Scottish Socialist
Voice
Issue 319
25th January 2008
front page
NUKEY BROWN YOUR ATOMIC POWER IS NOT WELCOME!
THE
worst kept secret in
However despite much radiated hot air from Labour ministers the SNP administration
in
Indeed there must be question marks over the entire plan given that,
in the fashionable ‘leave it to the market’ doctrine favoured
by Brown means that the whole operation is supposed to be privately
funded.
Leaving aside the economics of running nuclear stations with their necessarily
stringent safety and security costs a glance the key clean up
costs will raise serious doubt if profit hungry companies will want
to take them on.
For the current
And that is for a system which has still got no serious answers on how
to deal with nuclear waste that will be dangerous for years.
But a closer look at the plans shows that behind the brave talk of
a new generation of privatised nukes the state will still be expected
to cough up to cover waste costs when, as is likely the going gets
tough.
It is understood that it has been agreed that the government will
collect a fee from the companies for each unit of electricity used
in British homes to build up a fund to meet decommissioning costs.
Unsurprisingly it will be the customers who will pay this cost as
the fee will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher
bills.
So the government assurances that the public sector would not be
asked to pay for the new reactors turn out to be only the part
of the story ministers want to highlight
The decommissioning fund† raises the prospect that if the cash raised
does not cover the full decommissioning costs, the shortfall
- which, if the past performance is a guide, could run into billions
- would be paid by the taxpayer.
Companies planning to build new nuclear reactors have also been assured that
they will not have to pay the full economic cost of storing the hundreds
of thousands of tonnes of highly radioactive waste they generate.
The plan is that they will be allowed to ‘rent’ space in a giant
nuclear waste vault to be built by the government, so avoiding massive
construction costs.
Thus before a brick is laid it is already becoming clear that the
privatised nukes will, as in all previous cases, be expecting to
receive multi billion pound ‘sweeteners’ to ensure that even if the
environment isn’t safe the shareholders are OK.
Serious doubts have also emerged as to just how well the claim that
nuclear power is a ‘green’ solution to global warming stands
up.
Greenpeace warned Premier Brown that he would be misguided to press
ahead with a nuclear programme.
Greenpeace communications director Ben Stewart said:
“There is a lie at the heart of his energy policy, because this Government’s
own research shows nuclear power can only deliver a four per
cent cut in carbon emissions some time after 2025. That’s too
little too late at too great a cost.
“This obsession Brown has with nuclear is threatening to strangle
the renewables industry at a time when
it’s ready to take off. It’s one thing to be strong, it’s another to be strong and wrong.”
The renewables point has been underlined
by many other critics who maintain that the billions earmarked for new
nukes could0 develop a vibrant, safe and job creating renewable energy
sector.
page two
War On Public Sector Workers
NEW
Labour Ministers have declared war on the wages of 5.5
million public sector workers, invoking the spectre of
the 1978-9 Winter of Discontent, when millions went on
strike against crucifying wage cuts from the then Labour government
of Jim Callaghan.
Chancellor Alistair Darling (of the rich) has declared
his government’s plans for 3-year pay deals across the
entire public sector, in order to ‘stabilise the economy’
and ‘defeat inflation’.
The proposal is married to New Labour’s oft-declared diktat
that no public sector worker should be allowed a pay rise
of more than 2 per cent.
Thus they continue to peddle the crude myth that wage
rises create inflation when in truth, wage rises are often
the first victims, especially amongst the low paid.
In the same week that these measures were threatened,
official figures emerged that Retail Price Inflation is
up to 4.3 per cent - higher than the previous month.
The government is seeking to dodge this troublesome fact
by fiddling inflation figures down to the lower Consumer
Price Index.
But anyone who eats, heats their home or lives in a house,
knows that the cost of living is letting rip, and that
wages are failing to catch up.
Announcements of 17 per cent (£1000 a year) hikes in the
price of electricity and gas come hot on the heels of
the price of a litre of petrol breaking through the £1
barrier, and an escalation in food prices, by the biggest
rate in 14 years.
A quick stroll round your local supermarket will tell you
that prices have risen far more than the 2 per cent Gordon
Brown and Alistair Darling want to suppress wages to -
and far more even than the official inflation figures.
New Labour hope the imposition of their three year deals
will prevent industrial action for inflation-linked wages
rises this side of a Westminster election, which must
be held within that time-span.
They are aware of the looming economic storms blowing
across the Atlantic from the sub-prime mortgage crisis
in the
But Labour want the working class to pay for this crisis
not of their making.
The credit crunch adds to the pressure on working class families
who have staved off catastrophe through several years
of extended credit, paid for in exorbitant charges to
the robber banks.
Thus wages that match inflation are, for many, a critical
matter.
Already, workers are falling behind, as evidenced by recent
IDS figures showing that average pay rises for 2007 stood
at 3.5 per cent, whereas inflation stands at 4.3 per cent.
Leaders of both the GMB union and the Police Federation
have rightly asserted that there is absolutely no evidence
that public sector pay is key to inflation.
In fact, public sector pay rises are lagging behind the rest
of the economy, with increases at their lowest since May
1998.
As the GMB union leader Paul Kenny put it, “Can you tell
me what the price of a litre of petrol is going to be in
two years’ time?”
The stark fact is that under a capitalist economy, where
private profit is the central motivator, the government
cannot hope to control price rises - but they do have
the power to hold down wages, especially in the public
sector. Provided the unions let them get away with it.
This was the central lesson of the 1974-9 Labour government
fiasco, which imposed pay cuts across public and private
sector jobs, whilst inflation ran riot.
In 1978, pay was restricted to 5 per cent whereas inflation
was well above 30 per cent.
That crude wealth transfusion from workers to bosses,
from the poor to the rich, is what triggered the explosion
of anger manifesting in the mass strikes of 1978-9.
Whether New Labour’s new version of a very old idea is
allowed to forge ahead, or whether workers across the
entire public sector stop them in their tracks, very much
depends on what leadership is offered in the unions.
Workers have plenty of direct experiences of New Labour’s
multi-year pay deals.
Low-paid NHS workers have just suffered a pay cut with
a phased rise of 2.5 per cent over 2 years in
Prison officers are up in arms at a similar form of pay
cut, and at the recent announcement by New Labour that
the Tories’ ban on their right to strike is about to be
re-imposed.
The Police Federation are demanding the right to strike
- denied them these past 90 years - and threatening demos
outside
Currently civil servants in the Department of Work and Pensions
are striking back against an imposed 3-year deal that
means 2 per cent in 2007, zero rise in 2008 and 1 per
cent in 2009.
The lowest paid of these workers earn just 24 pence above
the government’s derisory minimum wage. Of course, pay
limits below inflation are not applied to everyone under the
glorious free market economy. Last year, the bosses of
the FTSE 100 top companies enjoyed ‘pay’ rises of 37 per
cent ... to an obscene average of £2,875,000 (each, that
is).
And now those elite ‘public servants’ - MPs - are pondering
how to disguise their own greed and hypocrisy whilst demanding such
severe pay limits on millions of other public sector workers.
Their Salary Review body recommends 2.8 per cent.
Gordon Brown and others are urging ‘restraint’ - that is,
a ‘mere’ 1.9 per cent - so as to reduce the blatancy of their
hypocrisy.
What he fails to remind the general public of is that 1.9
per cent on an MP’s salary of £60,675 is a damned sight
different from the same rise for civil servants on as
low as £11,000, or the vast army of public sector workers
on £15-20,000 a year.
