Ex-School Governor Michael Burke Sentenced

KAREN Danczuk's brother, Michael Burke, was this morning given a 15-year sentence on eight counts of rape and one of buggery in Court Two of the Manchester Crown Court. 
Sentencing, Mr Justice Gilbart said that he did accept that former Labour party activist Michael Burke had ‘done something for the community’, with Mr Walker adding that he had also been a school governor.
Michael Burke, 38, of College Bank, Rochdale , was found guilty of historic raping his own sister Karen Burke, now Mrs Danczuk - the estranged wife of Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk.  He was also convicted of sexual assaults on two other women - one of whom was just 12 when she was attacked by him.
Handing down the sentence for Burke for eight rape charges and one of buggery, the High Court judge told him:  'Your first victim was your sister...what had been tickling games and hide and seek in and out of your bedroom turned into you wanting her to touch you and then, when you got to 14, to exploit her further.'
Karen Daczuk was legally entitled to anonymity as a victim of a sex assault, but had now formally waived it after Michael Burke was found guilty, after The Sun newspaper ran an exclusive story of her ordeal.
It is not yet clear if Ms. Danczuk has been paid for this story.

Unite the Union: A Challenge to Len McCluskey!

Unite has called a ‘snap election’ but for whose benefit?

by Jo Benefield

UNITE the country’s biggest and potentially the most powerful Union will be holding an election for its General Secretary a lot earlier than was necessary. But why? And who stands to benefit? More importantly - who will pay the biggest price?

This election was not due to take place until 2018. So - was there a demand from Unite’s tens of thousands of workplace representatives?  Was there an overwhelming insistence from its 1.3 million members?  No, neither of those is the case - so why then and for whose benefit?

It is being proffered that McCluskey ‘must stand now’ as he is the only one to ‘save’ Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Yet Corbyn has recently, easily seen off a Labour coup and now sees himself elected twice on massive majorities.

Many,  including Jerry Hicks,are saying “Far from saving the safe Jeremy Corbyn, McCluskey is using Corbyn so he (McCluskey) can cling on to power for another 5 years taking him to 71”.

The fact that it is happening should have come as no surprise as McCluskey has form on calling ‘snap elections’.  He did the same in 2013, then on a different false premise of avoiding a potentially damaging Unite election at the same time as the 2015 General Election.  For the record, McCluskey was instrumental in Ed Miliband winning the Labour leadership, (who then went on to lose the General Election), and shunning John McDonnell’s bid.  Gerard Coyne now a declared challenger for Unite General Secretary was silent throughout all this.  

 Jerry Hicks has phrased it as ‘Two sides of the same Coyne’ and that both want to cash in on a six figure salary (paid out of members’ pockets). They have so much in common.  Both have worked for the Union for decades in appointed ‘jobs for life’ so neither has been on strike for decades.  Both support Nuclear energy.  Both support Trident at a cost of £200bn, despite Unite having over 1million members not involved in Trident but who will be affected by austerity & savage cuts to pay for Trident.  Both believe in appointing all paid Unite officers, thereby denying members a choice of who will represent them - despite paying those officers’ wages.

Jerry Hicks went on to say 'If this were the Labour leadership election, McCluskey would be Andy Burnham and Coyne would be a cross between Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall.  Neither would be Jeremy Corbyn.  Ironic then that McCluskey has created the circumstances, and then makes Corbyn the central issue

'McCluskey has set his house on fire and pleads with the members to put it out.

'McCluskey and his followers including many senior appointed officers always rely on ‘the fear’  factor. In 2013, I was ‘the danger’, I was the ‘red’ they mercilessly baited, saying my policies would wreck the Union. In fact, my election address and not McCluskey’s, read like Corbyn’s manifesto.

'Members deserve better than this, a lot better - something completely different.'

Jerry Hicks is an unemployed member of Unite having been unlawfully sacked by Rolls Royce and also on the infamous and illegal employers ‘blacklist’.  He ran for Unite General Secretary in 2013 and received 80,000 votes nearly 40%

'Fatty' Farnell or 'Mr. 51%

IT's not bad being on the Rochdale Town Council gravy train these days!  Certainly not for 'Fatty' (Richard) Farnell the leader of Rochdale MBC, who stands to get a pay rise of 51% in allowances.

Councellor Farnell now gets a Basic Councillor's Allowance of £7,812 plus a Special Responsibilities Allowance (SRA) as leader of the Council of £23,412.  This adds up to £31,224.

Yesterday ROCHDALE ONLINE reported that 'The Council is considering raising the Basic Allowance for councillors by 34% to £10,451, which Councillor Farnell would benefit from. In addition, the SRA for the leader is set at three times the basic allowance and so Councillor Farnell's SRA as leader will rise from the current £23,412 to £31,353. Added to his Basic Allowance that will give Councillor Farnell £41,804.  However, a new SRA is also being proposed, for being a member of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, of £5,500, which would increase Councillor Farnell's allowances to £47,304.  That is a rise on his current allowances of £16,080 (51%).'

Defending this rise by referring to the level of toil put in by local councilors, Councillor Farnell said:   'People may not realise it but our councillors spend many, many hours week in, week out serving their local communities and they get the second lowest amount in the region.'

