December 2009), the Government issued its response to its consultation on the outlawing of blacklisting in the UK. A week later Employment law pundit Professor Keith Ewing has given his verdict that the Government's proposed new regulations are not much to write home about.

Is this just another Government fudge? Just more cosmetic laws to cover up inaction against the bosses' discrimination against safety reps. and shop-floor activists?

Free-lance journalist, Phil Chamberlain, claimed on his blog [December 8th, 2009]: 'In fact the Government's consultation document appears to give the green light to employers to blacklist in certain circumstances.'

Chamberlain argues: 'The difference is clearest in event of workers stopping work due to serious safety concerns. This is considered to be unofficial industrial action. Such unofficial action, which is legal, would not be covered by the proposed regulations and companies could continue to discriminate [against] workers who took part in such a stoppage.' Mr Chamberlain thinks the Government doesn't do anything to discourage such blacklisting when it says: 'The Government believes such [unofficial] industrial action is especially disruptive and injurious to orderly industrial relations because, by definition, the trade union has not endorsed and controlled it.'

Alan Ritchie, General Secretary of the union UCATT, said of the proposed new regulations: 'Not only are these regulations entirely inadequate, the Government's consultation response favours the continuation of blacklisting in certain circumstances.'

It seems the Government's 54-page document fails to deal with the everyday blacklisting of safety reps. and activists; and Phil Chamberlain says: '[this] was a notable feature of the Consulting Association's blacklisting practices.' UCATT is anxious about the proposed law's failure to protect safety representatives and its allowance of 'vetting' by bosses for activities other than trade union matters, meaning that workers who the boss considers to be troublemakers will still be blacklisted.

Maybe I'll just have to wait a bit before I can blow my own trumpet about my part in the downfall of the UK blacklist.

Keystone Kops in Clean-up Bury Campaign

Terry Nieland and other managers from the Bradley Fold Depot, Bury, Lancashire, have been running round like blue-arsed flies in an effort to clear up rubbish left as a result of Bury Council's introduction of a new scheme for waste collections thought up by Waste management supremo Glenn Stuart. It all started last month when Councillor Dorothy Gunther, Bury's Executive Member for Environment & Transport, justifying the new changes in refuse collection, declared: 'We all know about the threat of climate change. These changes will help reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we release into the environment and improve recycling opportunities for more residents.'

Two weeks into the new scheme the benefits to the environment and the taxpayers are far from clear; with the local binmen struggling to complete their new rounds on time and bin wagons having to be tipped on Saturday morning by specially employed Agency workers instead of Friday night by the regular crews. The Head of Waste Management in Bury, Glenn Stuart, had promised:

'... the crews are making sure they are up to speed by familiarising themselves with the new more effective routes' and reassuring 'local residents that we will be working hard to make sure the changes take place smoothly ...'

Two days ago, it is reported, a Bury binman chipped a tooth while emptying an overfull bin whose lid was raised so that it blew into his face. We must wonder if in the anxiety to bring in new schemes designed to run the waste service more cheaply, but sold under the guise of a greener service with a reduced 'carbon footprint', the council is putting the safety of its workforce at risk: especially with management chasing round like Keystone Kops. Meanwhile in nearby Bolton, a new scheme of waste collection introduced in September, has brought claims that there is a risk of rat infestation owing to rubbish being left around. An enterprising company called GSD Pest Repeller is already advertising its services in Bolton based on the claim that Leeds residents suffered through the refuse collectors' strike, which, they say, has 'led to a marked increase in the area's rat control problems'.

One Of The Great Blues Guitarists - Check This Out

Chumbawamba eat your heart out! This is blues music at its best. Walter Trout playing his version of the Elmore James song Dust My Broom. I saw Walter Trout a while ago when he was playing a gig at Manchester University. He`s without doubt one of the best blues guitarists of all time having played with the Father of British blues John Mayall, Canned Heat, and the legendary, John Lee Hooker. The next time he comes to Manchester, go and see him.