Nor does Brown broadcast the fact that MPs’ pay has risen
by 127 per cent in 17 years - compared to official inflation
figures of 72 per cent in the same period.
The government’s sweet talk about aiming at stability,
at workers knowing what pay to expect in two years’ time,
is absolutely bogus. It already has a shoddy record of reneging
on such deals amongst NHS and local government workers, teachers
and others.
Not even Gordon Brown can guarantee the levels of inflation
two years hence.
He cannot even own up to last year’s.
Workers need the option of taking industrial action if annually
negotiated pay rises fall short of the rising cost of
living.
The need for united resistance across the entire public
sector screams out at the union leaders, who agreed coordinated
action at September’s TUC conference.
Even the threat of unified action has paid dividends in the
recent past, forcing big concessions on pension rights
for civil servants, teachers and health workers two years
ago.
We need all bear in mind the lessons of the 1974-9 Labour
government’s wage cutting Social Contract, which provoked
the strikes of 1978-9.
Be warned. In the coming hard times, the government wants
to share out the pain, but only amongst those at the lowest
end of the pay scale.
Stagecoach continues to bully and harass gay couple
ON
Friday 11 January, Mark Craig and Steven Black, a young gay
couple from Old Meldrum in Aberdeenshire had been in
At around 10:30 they left to catch the last bus back to Old
Meldrum.
They arrived at
“The bus arrived at around 11:30. It pulled in to the bus stop
as Steven and I were waiting. The bus doors opened slightly
and the driver looked at us then looked around him and
closed the doors and drove off leaving us standing on
the street in the freezing cold.
It was the same driver that tried to kick us off for hugging
in the back of the bus last year.”
Last October Mark and Steven were on the last Stagecoach bus
of the night from
After hearing about this incident, the Scottish Socialist Party
organised a mass email campaign to Stagecoach’s Director
of Corporate Communications, Steven Stewart. Hundreds
of gay rights activists and ordinary members of the public
appalled by this sotry asked for an apology for illegally discriminating
against the couple.
Stagecoach ignored all of these requests, and made it clear
that they thought the driver had done nothing wrong, and
had stood by him 100 per cent; accusing everyone else
of not knowing the facts of the case.
With the bus company refusing to apologise for illegally discriminating against
the couple and fully backing the driver, ‘hug-in’ protests
by same sex couples and friends took place on Stagecoach busses
around Scotland, with members of the SSP retracing the same
route from Aberdeen to Old Meldrum with Mark and Steven.
Now these two courageous young men need our help and support once
more. The Scottish Socialist Party is standing fully behind
the couple, as we did last year, because homophobic bullying is
totally unacceptable, especially when it is perpetrated by
a company with monopolies on many of the bus routes in
Please contact Steven Stewart, the Director of Corporate Communications
at Stagecoach (Steven.Stewart@stagecoachgroup. com, Tel:
01738 642040 or fax: 01738 443076) to demand that this clearly
anti-gay bus driver be suspended from his job pending review and
diversity training, and for a full and immediate public apology
to be issued to Mark Craig and Steven Black for the appalling way
in which they are being treated. This harassment and bullying by a
multi million pound company against one, young, gay couple
is utterly disgusting and totally illegal.
Nobody should suffer it, which is why we are asking everybody
to demand an end to it.
page three
Labour In The Brown Stuff
DESPITE
a New Year media barrage of Shock and Awe proportions from
the beleaguered New Labour government in
The Prime Minister, reeling from the blows inflicted by the resurgent Tories
and a series of near-mortal PR disasters at the end of 2007, toured
TV and radio studios burnishing his image, but the bleak headlines
kept on coming.
He even poured the tea and passed round the chocolate biscuits whilst
spoon-feeding invited journalists some “exclusive” tales, which
duly appeared in the daily and Sunday press.
But even this tried and tested tactic proved futile when pensions minister
Peter Hain fell face-first into the latest donations scandal.
This once radical firebrand turned New Labour grandee faced charges of
failing to mention a whopping £150,000 in donations received
for his failed deputy leadership campaign.
Oops.
Leaving aside the question of how on earth you could actually spend
£150K in an internal election, Hain’s claim that it slipped his memory
due to his busy, busy lifestyle, falls a little flat.
Hence his recourse to a new legal defence, as pioneered by Wendy Alexander,
that he ‘inadvertently’ broke the law. Well, that’s alright then!
Both are in limbo until the electoral authorities pronounce on their
cases.
New Labour chieftains hope this will get them off the hook. In
truth, it will but impale them on it more firmly.
They will be seen as either on the fiddle — and revelations that
the Hain cash came via a shadowy think tank will strengthen
that impression — or are just too incompetent to keep simple accounts.
Whether crooks or incompetents, this government is failing in
its bid to boost public confidence and is trailing in the
polls as it struggles desperately for survival.
At the heart of the 2008 ‘big push’ is the bid to portray the taciturn
Brown as a serious man of power and decision, and his Tory opponent
Cameron as a lightweight public school toff.
The fact that
And it’s a beauty contest Brown is far from assured of winning.
His team can launch only so many PR bids before being drowned
by the unrelenting tide of bad headlines which have opened
the year.
For the first time since the fall of the hapless Major government, which
(in)famously floundered in a sea of sleaze, the prospect of a
UK Tory government has ceased to be fantasy politics and
become a real possibility.
It is this reality which has sparked the sudden panic in Labour.
Now witness the gathering storm of rising energy and food prices, falling
house values, tight money and growing fears of a recession.
The Brown calculation is that, faced with such problems, his
stern, Presbyterian image will trump that of Cameron’s youthful
concern.
The New Labour sales team will flag up their ‘hard choices’ campaign
in the latest pitch for power.
In true New labour fashion, this will be a bittersweet offering,
with a few goodies to sugar the otherwise sick-making pill.
Thus glossy plans are revealed for ‘personalised’ health care
and long overdue concessions given on workplace pensions.
But overall, the message is as bleak as the post-Xmas gloom which
blankets the land.
Workers are warned that, as gas and electricity prices soar,
petrol climbs above £1 a litre and mortgage rates soar,
they can forget real pay rises.
Across the
And as the wealth gap between rich and poor widens, both Labour and
Tory are fighting about who can be toughest on the unemployed, with
the new, ‘caring’ Tories threatening to suspend unemployment
pay for three years.
For all their differences, Brown and Cameron contest only a small piece
of political land - both support the idea that the market economy, which
has generated the current economic and environmental crisis, holds
the solutions to its own problems. They only diverge on the how.
Both back imperialism and war in the shape of ruinously expensive new
nuclear missiles and continuing bloody war in
This year is set to see further attacks on living standards,
jobs and democratic rights, which will test the power and
creativity of those seeking to chart an alternative path.
Here in
There is likely to be a real struggle between those who want
to tackle poverty directly, through measures such a free
school meals, and those who see the answer in a business-friendly,
Tartan Tiger, tax-slashing
So far, Salmond has managed — with considerable help from his amateur
opponents — to keep his group united, but there are undoubtedly
divisions bubbling beneath the surface.
But as the Trump affair has starkly shown, the danger of economic
populism is that you get sucked in to backing all sorts of dubious
plans on the grounds that they are ‘good for
It is a short hop from ‘
There are powerful voices within the SNP advocating a neo- Thatcherite
approach which pampers business.
Thus, the progressive, pro-independence voices have a huge task,
and a huge responsibility, to popularise the alternative.