Meanwhile on his own website Richard Farnell reminded the citizens of Rochdale:   ‘We're preparing for another challenging savings programme, following reductions in government funding, rising costs and increased demand for our services.  As we'll have less money in the future, fewer staff, we won't be able to do as much…’

Top of Councellor Farnell's list of cuts in Rochdale Borough Council's costs are given below:

Summary of key savings include: 

•Reduced the council's workforce. 

•Changed terms and conditions of staff.

The council worker's unions Unison, the GMB and UNITE, will no doubt be delighted to learn that their members might be in line for redundancy. 

But there is more than a little humbug about Councillor Farnell's defence of his own pay rise in so far as in June 2014 another former Labour leader of Rochdale Council, Colin Lambert, was hauled before a parliamentary committee when he when he approved a pay rise for the then Rochdale MBC Chief Executive, Jim Taylor.  That pay rise which amounted to not quite 30% was eventually turned down by the Rochdale's councilors.

But guess who was behind the campaign against the Chief Executive's pay rise and who got Colin Lambert dragged before the parliamentary committee?  None other than Councillor 'Fatty' Farnell's old pal, Simon Danczuk, the now disgraced MP for Rochdale.

The proposal for the increased allowances will be considered at tomorrow's full Council meeting at Rochdale Town Hall.

Postal Strike!

WE have lots of support lined up on social media. It would be great if Branches and regions could share images and this article using #PeoplesPost throughout the day tomorrow. 

 

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-e1fd-Spare-a-thought-for-your-postie-on-National-Postal-Workers-Day#.WE0dWobfXYU

Kind regards,

 

Chris Webb

 

From Chris Webb | Head of Communications, Engagement and Media

Email cwebb@cwu.org | Direct line 020  8971 7397 | Mobile 07583 725644

 

Communication Workers Union  The communications union

Headquarters 150 The Broadway | Wimbledon | SW19 1RX

T 020 8971 7200 | F 020 8971 7300 | www.cwu.org | @CWUNews

'Populism', Imagined Communities & Nations

by Brian Bamford

ROUTINE elections in European countries in 2016 have ushered in a mercurial quality to the political landscape.  Jon Bigger in a thoughtful article on the Freedom Blog about the recent by-election in Richmond wrote:   

'The recent Richmond by-election victory for the Lib Dems shows that the Brexit split can make a very real difference to British politics.  It isn't inconceivable to see the British public split along the lines of the referendum for years to come, with the conservatives and UKIP on one side and the Lib Dems, Greens, and SNP on the other.' 

Mr. Bigger then writes: 

'Note that as things stand there isn't any real role for the Labour Party in this scenario.' 

On the 'libertarian communist' website libcom, commenting on Brexit, someone wrote in what appeared to be an editorial: 

'In the UK context it was clearly a vote against foreign “others” and anybody who can be labeled as such...  Nigel Farage (former leader of UKIP and important leader of the Leave campaign) said on more than one occasion that he would be able to sacrifice economic growth to see less immigrants.'

This seems to have been the case and François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said:

' In Britain, one of the campaign slogans for Brexit was “Vote Leave, Take Control”.' and the idea seemed to be that being in 'the EU was preventing Britain from doing that.'

The feeling is that the motivation driving many voters in Britain, the USA and now in Italy's referendum over a week ago, is to impress upon the politicians that the status quo and the establishment elites are now unacceptable. 

The Italian electorate threw out a constitutional overhaul that would have increased the power of the prime minister by cutting the number of senators and decreasing their power.  This wouldn't have mattered so much, but for the fact that it gave a political opportunity to the Five Star movement to gain political prestige by opposing it. 

What makes things worse is the lasting consequences of the global recession in 2008 in both Europe and the USA, and the underlying frustration of the pain still being suffered in many European countries. 

In France, economic growth only reached 1% last year, and youth unemployment is still close to 25%.  In Italy, Spain and Greece it's higher. 

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, the director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Plan, said recently:  'The Rust Belt isn't just in America – there's a Rust Belt in the north of France, ... they feel they are dispossessed, dispossessed of their countries sovereignty and their economy.' 

Ms. Scheffer added:

'The way Washington is perceived by many American people is the way many French or Germans or Italians perceive Brussels... they perceive Brussels as almost an illegitimate entity.'

Jon Bigger in his Freedom essay prudently argues that the 'changing [political] landscape may be something we don't fully understand for years and I don't think anyone has got the definitive vision yet (and you shouldn't expect to see it here either).'

And, he suggests:  'Think for a moment about how this anti-Establishment feeling has manifested around the world since it started:  the Arab Spring, Occupy, Brexit, Bernie Saunders, Donald Trump, Momentum and Corbyn...  The response to a disaster within global capitalism hasn't been one of simply global revolution.  Instead people have responded in ways that reject a simple left / right ideological perspective.  When things settle at home and abroad there will be a new alignment, a new politics which which may well conform to a clearer ideological split.'

Geert Wilders, the leader of the right-wing Freedom Party in the Netherlands and regularly rated as the most popular politician, also has said:  'Right verses left doesn't exist anymore'. 

Clearly politicians who look to nationalism and promote worries about disenfranchisement are in vogue. 

The lib-communist website editorial is at pains to stress that they are against nationalism and claim they are 'indifferent towards any national question'.  They stress that 'for us, all nations (small or big) are fake communities.' *

The dogmatic thinking of the 'communists' on their website tract seem in a bit of a muddle between what is the 'state' and what is the 'nation'.  They even finish off with an exit platitude taken from the 1848 'Communist Manifesto' by by Marx and Engels: 

'The working men (sic) have no country.  We cannot take from them what they have not got...' 

