Ipswich

Another defection

A leading member of Ipswich Labour Party joined the Socialist Alliance last week after deciding “enough was enough”. Andrew Coates, who was secretary of a Labour Party branch in the town, said that he had been so disappointed by the performance of the local Labour MP, Jamie Cann, at a hustings on education on Thursday that he had decided to switch his allegiance. Comrade Coates has already put a Socialist Alliance poster in the window of his home and started leafleting.

The news of the defection, and of the Labour Party’s petulant response to it, made the front page of the local daily paper, The East Anglian Daily Times. Comrade Coates, who had been an active Labour member for 12 years, said: “I don’t want to have a Tory government, and Labour is running a Tory government. The privatisation of the health service was the main factor in my decision.” He added: “I thought Peter Leech, the Socialist Alliance candidate, made a creditable case for his party’s politics. To me the alliance’s politics on education make sense. I had a grant when I went to university, but New Labour has abolished grants and introduced student fees.” In an answer to a question about tuition fees Cann had claimed that it was one of the hard choices governments had to make.

The Labour Party certainly did itself no favours at the meeting that precipitated comrade Coates’s departure from the party. Faced with an audience made up of a number of sceptical teachers and hostile leftwingers, Cann quickly subsided into a defiant bunker attitude. For instance, in answer to one question about the excessive hours teachers were expected to do he first denied that teachers were working longer hours now than 20 years ago and then added that, in any case, professional people did not count their hours and should grin and bear it.

The alliance is busy distributing leaflets: at the major Sunday push 13 people turned out to help on one estate, and more leafleting is planned for every evening this week with stalls publicising the organisation’s policies. The leafleting sessions are developing into major seminars about politics and the way forward between people who before the formation of the alliance would have hardly spoken to each other.

Frank Rogerson

Greenwich and Woolwich

Looking to the future

While energetically campaigning for our candidate, Kirstie Paton (Workers Power), members of the Greenwich and Woolwich SA managed to make time for a fruitful discussion last week. The May 24 meeting was scheduled to hear a speaker from the Dudley hospital dispute. However, the strikers had sent apologies and the agenda was changed to reports of the Dudley and postal strikes and a general political opening by comrade Paton.

The 30-plus meeting, scheduled as a public event, was entirely made up of the left. The Socialist Workers Party, who usually comprise an absolute majority, were on this occasion outnumbered by a large contingent from Workers Power, its youth section, Revolution, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and International Bolshevik Tendency, together with members of the Republican Communist Network, CPGB and a lone unaffiliated comrade.

Andy Reid (SWP) reported that the Dudley strike had ended the day before with the transfer of all staff to a PFI company. Comrade Reid stated that the strikers considered that their long and resolute fight against privatisation had been a success in so far as they had held out for so long and so publicly; also because they had decided to return not bowed or beaten - but ready to fight to maintain wages and conditions. Comrade Reid went on to castigate the official union bureaucracy who did little to back the strike.

The Dudley and postal workers’ strikes were an “underlying reason for the existence of the SA”, even though it was an electoral alliance, said comrade Reid. This simple yet balanced report, whilst only alluding to the role the SA could play beyond the election, whilst not yet making explicit the inescapable logic of forming a party, raised it to the top of the agenda - all of the following discussions revolved around the fundamental question: what next?

Ian Crosson (SWP) followed with a report on the unofficial postal workers’ strike. He began in ebullient mood, saying that it was the first time in 20 years he had been on two pickets in two days - he had also been out in support of members of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, who had backed the union call for a one-day strike in support of their pay claim. Comrade Crosson highlighted the significance of the action by members of the Communication Workers Union.

Contrasting the Natfhe and CWU pickets, he reported that all of the lecturers had heard of the SA, whereas most postal workers had not. He went on to say that the SA had certainly picked up votes by joining the postal workers’ picket and declaring our support for the strike. Another SWP comrade, Monica Axon, who had been down to the Dartford sorting office, reported how scabbing managers had donned overalls to sort mail through the night and then drive Royal Mail vans the following morning. SWP full-timer Hannah Dee made a very upbeat contribution about the revival of class struggle and pointed to the role the SA could play in building support.

Whilst there has been a noticeable upturn in strike actions - and the unofficial strike by postal workers was certainly a breath of fresh air - there is a tendency for younger, less experienced comrades, to get overexcited by these developments. A more sober and strategic view was offered by George McColl (WP). Referring to the CWU as one of the most rightwing unions, comrade McColl said that there was, nevertheless, a great tradition of militancy amongst the rank and file of that union. However, this was not yet translated into a socialist consciousness, said comrade McColl.

The reality of four years of New Labour had shifted the attitude of a section of regional and district officers, and a resolution to CWU conference to allow support for candidates other than Labour (similar to that recently agreed by the Fire Brigades Union) was now on the table. This provided “opportunities for the SA as a party to put down roots in the working class”, argued comrade McColl - implicit here was the aim of developing exactly the socialist consciousness now lacking.

During a broad-ranging political opening comrade Paton had marked the recent FBU decision as a historic shift from automatic support for Labour. This, however, was in contradiction to the advice Workers Power gives to voters where there is no SA candidate.

There followed one comrade after another from Workers Power, the CPGB, AWL and Revolution all arguing for a party - most wanting a revolutionary party and not a rerun of Labour. Many suggested we already have a party in practice. Comrade Reid, however, reflecting the SWP’s tentative approach, thought it necessary to first achieve a respectable vote and then “see where we go”. He noted that this was the “first time there had been a serious left challenge since Phil Piratin and Willie Gallagher”.