Progressive moves on prescription charges and the right to buy
are encouraging, but we need to see a clear way ahead, towards
a socially just, independent
Scottish Gypsy Travellers Face Ongoing Oppression
SCRATCH
beneath the surface of opinion in Scottish rural communities and
you will very probably find attitudes that would make an apologist for
apartheid in
There is little doubt that
At the Bobbin Mill site in Pitlochry, Perthshire, two large extended
families face yet another harsh winter in dilapidated accommodation
with no amenities on a site described in a recent BBC report
as ‘squalid’.
I spoke to Shamus McPhee by phone from the warmth and comfort of
my home - Shamus meantime was wrapped up against the cold in
a candlelit caravan he estimated to be worth £36.
In 2006 the Scottish Parliament pledged £97,500 for the provision
of a new chalet for Shamus’s father. Also part of the deal
the SNP led
Nearly two years on and the Council are still at the planning
stages for these amenities that are taken for granted elsewhere.
Their argument that Bobbin Mill was an ‘unauthorised site’
cut little ice with the residents who had been placed there sixty years
previously by the Council’s forebears, and this reason for lack
of action seems to have been quietly dropped. Meantime with
nowhere to wash his body and clothes properly Shamus found
himself unable to get work and an unsympathetic Job Centre
stopped his benefit for six months.
He found himself unable to pay his Council Tax and given the
lack of progress with the promised upgrade, has felt reluctant
to start since. Local MSP and government minister, the SNP’s
John Swinney has not visited Bobbin Mill for many years and seems
uninterested in the problems on the site.
Bobbin Mill was established in 1946 as a racial experiment to
assimilate Gypsy Travellers. The reports that describe this
and similar experiments elsewhere in the
As the residents were not considered fit to live in normal council
houses they were given huts that soon fell apart in the
harsh climate of the Scottish Highlands. The logic that this would
somehow wean residents away from generations of travelling and
into acceptable conformism was lost on the victims of the experiment.
Instead marginalisation was reinforced and it continues to this
day.
Despite the fact that Shamus and four of his fellow residents
at Bobbin Mill are actually university graduates, they feel
as much the victims of prejudice and societal ignorance as their forebears.
In recent years Gypsy Travellers have been recommended for status as
an officially recognised ethnic minority.
This could afford protection under the anti-racist laws, but
as yet there have been no test cases through the Courts
and the legal establishment seem reluctant to pursue the matter.
The Scottish Parliament see racial identity as a matter for
The last Scottish Parliament Equal Opportunities Committee produced a
report in 2005 that concluded that no progress seemed to have
been made in the previous five years in addressing issues
raised from the travelling community: accommodation, education,
health, representation and engagement. Under the new SNP
parliament interest and momentum seem to have been lost and
the issues shelved.
Scottish Gypsy Travellers have a rich culture of story telling
and singing that has been celebrated by socialist folklorists
like Hamish
Prejudice and misunderstanding have pushed them to the margins
of society and like similar groups elsewhere in the world,
alcohol abuse has taken its toll. Shamus and other Gypsy
Travellers consider that there is a continued systemic effort
to end their lifestyle and forcibly assimilate them into
mainstream society.
He and his family can trace roots and language back across the
world to
The SNP vision of a new inclusive
page four
The Pros & Cons of Biofuel
By Roz Paterson
THE
biofuel boom was dealt a double bodyblow this
month when both the European Environmental Commissioner and
the
Made from lovely green plants, the carbon dioxide (CO2) they
release upon being burnt is never more than equal to the amount
of CO2 they absorb whilst growing.
Thus, a perfect, carbonneutral fuel source.
Or is it?
The American government would clearly like its citizens to
think so.
Yet George W Bush’s sudden conversion from oil to soil is
failing to convince even the greenest greens.
No wonder.
He wants more ethanol, particularly the sort grown in
Alas, his power games do not even have the positive pay-off
of providing the planet with a few carbon savings, because
ethanol crops require fertiliser, often fossil fuel-based,
processing and transportation, both of which are energy-intensive, often
to the degree that you may as well fill your tank with petrol
from a Saudi oil well for all the difference you’re going
to make.
A slew of recent scientific studies confirms that carbon savings on biofuels
may be negligible when you factor in production and distribution.
The EU, until very recently, was another biofuel addict,
setting an ambitious 10 per cent target for all fuel used
in vehicles by 2010.
Now, admits Stavros Dimas, the Environmental Commissioner, it might be better
for the planet if we miss that target altogether.
The Royal Society concurs, stating in a new report that biofuels,
far from being a silver bullet to our environmental ills,
may exacerbate them acutely, through reducing biological diversity
and natural ecosystems.
Such damage has already been wreaked, to a huge and devastating
extent, through mass agriculture, where vast monocultures,
such as wheat, drive out all other kinds of animal and plant life.
More monocultures, in the form of ethanol and palm oil plantations
stretching across the horizon, can only make this problem
worse.
Plus, biofuel production, concentrated
mostly in poorer nations - because the richer ones are simply
out of available land - makes poor to increase space for plantations,
many rich landowners are simply turfing indigenous people off the land, or driving bulldozers
through tropical rainforests.
And that’s not all.
Devoting huge tracts of farmland to fuel production means
less food is grown globally, which means food prices must
rise.
Some 20 per cent of the
This is uncomfortable for us, where food accounts for an average
10 per cent of household costs, but hellish for people in
poorer nations, where it accounts for 65 per cent.
“We must not create new environmental or social problems in
our efforts to deal with climate change,” warns Professor
John Pickett, of Rothamsted Research
chaired the Royal Society’s study.
The big dollar paid by rich western nations for fuel crops
means that feeding people now often takes second place to
feeding cars.
Yet we have a screaming problem on our hands.
Transport accounts for fully one quarter of all man-made greenhouse
gas emissions and biofuels is currently the only workable alternative to
fossil fuels.
The other front-runners - hydrogen fuel cells and electric
cars - are prohibitively expensive and their technology is
in its infancy.
Furthermore, they need new infrastructure, in a way that biofuels
don’t. The latter can already be made available at conventional
filling stations.
The former - well, where would you go to recharge your hydrogen
cell? How near would those recharging stations need to be
to each other? Who would invest all the money to build them?
And so on.
So what can be done?
Current EU biofuel targets do not mandate
any carbon savings. It’s high time, if they’re to be implemented
at all, that they did.
So too should the
The Royal Society’s suggestions include a certification scheme
for biofuels, similar to that for timber
products and fish, that would mark out
those that are sustainably produced.
But the main point, it seems clear, is that we must desist with
any notion that technology will solve everything in time,
and that we can live as we do now, in perpetuity.
“The only goal [of biofuels] is to maintain
current patterns of consumption in the
page five
LETTERS
No
Until we see places like Possilpoint Youth Centre, underfunded and
on a tight budget better provided for, and recognised for its
work, young people of
Hanging out on the streets, getting into fights, fear of being jumped
if going to adjoining areas to swim i.e. Springburn Swimming Pool,
and the struggles which many people have due to being neglected,
and brushed to one side cannot carry on any longer.
We tackle this divide between rich and poor people in
Lets sort this problem out, and stop looking at
Jill Ferguson, Glasgow
Soap
Box
Nick Henderson
HIV Epidemic Has Gone Nowhere
IN
all of the manifestos for the Scottish Elections last May, there
was but one mention of HIV or Aids; where we called for a publicly
owned Scottish Pharmaceutical company to manufacture and sell
cheap generic drugs to fight Aids in third world countries.