Yet then it goes on 'the proletariat must ... constitute itself the nation... though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.' 

What are 'fake communities'? *  Are nations and nationalisms invented?

Or would we be better-off embracing Benedict Anderson and his now his famous study entitled 'Imagined Communities'?**

Put crudely what seems to have happen according Mr. Anderson, is that when peasant face-to-face communities declined from the 18th Century onwards people have felt a psychological need to replace the everyday communities of the village with the 'imagined community' of the nation state in which though people can't possibly know all of the members of the nation they come to feel an affinity with the other citizens through the national media and other cultural forms of identity. 

The 'libcoms' or 'communist libertarians' of small organizations like the so-called 'anarchist federation' are inclined to use a cookbook approach in such a way that their analysis almost writes itself.  Unlike Jon Bigger on the Freedom Blog who modestly admits the 'changing [political] landscape may be something we don't fully understand for years...', while the libcom gang for their part have the dreary dogma of a party-line don't even try to get to grips with the anthropological emergence of nationalism.***  It is so much easier to simply dismiss the whole phenomena of 'popularism' and resurgent nationalism with a grim guffaw and a quote from the 19th century Communist Manifesto to give their statement gravitas. 

 

*    Ernest Gellner has written:  'Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist'

**  An imagined community is different from an actual community in that it is not—and, for practical reasons, cannot be—based on everyday face-to-face interaction among its members. It is a concept coined by Benedict Anderson to analyze nationalism. Anderson depicts a nation as a socially constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group.

Anderson's book, Imagined Communities, in which he explains the concept in depth, was first published in 1983, and reissued with additional chapters in 1991 and a further revised version in 2006.

***  Benedict Anderson has explained his now influential concept thus:

'In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation:  it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. 

It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.'

Unite support's a Citizens Basic Income!

By Derek Pattison,

President, Tameside TUC, (in a personal capacity).

 

IN this country and abroad, we are seeing a growing interest in the idea of a guaranteed universal unconditional basic income scheme for all citizens. What seems to be driving such initiatives, is the realisation that the world of work is becoming more precarious with jobs under threat from technology and automation. The Bank of England now estimates that as many as 15 million jobs are under threat from technology and a third of jobs in the retail sector, are predicted to disappear by 2025, due to such things as online shopping.

Another factor is the way in which the world of work is changing. One is seven Britons is now classed as self-employed. Although some of this so-called self-employment is possibly bogus, as in the case of Uber and Deliveroo, the latest official data shows that 83% of new jobs created in the UK between March and May 2016, were self -employed. Such is the rise of the so-called 'gig economy' that in 2015, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), reported that since 1995, 'non-standard' jobs - temporary, part-time or self-employed positions, - accounted for the whole of net jobs growth in the UK since 1995.

Employment law in the UK also makes it easier to hire and fire workers by using zero hour contracts and agency working where employees have very few employment rights. The self-employed don't get sick pay, holiday pay, pensions or employment protections nor are employers obliged, to pay their NI contributions or the living wage.

My own union, 'Unite', supports in principle a universal basic income scheme and is urging other unions to support such a scheme. At the Unite policy conference in July (2016), the following resolution was adopted:

"Conference notes the growing crisis of low pay, in work poverty and precarity in a labour market increasingly characterised by casualised forms of employment that offer low pay, zero hours contracts and no long-term security.

Conference further notes the evident inability of our bureaucratically costly social security system, with its dependence on means-testing and frequent arbitrary sanction, to provide an adequate income floor.

Conference believes that a Basic Income, an unconditional, non-withdrawable income paid to everyone, has the potential to offer genuine social security to all while boosting the economy and creating jobs.

Conference welcomes the ongoing exploration of the concept of a Basic Income by the think-tank Compass, the innovation charity Nesta, the Royal Society of Arts, and others; further welcomes the planned practical experiments in Finland and Utrecht, Netherlands.

Conference calls upon the union to actively campaign for a Universal Basic Income and eradicate poverty for all."

Although the Tories have rejected the idea of a basic income scheme as unaffordable, Scotland is considering a universal basic income scheme pilot and the Labour Party is considering a universal basic income which would replace means-tested benefits with a flat rate payment.

Postscript (11/12/2016):

The Trades Union Congress (TUC), passed a composite resolution supporting a Universal Basic Income Scheme, at their September 2016 TUC Congress.

'Always Look On The Sour Side of Life'

How Ken Loach Renders Reality on Film

Reviewing  'I, Daniel Blake' & the impact of 'Social Realism'

by Brian Bamford

Reverend David Grey, a former friar, at Ashton Jobcentre

THE film Ken Loach's 'I, Daniel Blake' had the biggest domestic opening of its director's career with receipts of more than £2 million after its first three weeks.  Audiences predictably have been massive in Newcastle where the film is staged.  But also on social media, where the hashtag #iamdanielblake took off.   It is to be released in the USA on December 23^rd.

The Euro-septic MP, Iain Duncan Smith at one point complained that the film was unkind to the staff at the job-centres and benefit offices, who were enforcing the sanctions which is central to the film's message.