When it came to activities, our committee had decided upon yet another public meeting in the week before the election. I referred to the advice of SA national officers, who argued that ‘preaching to the converted’ in public meetings was not a priority in the last two weeks. I then went on to disagree with another part of the national officers’ advice in arguing for a push on canvassing: we need to talk face to face with as many workers as possible.

Comrade Dee argued that we did not have the resources to canvass, adding that we had a last chance to “pull people in” with a public meeting. The vote was overwhelmingly for the proposal. With a week to organise and going on our actual experience thus far, I expect we will have another nice meeting amongst ourselves.

Perhaps the recent mini-wave of industrial action has infiltrated the consciousness of secondary school students at Crown Woods school. On Friday about half of year 10, plus some year eights and nines went on strike against the new, £90,000-a-year ‘super headmaster’. This New Labour wonder boy is radically altering school hours after a rigged ballot - parents had to decide between two options, both of which amounted to ‘agree with me’. Or if they failed to vote, that was also taken as acceptance.

The headteacher also intends to lock the kids in at lunchtime and bring in private caterers. He has a raft of plans for attracting “investment”. Crown Woods, though not officially one of the PFI schools, is apparently a wonderful business opportunity. The impromptu strike lasted one and a half hours and gained sympathy from dinner ladies and a number of teachers. The superhead ended the strike by dishing out exclusions to ‘ringleaders’.

Shades of Blairism, second term.

Alan Stevens

Teesside

Labour scared

A regional Labour Party rally and a 10-hour open air indie-rock festival were both targets for the Socialist Alliance campaigning drive on Teesside last bank holiday weekend.

As comrades from Middlesbrough SA began the penultimate week of the general election campaign, the first port of call for our parliamentary candidate, Geoff Kerr-Morgan, was the Labour rally. About half a dozen comrades from across Teesside arrived at noon on Saturday May 25 to picket outside the University of Teesside’s Centuria Lecture Hall, where comrades had been told by university workers that a prominent Labour figure would be speaking later that day. Neither the local nor national press had publicised the event; the hall had allegedly been booked in the strictest confidence by an organisation which “did not wish to be identified”.

It later unfolded that the meeting was reserved for selectively chosen local Labour Party members only, to hear an address by culture secretary Chris Smith, apparently on the subject of ‘Saving the NHS’. Typical of New Labour’s lack of internal democracy and elitist culture, rank and file party members who arrived at the door were turned away by an official, who assertively told them that the meeting was for “invited members only”.

When questioned as to why a party supposedly representative of ordinary people wished to avoid meetings between senior ministers and its local membership, the Labour door minder declined to comment. It is blatantly obvious, however, that this was a concerted effort by the party bureaucracy to avoid any confrontation between the advocates of New Labour’s Toryism and the rank and file, who still cling to the memory of Labour as a party claiming to represent workers. Unsurprisingly, Labour would not like to publicise the fact that widespread discontent has permeated a significant proportion of its membership base two weeks before a general election.

Needless to say, many of those who were turned away on Saturday made it clear that they would not be voting for Blair’s party this June, but the socialist alternative offered by the alliance. “I have voted Labour all my life,” one Labour member told Middlesbrough MP Stuart Bell indignantly, “but I cannot vote for you again.” Bell did not as much as look at her as he was ushered into the building.

The party officers manning the door were far from talkative when asked about their personal thoughts, views and beliefs in relation to Blair’s rightwing, pro-business style of tenure. However, one official did let slip that he had recently met with St Helens candidate Sean Woodward, the ex-Tory millionaire whom Blair has parachuted into the safe Labour seat, commenting that he “made my skin crawl”.

SA comrades watched behind a glass wall as Chris Smith greeted an array of nurses and trade union officials, all evidently chosen prior to the event for their loyalty to the Labour elite and unquestioning advocacy of the party line.

Following on from Saturday’s intervention, Teesside Socialist Alliance once again went to work on bank holiday Monday to descend upon the ‘Middlesbrough Music Live’ open air festival, where Indie-rockers Shed Seven and Space headlined, alongside a range of other bands and artists from across the country.

It was not only the beautiful (although frequently unusual) harmonies that were music to the ears of SA comrades, but the considerable number of people who pledged their vote to the alliance. Some initially told leafleters that they were planning to vote with their feet on June 7, unaware that the SA was standing a candidate in the area. This once again highlighted the possibility that a huge constituency of potential sympathy lies untapped: we still have considerable ground to cover if we are to reach all of our target audience - traditional Labour voters, anti-establishment youth - before June 7.

Hundreds of leaflets were thrown into the air above the 3,000 festival-goers congregated around the main stage in Middlesbrough Boulevard, before being carried by the breeze to every corner of the audience arena. This rather intuitive venture proved successful when a number of indie fans approached comrade Kerr-Morgan asking for further information. Hopefully, those who took an interest and pledged support will spread the socialist message to others around them before polling day.

James Bull

Latino support

In the UK there are more than 200,000 Latinos. Their main newspaper is Noticias (News) - read by 100,000 people. Every month it carries many articles on the Spanish and Portuguese world with a few comments on British politics.

The paper does not have a line on the UK general election, but in the current issue (June) the only piece that deals with June 7 calls on Latinos to support the Socialist Alliance - the only force that is against visas and immigration controls and the abuse of immigrant workers, for full citizenship to all immigrants, for the cancellation of the foreign debt.

Juan Ponce