Africa, of course, is what is most associated with HIV/Aids, and
with good reason. There were 1.7million new infections in
sub-Saharan
The problem then in the
Yet infections in
Whether HIV in this country is a Gay disease or not, is the subject
of debate.
What is not up for discussion, however, is the fact that this
epidemic is real, it is here, and it is getting worse. For those who
are living with HIV in
It is probably no wonder then that 50 per cent of gay men in
The fact then that our mainstream politicians do not see this
as enough of a crisis to warrant even one word in over 167,000
words of promises and pledges from the 2007 manifestos’ lies
somewhere between utter incompetence and sheer criminal negligence.
For many reasons, the debate over HIV in this country has been
sidelined.
I’m not confident that the SNP have any real desire to bring the
issue on to the forefront of national politics, where it needs
to be. Strategies and policies on HIV in this country are buried
in the sexual health sections of policy. HIV is not like any other
sexual health issue. It can’t be cured by a pill or a jab, and intricately
wrapped up in it are the broader problems of social inequality, discrimination, institutionalised homophobia
and the underground nature of LGBT society.
The Terrence Higgins Trust has produced a battle plan, which I
think we should aim to support, to fight HIV in
Stopping Violence Against Women
White
Ribbon Group Launched For Men In
WHAT
is a man? When do you get to be a man? What is a ‘real’ man?
For women in
Like most survivors, she probably will not have talked about it.
Is it that simple? To be a man is to inevitably perpetrate violence against
women? We, the White Ribbon Campaign Edinburgh, don’t think so.
We are trying to contact other men who don’t think it’s that simple
either and who want to do something about it.
We believe that men and women can live together without violence or
the threat of violence.
Men have a vital part to play not only in educating themselves about violence
against women, but also in working towards changing societal attitudes
towards women, so as to bring about an end to domestic and sexual
violence.
White Ribbon Edinburgh is a new group which aims to:
* First and foremost clearly state the vital role and responsibility of men in challenging other men around attitudes and behaviours which contribute to the high rates of male violence against women.
*
Identify, create and promote opportunities for men to be involved
in the campaign to Stop Violence Against Women in
* Bring men together to discuss issues around being a guy, our feelings about relationships, masculinity and sexuality.
* To find different ways of relating to each other as men, to break away from narrow, restricting, macho, stereotypes. There are many ways to be masculine.
* To change the way we relate, as men, to women e.g. having full, person to person relationships instead of reducing women to sex objects.
We
meet every first and third Thursday of each month, at 8.30pm,
upstairs in The Wash Bar, on the Mound.
We can be contacted at whiteribbon. edinburgh@googlemail.com
Or phone Fraser on 07919102820
We want to see a fundamental change in the way men relate to women.
Violence against women will not stop unless men are part of the
campaign to stop it. We believe it takes a real man to do this, and that
it takes strength of character to examine exactly what it is to be a
real man in the twenty-first century.
Please join us in achieving this aim.
* More information about the White Ribbon campaign can be found at: www.whiteribbonscotland.org.uk
centre pages
Coming Home To Roost
Roz Paterson
What
price do we really pay for our food? Not just financially but
also ethically. The television at the moment is full of
celebrity chefs extolling the virtues of free range and organic
foods. Roz
IN a time of rising mortgage rates, escalating fuel bills and
creeping food prices, surely we can’t be expected to turn up
our noses at a cheap chicken?
Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall think that’s exactly
what we should do. But before we write them off as a couple
of celebrity chefs with no idea of how the other half lives, here’s
a thought...a chicken retailing at a mere two quid might seem
like a bargain, but chances are that its meat will be of such
low quality that it will provide only one meal for a family
of four. A free-range chicken, retailing at double that,
should be sufficiently nutritious and tasty to provide a decent
family-size roast, a curry with the leftovers and a risotto,
using the stock.
You do the maths.
Fowl Dinners, a campaign led by Oliver, whose campaigning work
famously included a heartfelt drive for decent school dinners
for the nation’s kids (an experience which left him reeling
at the cynicism and sheer slipperiness of government ministers),
is lifting the lid on the dark and nasty world of the factory
farmed chicken, in a bid to make us reject the cheap chicks
in favour of real meat, reared in a decent and humane manner.
Not solely because there is something undeniably sick about
a society that treats its animals like so much shit, but also
because factory farmed fowl is bad for the environment and
bad for us.
This last may come as a surprise to many, given that chicken
has become the
But 95 per cent of those 855 million are reared in such unnatural
and overcrowded conditions, that they need to be pumped full
of growth enhancers and antibiotics to compensate, all
of which bodily pollution ends up in our food chain and, ultimately,
our bodies.
Factory farming dates from the 1930s, when
The factory farming pioneers discovered that they could raise
chickens in lots of tens of thousands at a time, in giant sheds
where ‘nighttime’ was kept short so the birds stayed awake longer
and thus ate more and thus grew more.
They discovered too that they could dispense with seasoned
hands, thanks to feeding machines, the practice of binning
dying birds rather than bothering to save them, leaving them to
wade through their own waste for the short period they would
be alive, rather than waste resources cleaning the sheds, and
cut-price slaughtering methods.
Make no mistake, factory farming dehumanises its workers too.
In modern
These sudden adults crowd each other in the dimly-lit sheds
wherein they spend their lives, to the degree that many die
prematurely of suffocation, or suffer ‘hock burn’ - leg ulcers caused
by living shank-high in their own excrement - and heart and
lung problems, brought on by their need for more and more oxygen
to fuel their unnaturally speedy growth.
Given how weakened these creatures’ immune systems are, and
how closely they co-exist, it’s little wonder that disease
is a constant risk.
And given that we eat these animals, that risk is passed on
to us.
Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) states that between 1992
and 1999, one fifth of all reported food-borne sicknesses in
the
Until recently, antibiotics were routinely administered to
factory farmed birds to try to prevent outbreaks of disease,
and also to promote growth.
That’s a lot of antibiotics. In fact, the World Health Organisation
estimates that fully one half of all antibiotics produced worldwide
are used in farming animals and all because, says CIWF, farmers
need to compensate for the appalling way in which they rear
livestock.
Antibiotics are only used in humans when necessary. Not so
in the case of factory farming.
And because antibiotics are so widely used in this latter,
bacteria are widely exposed to them, causing it to mutate into
antibiotic-resistant strains, which cause infections that cannot
be treated with antibiotics.
These strains can be transmitted to humans in a number of ways,
including direct contact, to farm workers for instance, through
eating meat contaminated with this resistant bacteria, or contaminated
eggs or milk that is insufficiently cooked or pastuerised,
or even through consuming fruit and veg that was grown using manure
contaminated with the bacteria.
There have been moves to limit this orgy of drug abuse.
In 1997, the EU suspended the use of avoparcin, a noted growth
promoter, because it produced a bacterial strain resistant
to the antibiotic vancomycin, which is used as a drug of
last resort in human medicine. Put simply, if this bacterial
strain got you, you were untreatable.
By January 2006, the use of antibiotics as growth promoters
was being phased out of European farming.
But it’s not enough, says CIWF, which is calling for a ban
on antibiotics being routinely administered as a prophylactic.
This latter will be strenuously resisted by factory farmers,
on the grounds that their method of livestock-rearing is untenable
without drugs to control the inevitable diseases that such conditions
promote.