As things turned out audiences in this country have been flocking to see the film, which portrays the difficulties experienced by a Newcastle joiner with an heart condition trying to make sense of the British benefit's system. 

Working class culture has a rich tradition in many post-war British films.  In 1996 I interviewed Jim Allen, one of Ken Loach's screen-writers and a former building site worker, who had just collaborated with Loach on the film 'Land & Freedom' about the Spanish Civil War, and had previously worked with him on 'Raining Stones' (1993). 

At that time in an essay entitled 'Rendering Reality on Film: art and the emotion racket' (The Raven, Spring 1996), I wrote:   

'... in Raining Stones in 1993 (based on a council estate in Middleton, Greater Manchester), they are  concerned with the problems of survival on the dole in Britain today.  How to get by on a council estate amid the loan sharks and drug pushers.  Making out and leading a decent family life, in the aftermath of an era of social blight and desperation for the poor that shows  no sign of ending in the near future.'

Loach himself is uneasy about being identified with 'social realism' because he thinks it pigeon-holes his films puts off the public, he has said:  'It's a way for critics to isolate someone's work... As a film-maker you just want people to come with an open mind.'

Some doubt the accuracy and truth of the events in the film, although Mr Iain Duncan Smith has given a radio interview in which he said:that the film showed 'the very worst of anything that could happen'.

The benefit agencies and jobcentres have long been held responsible for inflicting suffering upon people at the bottom of society's pile.  Only last week the National Audit Office which found that  the Government spent £147 million more on administering the system than was saved through sanctions.  In my capacity as a Trade Union Council Secretary in Tameside, Manchester, I recently wrote to Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the PCS union that represents jobcentre workers:

'...  the protests at Ashton Jobcentre are now in their second year...  During the last two-years, staff working at Ashton Jobcentre, have made numerous complaints that they have felt threatened by protests taking place outside Ashton Jobcentre.  While this has often led to police intervention, no protestor has ever been arrested, cautioned, or rebuked in anyway.  The police have often considered these complaints, as time-wasting or baseless...  You may be interested to know that on one occasion, the Reverend David Grey, a former friar from Gorton Monastery, entered Ashton Jobcentre dressed in clerical vestments (see picture) to offer staff spiritual guidance and counselling..  We were later told that the Jobcentre had summoned the police on the pretext that staff felt threatened and intimidated by this man of God.'

This kind of corny confrontation between the British benefit bureaucracy and the claimants has been going on for as long as I can remember.  It's an authentic long-running farce played out daily up and down the country.  Towards the end of the film, Daniel Blake asks to sign-off as a claimant saying that applying for work with a heart condition like his was just wasting everyone's time and only served to humiliate him as a claimant.   The film critic Antonia Quirke has written:  'Very few people can hit you in the thoracic cavity like Loach.  Of course I cried, as I always do...'.

This is what my mother would have called a 'tear jerker' or Bertold Brecht the 'emotion racket', but while social realism may scare some off the cinema Danny Leigh in the Financial Times suggests:

'That is the essence of modern social realism – a place on the screen for people often seen as statistics'.

The film has already won the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and has scored as  a hit at the British box office. 

'Carolyn Wilson, I don't know her from Adam!'

WE publish the report below just to keep our readers informed of the strange goings on at Freedom Press, which used to have the distinguished reputation of being the stable of one of the oldest journals in the country (founded in 1886), and is now a place where the inmates think nothing of operating bans and blacklists against fellow anarchists.  The latest rumour is that the Freedom Collective, led by the Bookshop manager, Andy Meinke, wants to extend his local blacklist to include a Friend of Freedom Press who he believes is leaking info. to Northern Voices.  The Collective under Andy Meinke got rid of the solicitor Richard Parry earlier in the Summer of this year, after Mr. Parry had sent a letter to the occupants of the building who sometimes pay rent to the Collective warning them they may have to move out as the Friends planned to sell the premises on Whitechapel High Street.  On that occasion Mr. Meinke rallied a mob to intimidate the Friends of Freedom Press by using his Facebook page yet again.

ADAM Lawrence Barr, who was the latest editor of Freedom, has now left the job he was paid to do apparently for good.  He is the latest in an  undistinguished line of holders this office to quit.  In fact most people I know connected with Freedom Press are embarrassed by both the printed version of the paper and the website offering.

What was more curious than Mr Barr fleeting participation at Freedom was the sudden conjuring up of the good lady Carolyn Wilson, who was installed on the eve of Referendum Day (22/06/16) as a new Friend of Freedom Press.  Carolyn Wilson was nominated by a departing Friend who had not only never met her but had no knowledge of who she was.  In other words she was just another 'name' put forward by the Secretary of the Friends of Freedom Press, Steve Sorba, who nominated the other new Friend, Jason Holdway, who is an anarcho-syndicalist and seemingly has some connection with the Solidarity Federation. 

What must be troubling about all this is that the director/ members of the Friends of Freedom Press are operating like puppets or nodding dogs; nominating any kind of odd or sod who presents themselves at the Freedom Bookshop in Angel Alley.  I write this in the knowledge that both Mr Holdway and Ms. Wilson are representatives of that shy school of anarchists and did not want to give their details, and that this presents a problem because Companies House to which the Friends of Freedom Press are registered as Company Directors normally requires the full names and addresses of the Directors on the board. 
Further investigations by Northern Voices shows a Ms. Carolyn Jane Wilson has now been registered at Companies House together with the other directors, and perhaps we should not be surprised that her 'correspondence address' is registered as 84b, Whitechapel High Street:  which is none other than the address of the Freedom Bookshop run by Andy Meinke.*  She now takes the minutes of the meetings of the Friends, so Mr. Meinke will have advance warning of anything that may affect his plans or his money-making schemes of renting out rooms.  Sources close to the Friends of Freedom have told Northern Voices that Mr. Meinke still hasn't provided proper accounts for his Freedom Bookshop operation.  We have been told that when the Friends have their meetings Andy keeps out of the way and very often sneaks off to the pub.
The relationship between Ms. Wilson and Mr. Meinke would seem to stem from when they were both associated with 'Reclaim the Streets' some years ago.   When  in 2012 there was trouble between Freedom and a left-wing photographer, over the copyright theft of intellectual property when Freedom Press agreed to publish the book 'Beating the Fascists'; the photographer David Hoffman then advised that people should take closer look at Mr. Meinke. 
Meanwhile, Mr. Jason Holdway is not registered as a director at Companies House, and has not attended any of the monthly meetings of the board of directors since he was crowned as a director at the AGM last June.

Since her elevation onto the Friends of Freedom Press, I have spotted the mysterious Ms. Wilson at various events associated with the left.  She was at the London Anarchist Bookfair last October, and at the Greenwich Conference on Blacklisting in September.  Her attendance at the Blacklist Conference is interesting because she seems to have been recruited by the Freedom Bookshop manager, Andy Meinke (see link below), her name being forwarded to Secretary Steve Sorba for her to become a Director of Friends of Freedom Press.  Curiously Mr. Meinke is on record on his Facebook for participating in a campaign against Steve Hedley, Senior Assistant General Secretary in the RMT union.**   Mr. Steve Hedley, was found to be on the Consulting Association blacklist and is a well known and respected trade union militant.  
Mr. Meinke has not been a great supporter of the campaign against the blacklist in the British building trade; he sold all of 5 copies of the Tameside TUC 'Boys on the Blacklist' booklet in his Freedom Bookshop and anyone who wants to know more about him can always go on his Facebook page.


*  WILSON, Carolyn Jane                                           
Correspondence address:  84b Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX                   

Role Active:  Director                        

Date of birth:  December 1974                            

Appointed on:  23 August 2016                            

Nationality:  British                            

Country of residence:  United Kingdom                            

Occupation:  Voluntary Worker

**  Andy Meinke - Had an unpleasant altercation with Steve... | Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/andy.meinke.5/posts/778018038941893  
Blacklisted building workers hope for day in court after ruling | UK ...

https://www.theguardian.com  › World › UK News › Police
Blacklist blog | This blog is brought to you courtesy of Hazards magazine

www.hazards.org/blacklistblog/ 
Undercover police officer Carlo Neri spied on the RMT union - rmt

https://www.rmt.org.uk/.../undercover-police-officer-carlo-neri-spied-on-the-rmt-unio...

Relevance of Immigration in the UK Referendum

by Les May

YESTERDAY the Home Affairs Select Committee chaired by Yvette Cooper launched an inquiry into developing a consensus on an effective immigration policy. 

She said, ‘Immigration is one of the most important issues facing our country and will be central to the Brexit deal. Britain voted for change, especially on free movement, but there has been very little debate about what kind of reforms or immigration control that should now mean or how we get the best deal for the country.’   

Which isn’t strictly true.  In the recent referendum the only question that was asked was whether or not we wanted to leave or stay in the European Union.  There was no question about immigration, the single market, or about the wider question of free movement of people, good, capital and services, so no politician has the right to infer anything from the vote other than that a majority of people voted to leave the EU. This isn’t sophistry, it’s just a fact.   

Fixating on immigration ignores all the other reasons why people may have chosen to vote ‘leave’. Is immigration a significant factor in the growth of inequality? Is it really the reason why some people are paying out a third of their disposable income to rent a house for which they have little security of tenure?  Is it really the reason why some people have become reliant on food banks to ward off starvation?  Is it really the reason that some people feel they have been ‘left behind’ by globalization?  

No! It’s not that ‘they’ have come here to steal our jobs, its that our companies have exported jobs to ‘them’ to line the pockets of CEOs.

In the 1980s the ‘Chicago school’ of economists argued that companies should be run for the benefit of the ‘owners’.  The natural consequence of this was that the proportion of money going to wage earners fell and that to shareholders increased.

 http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/EMO%202012%20Eng_Chapter%203.pdf  

One way of boosting profits still further is to export manufacturing jobs to low wage economies in the Far East.  Check out where your Dyson vacuum was made.   

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2752100/800-jobs-to-go-as-sad-Dyson-moves-factory-to-Far-East.html  

Whether you think that Cooper belongs to it or not there is a strand in the Labour party the best way to fight off a challenge from UKIP for the so called ‘Labour vote’ is to emulate UKIP and start parroting ‘something must be done about immigration’. The effect of this will be to let the Tories off the hook as architects of our present era of ‘casino capitalism’ where a few winners take all and the rest of us squabble about what is left. 

I’m told that Corbyn has never said anything to indicate that he has any time for ‘populism’.  The indications are that he, and Diane Abbot, will tackle UKIP’s populist policies head on.  But that could bring them into conflict with those in the Labour party who think the best way forward is to become a kind of ‘UKIP Lite’. 