Another problem with intensive farming is the amount of toxic
waste it produces. Human waste, by law, must be treated. Animal
waste, however, needn’t be. It can be used as fertiliser, which
means it seeps into the food chain by another route, and runs
off into watercourses, where it pollutes ecosystems and disrupts wildlife
cycles.
But could we survive without mass-scale farms, called ‘operations’
in the
Wouldn’t we starve?
Probably not, if you consider that we throw away, as a nation,
around 40 per cent of all the food we buy, partly because it’s
so cheap, because we’re bombarded with inducements to buy
more than we need, and partly because, thanks to long working
hours and such ‘progressive’ innovations as the transformation of
domestic science from the teaching of cookery skills to an
indoctrination into the merits of the processed food industry,
we have lost our skills base when it comes to having our chicken
and cooking it too.
Furthermore, if our diet was less laden with meat, and more
inclined to vegetables and cereals, we would not only be healthier,
but there would be much more to go round, meat production
requiring much more land and resources, including water, than
agriculture.
Chickens going cheep? It’s no joke, you know.
Soaring Food Prices And Energy Bills Pile On New Year Misery
AS
bumbling Labour minister Hain ‘forgets’ he had been given £150,000 back
in the real world people are counting the pennies as soaring
prices bite into shrinking pay cheques.
For while Wendy Alexander and Hain talk airily about mismanaging
a few thousands given to them food and fuel price hikes
are piling on the pressure for real families.
As first snows fell consumers were confronted with rises in
gas and electricity prices which have now been followed
by escalating food bills.
The increases recorded in food prices are the steepest since
records began† fuelling a rise in the average family’s
shopping bill of £750 a year.
And away from the world of New Labour’s champagne socialists
it is basic prices which are soaring with Tesco’s frozen
peas up from £1.19 to £1.79 and 2.5 kilos of spuds up from £1.78
to £2.18.
Clearly the High Street monster takes it own slogan to heart
when it comes to price hikes - “every little helps”.
Meat prices have gone up by an average of almost 4 per cent
in the month of December alone.
Now the well oiled PR machines of the big food retailers are
being wheeled out to justify the latest price hikes with
explanations which range from floods through rising oil prices
to the Chinese eating a more varied diet.
However what they fail to mention is that one area where there
is no call for belt tightening is in the profits going
to shareholders. Indeed in a world of retail gloom and early
sales to boost flagging sales food stores are, unsurprisingly,
the exception.
Supermarkets continue to see profits rise amidst the gloom
and no amount of Bob Hoskins voiceovers and minor celebs
wheeling their trolleys across our TV screens can conceal that
fact.
Taken with the squeeze on credit and high mortgage rates experts
are predicting growing debt, hard times and in some cases
bankruptcy for many families in the months ahead.
Yet what relief is offered from a supposed Labour government
for people struggling to pay their bills?
No price freezes but a stern lecture from Gordon Brown on how
we must tighten our belts, that the ‘nation’ can’t afford
extravagant pay rises to pay bills and probably we should
all sign three year pay deals.
There will, of course, be one likely exception to the call
for pay cuts. MPs are likely to award themselves above inflation
rises despite crocodile tears from Brown.
And of course 3.5 per cent of £65,000 a year is rather more
than 2 per cent of a low paid workers £15,000.
For older Voice readers this will all have a ‘seen it before’
feel as the first call made in any economic crisis certainly since
WW2 has been to freeze wages but leave profits alone.
Despite grave assurances from the chameleon like Chancellor
Darling and former socialist Prime Minister Brown all
the signs point to 2008 being a year of economic crisis.
The Northern Rock crisis has consumed £25billion so far and
all the signs are that private buyers don’t want to touch
it with a barge pole.
Even the normally headline hogging Richard Branson has disappeared from
the fray.
However Northern Rock is but one sign of a massive financial
crisis in which Billions in bad debt threaten the entire
globalised money casino.
Indeed so bad is the crisis that key banks and financial institutions
are refusing to admit how much bad debt they have and
are hiding it in a rich man’s version of putting the unpaid bill
behind the mantlepiece clock.
Add in the ingredients of continuing war in
In 2008 the left will need to maintain its opposition to imperialism
and war and deliver solidarity and support to workers
who refuse to carry the burden of the crisis through sackings and
pay cuts.
page eight
SNP Not To Be Trusted With The Future
Scottish Government pledge to scrap PFI and replace it with... ...well with the same
By Gerry McCartney
JUST
before the Scottish parliament emptied for the Christmas
holidays, the SNP government published its longawaited consultation
paper on proposals to create a Scottish Futures Trust.
This is important because this represents the SNP alternative
to the private financing of public sector infrastructure
such as school and hospitals, first termed PFI (private
finance initiative) under the Tories and then rebranded as PPP
(public private partnerships) under New Labour.
Before winning the election, the SNP had campaigned heavily on the
issue of privatisation, claiming that PFI would be ended and common
sense public financing restored. The basis of this would be the
issue of bonds and the holding of new buildings and infrastructure in
‘trust’.
This effectively meant that the SNP intended to approach the money
markets looking to raise money today by promises to pay back
the money at low but guaranteed levels of interest.
This is a tried and tested method of public sector financing
that, given the framework of a capitalist system, Socialists
normally welcome.
It means that no profits are taken out of the system other than
the low rate of interest for the money loan.
What was more questionable is the proposal to hold the newly
built assets (e.g. a school) in ‘trust’.
The Government consultation on the creation of the Scottish Futures Trust
(SFT) has now been published. It is something of a disappointment.
Currently planned PFIs will go ahead. Existing PFIs will
continue. The issuing of bonds is revealed to be only a
future aspiration.
The consultation document welcomes the involvement of the private
sector in the provision of public services and the ‘additionality’
of their involvement.
This term, additionality, is a euphemism for privatisation.
Under PFI and PPP, private companies were attracted by guaranteed
high profits for around 30 years.
The difference between SFT and PFI or PPP is the creation of
a ‘trust’ to own the assets, or to manage the owner of the
assets (e.g. a private consortium).
This trust will be a not for profit private company.
The published information about this is sketchy, but is it presumed that
it’s shares will be owned by the government, and that it will raise
money from the private sector for investment.
Another possibility is that the trust will contract with private consortia
to own and run the asset (much like already happens with PFI).
The trust will not be able to be under government control (or publicly
accountable) if it is to raise money from the private sector
without the Treasury blocking it.
The board will therefore be appointed from the great and the good
(or possibly just the friends and funders) of the government.
The government claims that the trust may make a surplus (profit), and
that it will distribute this to the community because it will
not be profit making.
This prospect is however unlikely, given that most contracts with
the private sector do not result in the private company saying,
‘We didn’t spend all the money, so here is your change’.
However, any surplus that is created, will only be money gained
by overcharging the government, local authority or health
board that is paying for the asset.
It therefore represents a diversion of public money from the
democratic structures to an unelected trust for distribution.
Those in the SSP who have campaigned against housing stock transfer
or the creation of trusts to own and run leisure services will be
familiar with the problems of this model.
Trusts are not accountable to the public as their boards are
not elected.
The use of trusts is an expensive method of financing public
sector investment because they sit outside the public sector
and therefore do not attract the preferentially low interest
rates that governments can benefit from.
The idea that the risks of investment (ie the potential for costs
to rise) will be carried by the private sector has repeatedly
been shown to be a myth and private investors will be guaranteed payouts
for decades.