In summer the writers of ‘think pieces’ were speculating that the Right and Left wings would end up fighting over the carcase of the Labour party.  But if the recent referendum told us anything it’s that people do not always feel bound by those traditional allegiances.  How long before those same writers are predicting the death of the Labour party as its splits into those who are willing to scapegoat immigrants to garner votes and those who are not?

Len McCluskey manoeuvres to hang-on till 2020

LEN McCluskey, the boss of the UK's biggest union Unite, has resigned triggering a leadership election, but he will fight to be re-elected next April.
McCluskey’s present five-year term is to end in 2018, so he is effectively bringing the election forward a year.  The 66-year-old would have come under pressure to retire if he had stayed until the end of the scheduled term.
The aim by McCluskey and his backers is to keep control of the union and retain political influence in the Labour Party.  Unite has just under one and half union members and has long propped-up the Labour Party's finances.
Gerard Coyne, Unite’s regional secretary for the West Midlands, is expected to stand against McCluskey.  Bro. Coyne is seen as well to the right of McCluskey. 
Strictly Come Dancing star, Ed Balls in the Huffington Post has said that defeat of McCluskey in the Unite General Secretary election would be a 'staging post' on a route to giving Labour MPs and unions more of a say over the party’s leadership rules.
Unite remains one of Labour’s biggest donors and its members have key votes on the party’s ruling National Executive Committee, which decides on leadership rules.
Mr. Balls told Paul Waugh of Huff Post: 
'Now that’s a problem [for the Labour Party] when that’s the attitude of the largest trade union.  He obviously will feel differently now that Jeremy Corbyn is leader but that’s partly because Jeremy Corbyn is being supported by many people who’ve not been in the Labour party for a very long time. If McCluskey wins, he will almost certainly be Unite leader up until the 2020 general election, strengthening both his own position and that of Corbyn. 
In a statement issued through the union, McCluskey said:
'I intend to be a candidate in the upcoming general secretary election and to submit my record to the vote of Unite members. This will be an election in which Unite will be under unprecedented scrutiny, particularly from our enemies.
'It is vital that in this period there is no lack of continuity in service or support to our membership, and that the full integrity of our procedures is not only protected, but seen to be protected.' The current assistant general secretary, Gail Cartmail, will act as leader for the election period, a move McCluskey said would ensure 'that, while I am a candidate for re-election, the business of Unite remains properly managed'.  

Wynford Dewhurst: A Manchester Impressionist!

The first retrospective of the English impressionist painter and art theorist Wynford Dewhurst since his death in 1941.

Manchester Art Gallery

 Friday 9 December 2016–Sunday 23 April 2017  Free

A controversial figure on the Anglo-French art scene at the turn of the twentieth century, Wynford Dewhurst is most famous for his 1908 work The Picnic, in the collection of Manchester Art Gallery. He was born in Manchester in 1864 and began his career studying law.  He moved to Paris at the relatively advanced age of 27 to train as an artist, returning to France throughout his life to paint in the valleys of the Seine and the Creuse in the style of Claude Monet, who became his principal mentor.  This exhibition brings together a large selection of Dewhurst’s shimmering paintings with archival photographs and documents to reintroduce the painter to his native city. 

"His views have the archetypal Impressionist quality of appearing in the gallery like windows on to a sunlit world, the purple hills warm and inviting in the distance." 

Dewhurst’s pictures take their cue from Monet, though his particular vision is of a dense ether from which cliffs and castles emerge solidly, glowing as if lit from within.  Although from Manchester, Dewhurst’s affinity was with French landscape and the bright light of the continent.  His views have the archetypal Impressionist quality of appearing in the gallery like windows on to a sunlit world, the purple hills warm and inviting in the distance. 

Dewhurst was an art theorist as well as a painter and his 1904 book Impressionist Painting.  Its Genesis and Development was the first important British study of Impressionism.  The book became notorious for Dewhurst’s insistence that the English landscape tradition, especially the work of John Constable and J. M. W. Turner, was at the root of modern French painting.  Dewhurst’s thesis was that, ‘the French artists simply developed a style which was British in its conception.’ 

The exhibition is brought together by independent curator, Roger Brown and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated book, the first monograph to be written on this influential artist and writer.

The Danczuk's on the 'Street of Shame'!

THE current issue of Private Eye (No. 1433), pondering the possible lavish historic payments from the Sun newspaper for stories and photos over the last few years relating to the MP for Rochdale and his ex-wife Karen Danczuk, discusses Ms. Danczuk's almost indecent haste to waive her 'anonymity' following the verdict against her brother for rape:
'It was, perhaps, grimly inevitable that Karen Danczuk, ex-wife of Simon Danczuk, should have "waived her right to anonymity" to reveal in the Sun that she was one of the child victims of rapist Michael Burke, her own brother.'
The Eye story filled almost a column of its feature page 'STrEeT Of ShaMe' and listed the nice little earners that the Danczuks had coiled in the past from media outlets. 
With respect to the current exclusive coverage in The Sun the Eye says:
'Precisely what financial arrangement Karen Danczuk has with either the [photo] agency or the paper we do not know (when she divorced her MP husband last year she also stepped down as a director of Danczuk Media Ltd, the company the couple had set up "to assist in the production of media articles").'

Methodology of Spanish football in the UK

MANCHESTER's Instituto Cervantes presents this coming Wednesday 7th December, at 6.30pm, the launch of the project ‘Methodology of Spanish football in the UK:  Sports excellence’, by Spanish coach, Ángel López.  The talk, which is free of charge and open to the general public, will “analyse the Spanish methodology and the English football’s current scene, with the aim of finding new ways of collaboration regarding the training of managers, both at professional and lower levels”.

The main goal of this project is to organise conferences and seminars on the Spanish methodology on football at the clubs’ premises, at the English Football Association and also at the Manchester’s Instituto Cervantes.  Moreover, the project intends to offer Spanish classes “with specific football terminology” to all the colleges, academies and clubs interested, and it is aimed both at football players, coaches and managers.  Likewise, there is a view to organise after-school activities about football and summer camps in Spanish for kids and teenagers.

López points out “the remarkable conditions for working in English football, from professional categories to academies”.  However, this goes against “the shortage of native coaches in the Premier League as well as in the best leagues in the world”.  Hence, this project could lead to joining forces with local managers, to foster talent and expertise.  The Spanish coach highlights that “we should not forget that England invented football, therefore it deserves our admiration and respect and always look to contribute and collaborate with them”.  According to López, Manchester is the perfect place to develop this project, as today it is “the nerve centre of world football”, he claims.           

About the author         

Ángel López is a National Football Coach with the Madrid Football Federation and Graduate in Physical activity and Sport Sciences from the Polytechnic University of Madrid.  Furthermore, he holds a Master´s Degree in Physical Training in Football.  He has a wide experience as an Assistant Coach at the Spanish First League with Getafe FC and he has also trained teams at the Romanian Professional Football League and the Asian Champions League.

Among his many merits and achievements, it should be noted out that he was the youngest assistant and fitness coach in the Spanish La Liga in 2014 and 2008, respectively.

More information and bookings: cenman@cervantes.es  / 0161 661 4201/12

Are N.H.S. services in Greater Manchester safe with Andy Burnham?

'Doe-eyed' - Andy Burnham

Andy Burnham, who is standing as a candidate in the Greater Manchester mayoral elections, was recently described by one newspaper columnist, as ‘doe-eyed’ and a cross between ‘Paul McCartney’ and a ‘Thunderbird puppet’. Last week, Andy, the Member of Parliament for Leigh, was on the stump in Ashton-under-Lyne, where he was billed to be speaking at a public meeting on ‘Health and Well-being, at Clarendon Sixth Form College.

While the event was free to attend, and was advertised on ‘eventbrite.com’, it was not widely advertised or easy to register and many of the people who were attending the event, told me that they were Labour Party members who had received invitations to attend the meeting. Despite assurances from a Labour functionary, wearing a red tie, that it was indeed a public meeting, a Tameside councillor, told me that it was by invitation only.  

By all accounts, the event turned out to be less a “Policy Development Conference on Health and Well-being” and more an Andy Burnham roadshow. A health professional, who managed to attend the meeting, who is also a Labour Party member, told NV that the event was a ‘missed opportunity’ and a ‘waste of time’. Seemingly, proposals to integrate health and social care in Tameside and across Greater Manchester, “the first properly integrated National Health and Care Service”, which Burnham supports, were presented as a shining light within Greater Manchester.

While the public are told that Andy Burnham is keen to involve the public in developing policies that “will make a real and meaningful difference to people’s lives”, this turned out to be even more bullshit. According to our health professional, the people in charge of the meeting were not interested in talking about the massive bed cuts at Tameside Hospital, low staffing levels, or how tax-payers’ money is being wasted. Neither had they much to say about the fate of the N.H.S. Instead, all the speakers focused on how Andy Burnham’s career as a Labour politician, had been full of dedication to the well-being of the great British public.

Although I think that integrating health and social care could be an excellent idea, the thought of out-of-their-depth, ten-bob councillors, in Greater Manchester, having greater control over N.H.S spending and health care in the region, is something that fills me with abject horror. In 2013, the Electoral Reform Society (ERS), said that Labour dominated councils like Manchester, Salford and Tameside, were at risk of becoming the equivalent of ‘one party states’ like North Korea, China or Cuba.

Last month, Sir Richard Leese, the Labour leader of Manchester City Council- a council where almost all the council seats are filled by Labour - speaking about DevoManc, told an audience at the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisations (G.M.C.V.O) A.G.M, that he wanted to see ward and hospital closures across Greater Manchester, including Tameside. He believes that many people who are currently in hospital, need not be there and that their needs could be better met in other ways. 

However, as part of the ‘Devolution’ agreement, the government have made it a condition that all the ten council’s in Greater Manchester, develop ‘new care models’ between now and 2020, to receive the £450 million, ‘Transformation’ fund monies agreed in the devolution agreement. Mr Leese also believes that it is the role of voluntary organisations, to “fill in the holes”, left by public service cuts.

Already, Tameside Hospital have confirmed that they are planning to close 246 beds at the hospital by 2020 and claim that this can be compensated for by the creation of five local multidisciplinary care teams. Moreover, care services are steadily being privatised - CareUK have recently been given a five-year contract for musculoskeletal services in Tameside. Nationally, some 200 N.H.S care services have also been handed over to the billionaire tax exile, Richard Branson.