The contracts are inflexible and mean that any changes that are required
in the future are ultraexpensive to rectify.
The private sector is adept at cutting corners and drawing up contracts
that reduce the quality of the product.
These problems will be even more acute if the SFT is only managing
the private consortium rather than raising the finance itself.
In short, privatisation in the SNP’s
We can expect the Treasury in
The EU might cause more of a problem since it is becoming more sensitive
to the accounting scam of placing PFI projects (and SFT) outside
the stated borrowing of the government, and this could expose the
high borrowing levels in the
Socialists should be clear that the SFT represents a continuation
of privatisation.
The SNP is currently without an elected opposition to its left
to make this case.
Our task is therefore to articulate this opposition and galvanise public
opinion against privatisation.
Power companies announce price hike
By Ken Ferguson
WITH
impeccable timing the big power companies chose to announce
major price hikes as the mercury plummeted and the first snows
of winter fell.
Leading the charge was
Npower said that customers will see annual bills jump on
average by £95 for gas and £64 for electricity under the
price changes, which come into effect immediately.
And it is an absolute certainty that the supposed ‘competitors’
of the firm will be smartly following with their own inflation busting
price rises.
Price comparison website uswitch.com’s Tim Wolfenden said
that the “smart money” was on a 15 per cent rise in bills
from all British energy suppliers.
British Gas parent company Centrica had already raised its
“market tracker” tariff by 13 per cent for gas and 15 per
cent for electricity in December.
Its all a far cry from the privatiser’s fairy tale that taking
energy supply out of public ownership would create a free
market for gas and electricity in which the consumer would
be king and just shop around for cheap power.
Originally pushed by Thatcher this nonsense is still fed
to an increasingly disbelieving public by government spin
doctors.
Commenting of the eye watering price rises a government spokesman
- describing them as ‘price changes’ said: “The competitive
market has delivered significant savings for
“Price changes are commercial decisions for the companies
involved. There is a competitive market in the
Of course - as the soaring prices underline - the reality is
that supposed regulators are toothless and are only there
to provide a fig leaf for the fact that the energy market is
nothing but a big business carve up to ensure super profits.
The creation of private firms with shareholders means that
cash that could have pegged prices must go to pay the dividends
of the largely corporate fat cats who now own
For a few years they were able to claim efficiency was cutting
prices when in fact this was largely based on the so called
‘dash for gas’ which saw short term investment in highly
profitable gas powered power stations.
Now the gas has been largely squandered and rising energy
costs are being handed to the consumers in the shape of
price rises.
Despite illusions that a Brown government would be different
they continue to punt that ‘sorry guv it’s out of my hands’
line on price rises and point the finger at the power firms.
No doubt they will ‘carpet’ the bosses to explain themselves, ‘force’
out a few minor concessions, spin them as a victory and
move on.
In this they illustrate the great attraction to politicians of
privatisation - in electricity, railways, buses, gas and so on
they can wash their hands of it all and shift the blame.
That’s why on grounds of costs, efficiency , safety and to
allow long term planning such key industries as gas, electricity,
coal, railways and public transport were taken into public
ownership.
Faced with the challenges of fuel poverty, global warming,
growing traffic levels and choices about nuclear power the
case for putting such key sectors under public control and out
of the hands of faceless shareholders looks increasingly unanswerable.
Massive pressure needs to be put on to demand a freeze on
energy prices to protect the vulnerable but the time is
overdue for a renewed campaign to return such vital industries and
services to public control.
page nine
A Mighty Heart
Paramount Home Entertainment DVD out now
by Alex Miller
THIS
film tells the tale of Daniel
However, it focuses mainly on
The acting is certainly very effective, and Angelina Jolie
in particular is very convincing in the role of Mariane.
And director Michael Winterbottom does a good job of capturing
the tense, chaotic nature of
However, the film, regardless of how well it performs at the
box-office or in the DVD sales charts, is ultimately a
political sleight-of-hand.
While it justifiably highlights the terrible suffering of
I don’t know if it was just the DVD version that I watched,
but for long stretches of the film (including some key
moments) the dialogue was primarily in Urdu, with no subtitles available.
While this may have helped to capture the tension felt by those
non- Urdu speakers who were actually present as events
unfolded, it also created the impression that there is an uncrossable
divide between the incomprehensible non-white hordes and the
fully human and transparent beings speaking English in American
or European accents.
Although bits of the film are genuinely realistic, other bits
are almost laughingly unrealistic, such as the avuncular
portrayal of the American intelligence officer who reassuringly tells
Mariane that they’ll find
The unspoken implication that “they” but not ‘us’ use or condone
torture will fool no one acquainted with the basic facts
about “extraordinary rendition”.
That the terrorists are always “they” and never western governments
acting in our name is made clear by Mariane’s comments
following confirmation of her husband’s murder.
In a radio broadcast she informs the audience that
Fair enough, she’s just lost her husband in horrific circumstances,
but that this is the best the film can do by way of citing
other examples of terrorism - at a time when American B- 52s
are pounding countless innocent Afghani civilians into the
dust - reveals clearly the assumption underlying the film:
western governments, unlike the dark-skinned and incomprehensible jihadists,
are themselves incapable of terrorist activity.
Overall, then, although the film is dramatic and compelling,
its entirely one-sided portrayal of the “war on terror”
won’t go unnoticed by anyone with a bare modicum of political
nous.
Haggis, Neeps & Politics
People’s Festival Celebrates Burns the Radical
BURNS
scholar Patrick Scott Hogg and stand up comedian Bruce
Morton will top the bill at the Edinburgh People’s Festival’s ‘Alternative
Burns Supper’ next week.
People’s Festival spokesman Kevin Ferguson believes their
celebration will be like no other held in the city this
year. He said:
“We reclaim Robert Burns the ‘People’s Poet’ from the prosaic
and honour the working man who rebelled against his designated
social status, the corrupt politics of his day and advocated
international solidarity supporting the progressive revolutionary movements
in
“In recent years Patrick Scott Hogg and other prominent Burnsian
scholars have established beyond doubt the revolutionary
political leanings of Robert Burns.
“We are delighted that Patrick, who is in such huge demand
at this time of the year, has agreed to join the Edinburgh
People’s Festival Burns night celebration. And we are
equally delighted to have the one and only Bruce Morton
performing too.”
The Edinburgh People’s Festival’s ‘Alternative Burns Night’
takes place on Friday 25 January at 7.30pm in the upstairs
function suite of the Meadows Bar,
The
Wild Brunch
Keef Tomkinson
Keef casts his eye across life’s more leisurely pursuits in order to put a wee bit of CULTure into our lives.
I Am Keef - I Believe In Taking Sides*
Was
just writing a column about the American Presidential elections.
Taking the piss out of armchair revolutionaries who muse over
it and finding the most comical way to say I would vote Democrat
in a flash if only see young republicans cry.
But who cares? While it’s the most bling political battle in the
world its almost beyond parody. So what to write about?
Bridge cables? Naw. Sport
My head is a mess. Should I buy a new TV? Where should me and
the little lady go on holiday and when? Why do have so much
gas?
Anyhoo. Why not a film review of sorts. I went to that Tom
Hanks film on Sunday, Charlie Wilson’s War. For me it was really
unsatisfying. It had a great trailer. Tom Hanks is Mr Likeable
and there was the hope of a lil’ politics with the fun.
Wow, it’s hitting off in The Getaway. Bank just got robbed
and folk got gunned down.
My biggest problem with the film (Charlie Wilson’s... not The
Getaway) was that it could not decide what it wanted to be.
A film about the Russians being driven out of
It certainly does not manage both and fails to give enough background
or an exposition of the conflict while skimming over
In terms of the conflict no explanation is given to why the Russians
are there or what they want out of the occupation.
Only fleeting remarks are made to the tribal and disparate nature
of the resistance, which led so much to the country’s implosion
into civil conflict.
The hype describes
However, apart from boobs at the beginning and some secretaries,
he comes across as a dull drunk with no inner demons.
The budget was a clearly a restriction for the film. Some refugee
camps have the feel of being filmed on a disused
There is an attempt at the end to show how
Why not start with images of young Russian men crossing the
border to bring order and close the film with young Americans
landing in
Maybe all this needed was Meg Ryan to steal the politicians
heart and give him his soul back but that’s another film. Wow!
Steve McQueen just shot someone with a big gun. That’ll teach
him.
I Am Keef - I Believe In Taking Sides*
*:
The specific side being taken is liable to changes based on
new political priorities, opportunities, headlines and revised
jury verdicts.
page ten
by Sam Gordon in
THE
Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) government of
The fuel shortages certainly affected the economy. And rising world petroleum
prices have been a significant contributor to rising inflation
in the Nicaraguan economy.
This has stood at around 9.6 per cent to 9.4 per cent for some
time but reports now say that the cost of basic household
purchases to the consumer had risen to 11 per cent in November.
Many hoped that petroleum shipped from
On the political front, 2007 ended with a crisis that is sure to
spill over into this year’s agenda. A central plank of Daniel
Ortega’s government is the role given to the Council for Citizen Participation
(CPC).
One of the declared aims of this piece of policy is to introduce
‘direct democracy’ into the body politic of the republic.
The main exponent of this is First Lady, Rosario Murillo, wife
of the President.
Just before the National assembly’s seasonal break the government introduced
legislation to enshrine the CPCs into
law. This brought a rare unity among the opposition liberals and conservatives
- and rarest of all - the FSLN break away, the Sandinista Renovation
Movement (MRS).
However, despite this exercise in parliamentary democracy the FSLN President
of the National Assembly refused to sign it into law. Predictable
Another piece of legislation is also bubbling away on the back
burner.
And it is sure to make the political kitchen a very hot place in
Since 1893 Nicaraguan law has permitted what is known here as ‘therapeutic
abortion’, when the woman’s life is at risk and there was agreement
by three medical specialists.
During the pre election frenzy at the end of 2006 the National
Assembly overwhelmingly voted to outlaw all abortions. Faced
with the combined campaigning of the Catholic Church and Evangelical
pastors, Liberal and Conservative parties, formerly prochoice FSLN
support for women’s right was nowhere to be seen. Only three MRS
members of the National Assembly voted against the change in the
law.
This has become a campaigning issue for women’s and human rights
groups.
These organisations have political savvy and the ability to mobilise support
in a way that will attract public attention. It is also likely
to attract the attention of state authorities.
This year promises to be packed with tension in the political,
economic and social arenas. Commentators loyal to Daniel Ortega
assure us that the government is on course to improve the lot
of the country’s poorest. Others, and there are plenty of them
from the right, left and centre, condemn the Ortega couple’s
every utterance and move.
The waters are indeed muddy. If anything is clear it is that
But all is not totally gloomy.
Former President of the Republic and Constitutional Liberal Party
boss, Arnoldo Aleman,
had been convicted of fraud, money laundering and other felonies
contributing to the county’s poverty. Nevertheless, he continued
to lead a high profile public life despite a long jail sentence
changed to house confinement for health reasons.
A recent hearing of the Managua Tribunal of Appeals he was sent
back to his house in the country - where he is due to spend
the next few years.
We’ll see.
Chavez To Try And persuade FARC To Disarm
VENEZUELAN
President Hugo Chavez has offered to try to persuade Colombian Marxist
FARC guerillas to lay down their weapons if
He also accused
“I don’t agree with the armed struggle and that’s one of the
things I want to discuss with Marulanda,” Chavez said, referring to FARC commander
Manuel Marulanda.
“This problem doesn’t have a military solution and, if it
doesn’t have a military solution, what other solution is left?
The political path.”
The Venezuelan leader also urged his Colombian counterpart US
backed Alvaro Uribe to recognise the
FARC and the National Liberation Army as legitimate insurgent groups,
rather than terrorists.
And he brushed aside criticism made of him for urging foreign
governments to remove the FARC from terrorist lists, saying:
“I don’t care if they call me a terrorist. it’s
one more stripe for a tiger.”
The European Union fell in behind the
Last week, Colombian former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez,
who was released by the FARC after roughly six years in captivity, asked
Mr Chavez to persuade the guerillas to
abandon their practice of kidnapping people and holding them
for ransom or political leverage.
Her release followed a key intervention by Chavez.
Ballots
Lead To Bullets In
By Bill Bonnar
IT
seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy; another African country imploding
into violence and demonstrating to the world that Africans
are incapable of governing themselves.
As one caller to a talk radio show stated, “you can’t blame colonialism
for this; we gave them this country and look what they’ve done
with it. I suppose now we will have to bail them out with even
more aid”.
His views are on recent events in
Colonialism and the post-colonial settlement have a lot to
do with recent events.
The violence was triggered by President Kibaki’s crude attempt to
stay in power by rigging the country’s general election.
This produced a violent backlash among opposition supporters
and counter violence by supporters of Kibaki.
As with many African countries divisions have largely followed tribal
lines with leaders on both sides quite prepared to use tribal allegiances
for their own ends.
However, to reduce what has happened to tribalism is both simplistic
and naive. Politics in
In 1967 the then President Kenyatta ended
This enhanced their social and economic standing in the country
so that today Kikuyu dominate business and control much
of the best land.
Their political control means that they also dominate a notoriously corrupt
state. Within this there is a Kikuyu ruling elite with close
links with international capitalism.
They tend to regard the country as a kind of private estate
and been responsible for looting billions of dollars
over the years.
The decision to rig the election was as much about protecting
these interests as anything else.
The opposition mobilised people largely along tribal lines
but also in opposition to corruption and inequality.
They drew most of their support from ‘excluded’ areas and
from
On a wider note
This followed years of activities by pro-independence forces
and a violent counter-reaction from
This campaign of terror led to tens of thousands of deaths,
over one million arrests, the setting up of concentration
camps all over the country and the widespread use of rape
and torture in its attempt to terrorise the population into submission.
When it became obvious that British rule was unsustainable
a postcolonial settlement was agreed that would defend
Part of the settlement would be the creation of a new and amenable
black elite who would play their part in exchange for a slice
of the cake.
All buttressed by generous amounts of British aid; even today
When
This crumbled in the face of western pressure and the interests of
the new, emerging black ruling class and their white settler
allies.
One positive that has emerged from recent events is that
this original vision is back on the agenda.
It is clear that
Perhaps the most significant factor is the growth in
A growing section of the population now live in towns and cities
like
For them tribal loyalties are becoming less important than issues
of wages, long hours and sweat shop conditions.
They also see at first hand the poverty experienced by most people
in contrast to the gratuitous wealth displayed by the rich.