Milton Peña, a retired consultant orthopaedic surgeon, who worked at Tameside Hospital for seventeen-years, told a public meeting held in Stalybridge in September:

“Such a massive reduction in bed capacity will lead to a drastic deterioration in quality of care of patients in Tameside and Glossop. Safety, effectiveness and patient experience, will be significantly affected.”

Some people are rightly suspicious about the notion of “integrated care” believing it to be a cover for cuts, deprofessionalization and the downgrading of N.H.S services. They question how private companies can provide a high standard of health and social care while making profits and point out that this is often done, at the expense of cutting staff and working conditions.

Although, Andy Burnham, failed to explain how ‘integration’ will improve health and social care, some sceptic’s in the ‘Tameside Keep our N.H.S Public’ group, believe that Labour in Manchester, have:

“swallowed hook, line and sinker current government ideology that believes publicly funded and provided health and social care services should be severely reduced, leaving a ‘safety net’ for the deserving poor, for whom no alternative is possible.”

As they point out, this would mean most of us paying for services or taking out private health insurance as is the case in America, where failure to pay medical bills, is the main cause of middle-class bankruptcy in the United States.

As a candidate for Mayor, Andy Burnham, should tell the electorate whether he agrees or disagrees with Sir Richard Leese in wanting ward and hospital closures across Greater Manchester and how “integration”, will improve health and social care.

Time to Publish Rochdale's Child Abuse Reports

Is there a cover-up going on in Greater Manchester?

by Les May

SOME three weeks after I originally wrote to him I have had a response from Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Lloyd.  A response to my e-mail, but not to my request:

‘Could we have a single and unambiguous public statement from you either that you repudiate Mr Danczuk's assertions and that you consider that the GMP investigation was thorough and carried out to the highest standards or that you agree with Mr Danczuk's assessment of the investigation and believe that GMP failed in its responsibility to carry out a thorough investigation into these allegations.’
Instead he directs me to an article in the Manchester Evening News which deals with the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service not to proceed with the case against David Higgins who in April this year was charged with 18 counts of indecent assault and one count of attempt indecent assault of two boys under the age of 16.  http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/case-against-alleged-abuser-knowl-12048041
Lloyd is trying to conflate his response to the single case in which there was enough evidence against an individual to launch a prosecution, with the 13 cases where there was no realistic chance of a successful prosecution because there was no firm evidence.  So we still do not know whether he thinks the GMP investigation was done incompetently or not.  With support like this for the police service I’m glad I don’t work for GMP.
Like Danczuk he wants to talk about ‘victims’, even though there has not been a trial, or in Danczuk’s case, even in the absence of anyone being charged.  Unlike Danczuk he does not want to commit himself about how well Operation Jaguar was conducted.  He will neither reassure the public that the investigation was carried out to the highest standards nor will he dissociate himself from Danczuk’s wild comments about a ‘catalogue of failures’.  As Operation Jaguar is said to have cost half a million pounds this is simply not good enough.
We should not forget that not everyone who has had traumatic things happen to them necessarily wants ‘punishment’ of wrongdoers.  It may be that people simply need to have their side of the story heard and acknowledged, and have a burning sense of injustice when it is not.
For legal reasons that were entirely valid in1970, Cyril Smith never stood trial for indecently assaulting young men at Cambridge House. http://obiterj.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/sir-cyril-smith-corroboration-of.html#more
But the detailed article which appeared in the Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) in May 1979 ensured that their story was heard.  That Cyril was able to continue as an MP for another 13 years was not due to him being ‘protected’ by the security services, nor due to David Steele ‘turning a blind eye’.  It was due to the fact that the press chose not to run the story.
In refusing to publish the Shepherd and Mellor reports Rochdale MBC are denying the men who were at the school in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and are now approaching forty and with families of their own, the opportunity to have the unsavoury things that were going on at the school publicly acknowledged.  Some people would say they are being denied an opportunity for ‘closure’.
I am not aware that Mr Danczuk is on record as urging RMBC to publish these reports though it has been suggested that he should.  Unless he does start to press for publication his continued reference to ‘victims’ at Knowl View will begin to look like crocodile tears.

Wakefield Socialist History Group Message

Comrades

 

Twenty three people attended a meeting on THE POLITICS OF ANTONIO GRAMSCI organised by Wakefield Socialist History Group last Saturday (3 December) at the Red Shed in Wakefield.
Colin Waugh (Independent Working Class Education Network) argued that Gramsci's ideas have been distorted in because of his imprisonment, by the Italian Communist Party in the aftermath of World War Two and by "academics to this day."  Gramsci, Colin argued, was a Marxist revolutionary who developed a radical from below view of socialism.
Howard Moss (Socialist Party of Great Britain) also spoke.  He said Gramsci was undoubtedly a courageous figure.  However Gramsci still had an attachment to a Leninist position.  Gramsci still talked of socialism as a form of state and of socialism in terms of the leaders and the led.  The SPGB is for socialism where "people act for themselves, democratically and without leaders."
There was also music from "Barnsdale Hood" and a lively question/discussion session.
The Wakefield Socialist History Group is now planning an event, "Robert Burns..and other radical poets" on Saturday 28 January 2017 at the Red Shed.
Fraternally
Alan Stewart
Convenor, Wakefield Socialist History Group