Most of
It is through the growing organisation and awareness of
CIA Agent Who Denounced The Company Dies
By Ken Ferguson
PHILIP
Agee, a former CIA agent who left the ‘company’ largely a
a result of its support for
Agee went public on the crimes of the CIA in his book Inside
the Company: A CIA Diary, published in
The book fingered approximately 250 Agency officers and agents
and warned that “millions of people all over the world
had been killed or had their lives destroyed by the CIA and the
institutions it supports”.
The spooks hit back with the usual claims that Agee’s action
had led to the deaths of US spies which it probably did
but Agee responded saying:
“It was not enough simply to describe what the CIA does,
it was important to neutralise the effectiveness of
everybody doing it.”
Both the CIA and MI6 were believed to have been behind moves
in 1975 to have Agee deported from
A massive campaign in his support produced a defence committee,
rallies, marches and demands by 50 Labour MPs for the
closure of the CIA’s
Agee attributed his opposition to the CIA network of subversion
to his Roman Catholic conscience that had persuaded
him to leave the CIA, and he certainly became a principled
critic of
In 1978 he and a small group of his supporters began publishing
the Covert Action Information Bulletin, a platform for
his campaign to “expose” the workings of the CIA. In 1978-79 Agee
published two volumes of Dirty Work, which exposed more than 2,000
covert CIA agents in western Europe and
In 1981 Agee was deprived of his American passport and finally
settled in
Support Iranian trade unionists
THE
British TUC is urging trade union members to send a
message of hope to Mansour Osanloo and Mahmoud Salehi,
who remain imprisoned in
Mansour Osanloo, is President of the trade union representing
workers of the
Both have faced repeated persecution and periods of imprisonment
for their efforts to establish free trade unions and
to represent their fellow workers.
The TUC is backing Amnesty
This year Amnesty is highlighting the cases of Mansour
Osanloo, and the TUC is joining the action.
Full details of the greetings cards campaign are available on
the Amnesty website, including labels with home addresses,
labels with a suggested solidarity message in Farsi,
and other practical information.
page twelve
Support The Civil Service Strikers
by Richie Venton
CIVIL
servants in the HMRC (Revenue and Customs) and DWP (Job centres,
Pensions Centres and CSA) are poised to strike on 31 January.
They are putting up stiff resistance to the double-barrelled assault
on jobs and pay by a government hell-bent on crushing public
sector workers and the public services they provide.
In the DWP, a 3-year pay deal was rejected by three to one by staff,
but instead of seeking a negotiated solution, the employers barged
ahead by imposing this deal on workers’ pay packets at the
end of November. They ignored union appeal for a pay rise
to match inflation for 2007, whilst talks on 2008 and 2009 were
held. This imposed deal means 2 per cent for 2007, zero for
2008 and 1 per cent in 2009 - a savage cut to pay in the light
of food, fuel and housing costs rising relentlessly.
They provoked the rock solid two-day strike of staff in December.
But still DWP bosses - who themselves got pay rises of 6.5
per cent to 7.6 per cent last year! - refused to budge.
Department Permanent Secretaries who had bonuses of over £3,000 and
pay rises of 9 per cent, egged on by their political bosses in
the Labour Cabinet, would neither concede a penny on pay nor arbitration
though ACAS. So the PCS union are calling members in DWP out
on strike on 31 January, to coincide with the one day strike being
balloted for in the HMRC department.
In HMRC, the primary issues are a jobs slaughter totalling 25,000,
galloping privatisation, and attacks on flexi time arrangements.
HMRC and the government are set on a crazed, vindictive course of
250 office closures, another 12,500 redundancies by 2011, and further
outsourcing and privatisation - including the Security Guards
at sites across the
A powerful show of strength by workers in two huge departments should
rock even the most hard faced anti-union government.
Joint regional rallies and demos would be a powerful morale boost to
all those on strength, and a means of highlighting the issues behind
the strike to the public they deliver services to day and daily, despite
their depleted numbers and vilification at the hands of New Labour.
And strikes work! 700
So imagine the power of 70,000 HMRC staff and 90,000 workers in
DWP taking action to stop New Labour’s privatising, job-cutting, wage-cutting,
anti-union Tories.
John Davidson, PCS
“The main reason for striking on 31 January and imposing a strict overtime
ban thereafter is redundancies. 13,000 jobs in Revenue and
Customs have already gone with a government target of another
12,500 by 2011.
But this issue is closely followed by privatisation. The government are
not stupid enough to conduct outright, upfront privatisation, but they
want to do it through a third party, and then eventually outsource
and offshore the work - especially in the call centres.
Remember the leak a couple of years ago that they planned this transfer
abroad of call centre work in the Department of Work and pensions?
Office closures are a big problem we aim to fight. The employers
have not yet finalised the list for closure, but they have previously
named Blythswood in
The existing loss of jobs makes the workload unbearable for those of
us who remain. Staff face stress because they get the irate taxpayers
ringing up to ask why it takes 19 weeks before their case is even
looked at, not dealt with, whereas when I started in the revenue
a mere six years ago the cases were dealt with inside 4 weeks.
The Labour government’s jobs cuts are crazy and illogical.
Because they are de-skilling the work in Revenue, we are the one part
of the civil service which is recruiting! We now have 12,500 in the
call centres. So whilst they are shedding jobs in the processing sections
they are taking people on in the call centres - to deal with the irate
calls from taxpayers that are caused by the staffing cuts in processing!
Even the Taxation magazine, the journal of professional accountants, is
now backing our campaign against the jobs slaughter, which shows
how badly services have been damaged.
Another key issue for Revenue staff is the threat of removing flexi time.
This is always the second big issue after pay in staff surveys.
People with kids and care responsibilities only stay in the Revenue
because they can use flexi.
Now they started a pilot scheme of removing it in the call centres.
They want the arrangement more akin to McDonald’s, where they
send you home without pay when it is quiet.”
The Scottish Socialist Party has a proud and unique record of supporting
every action by PCS members since we were formed in 1998.
We will be on the picket lines and rallies, as PCS members, as supporters†
from the local community, as socialists who put people before
profit, public services before shareholders’ greed, workers
before bosses.
Vote SSP in the Kilsyth by-election
LOCAL
members of the Scottish Socialist Party have chosen local man Willie
O’Neill as their candidate in the impending council byelection in
Kilsyth.
Willie told the Voice:
“Although this by-election is taking place in unfortunate circumstances,
following the untimely death of Councillor Griffin, I am delighted
that party members have selected me to stand.
“Growing up and living in the ward gives me first hand knowledge
and experience of what the issues are that concern the people of
Kilsyth and Croy.
“I am standing as a socialist who aims to challenge the consensus
amongst all the other parties, that big business and the free market
offers solutions to the problems of communities like ours.
“The SSP offers an alternative that’s about people not profit and
it is important voters have that choice.”
Willie, who stood in the ward in May’s election, has previously
contested Scottish and
He has a long track record of involvement in campaigns dating back
to the fight against the Poll Tax, including fighting school
closures and for improving local transport links.
Willie has pledged to continue that fight saying:
“Labour led North Lanarkshire Council consistently let people in
Kilsyth and Croy down.
“The gap between the wealthy and the rest of us has increased under
Labour and our local services have been run down.
“The SSP will fight on a ticket that includes defending local services,
improving public transport links, introducing road safety measures and
increased resourses, to not only improve existing housing stock,
but to increase availability of affordable homes for rent.
“The SSP gives people a real choice between parties who defend
inequality and a party that will fight tooth and nail to defeat
it.
“I hope people support our alternative vision of an independent
and Socialist