Socialist Worker 2309, 30 June 2012



starts Highlights



Egypt's relief at election result - in International



'We all face the same attacks, but united we can stop them' - in News



Drones: Waging war on civilians with a click of a mouse - in Features



Britain's Industrial Revolution: the birth of a new power - in Features



Immigration row: concessions to racism will always weaken us - in Comment



ends highlights



starts section News 



Crooked Cameron's Class War



Tory billionaires pay no taxes, but they want to smash welfare



Millionaire toff David Cameron paraded his hatred of working class people this week with a wide-ranging assault on benefits.



Cameron’s ideas include taking housing benefit away from under-25s, throwing people out of council homes and forcing more single parents into work.



Alongside this went a disgusting view of ordinary people and how we should live.



If you’re poor and have children, Cameron thinks you’re “irresponsible”—and you could lose your benefits. 



If you’re out of work and can’t read, it’s your fault you can’t get a job—and you could lose your benefits. If you’re ill, it’s just because you aren’t looking after yourself—and you could lose your benefits.



The barrage of attacks is designed to cause panic and to shift the debate about welfare to the right. 



Hypocrite



Cameron whined about people on benefits having a “sense of entitlement”. What a hypocrite. Cameron, a posh boy from Eton, was born into a millionaire family and then married into another one.



His crony cabinet is stuffed with millionaires who have never had to worry about paying their bills or affording a decent place to live. It’s this rich rabble who have a real “sense of entitlement”.



Ordinary people are entitled to benefits. It’s right that we have a welfare state and it’s right to defy Cameron’s attempt to take it away. It wasn’t people claiming benefits who caused the economic crisis—it was the Tories’ banker pals.



The Tories say benefits are “unaffordable”. It’s rubbish. Their rich mates siphon off £120 billion in tax scams every year. For all his rhetoric, Cameron is doing nothing to stop this.



There’s plenty of money to give everyone a decent standard of living. But the rich want to keep all the cash for themselves.



Cameron’s fantasy list of attacks shows what he would love to do if the Tories win the next election. It revealed the truth about their cuts.



They aren’t really about cutting the budget deficit. Instead they aim to bring about a permanent restructuring of the welfare state. Cameron has declared war on all of us. Now is the time to fight back.



» There is no “feral underclass”



» Tories are the real tax dodgers



» Tax scams that shore up profits



ends Crooked Cameron's Class War



News in brief



Theresa May in contempt rap



Theresa May has been found guilty of contempt of court—only the second time in history this has happened to a sitting home secretary.



In an “intentional breach” of a court instruction, she failed to release Aziz Lamari, an Algerian man who had completed a prison sentence but could not be safely deported. May escaped further action as he has since been released.



Brooks to face more charges



Former Murdoch chief Rebekah Brooks could face further charges over phone hacking. She appeared in court last week together with her husband and four others charged with perverting the course of justice.



20 year pay gap hits women



New research has shown the gap between men and women’s pay. On average, men will earn £1 million over their working life by the age of 50. Women have to work until they’re 72 to earn the same amount.



More stillbirths if you’re poor



Women in the most deprived areas of Britain suffer twice as many stillbirths than the wealthiest, research has found. There would be 900 fewer stillbirths each year if everyone got the same treatment as the rich.



ends News in brief



South London NHS trust could go bust in weeks over PFI debts



Tom Walker



Three London hospitals could close as an NHS trust has been formally warned that it could be declared bust within weeks.



South London Healthcare Trust has built up a £150 million deficit because of massive PFI payments it was forced to make for hospital buildings.



The trust runs the Princess Royal University Hospital in Orpington, Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup, and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich.



Even health secretary Andrew Lansley admits that the trust’s problems are “not of its own making”. But he is refusing to offer the trust any kind of bailout.



Instead he is forcing it into a so-called “unsustainable providers regime”. Administrators could take over the trust within weeks. It is then likely to be dissolved—and the future of the services it offers put at risk.



The crisis could lead to cuts in neighbouring trusts too as services are “reconfigured”. Even if the hospitals do not close, they could face being handed over to a private firm as part of a “rescue deal”.



There up to 22 other NHS trusts with similar debt problems caused by PFI and decades of underfunding. But the government looks likely to seize on this to argue that the NHS is going bankrupt and accelerate its vicious plans for the privatisation of healthcare.



ends South London NHS trust could go bust in weeks over PFI debts



London bus workers on strike: this is the power of our unity



Hundreds of bus workers took to picket lines across London last week as they struck to demand an Olympic bonus. The Unite union members’ walkout last Friday was the first London-wide action on the buses since 1982.



There was a real spirit of unity on the picket lines. Black, white and Asian, working for different companies, bus drivers struck together for fair pay.



Jake works as a bus engineer and was outside West Ham bus garage, on strike for the first time. “Everyone’s had enough of what’s happening,” he told Socialist Worker. “It’s great to see everyone out together.



“It makes being in a union have more meaning when we come out in the rain and do something instead of just talking.”



Bus driver Ben Chipperfield has struck twice before, but never with all the other drivers in London. “To get the backing of everyone makes a huge difference,” he said.



“We’re undervalued for everything we do. People don’t know what it’s like from the inside—how patient we need to be, how we’re always up before 2am.”



Ben’s partner Melissa is also a driver. She said, “We’re not even allowed to take time off during the Olympic period. Some people have even been told they can’t even have weekends.



“We work so much we hardly see our kids. Spending a few weeks with them in the summer holidays is like their little treat for the year. Now we’ll be working the whole six weeks that they’re out of school.”



Pickets



More than 70 pickets gathered outside Leyton bus garage in east London. And there were some 150 pickets outside the Lea Interchange—within a few hundred metres of the Olympic stadiums.



“This area will be bedlam during the Olympics—and so will London as a whole,” said Iqbal, one of the pickets. “We deserve a bonus. In fact, we deserve better pay all round!”



Strikers were determined to see a clear victory. And they were excited by Unite’s decision to increase its pay claim to add every day’s pay the workers lose by striking.



Errol Whyte, a bus engineer at Westbourne Park, said solidarity would be the key to victory. “Our fight for Olympic pay is the same as public sector workers strikes for their pensions,” he said.



“After working hard all your life, people deserve a decent pension. It’s unbelievable when you look at the bonuses of directors and bankers—they’re outrageous compared to ordinary workers’ pay.



“If we don’t fight it can only get worse. I hope our strike can show people there’s an alternative to just accepting this bullshit.”



Michael at Bow garage in east London agreed—and argued escalation was the way to win. “We need to strike not just for one day but for weeks,” he said. “If we struck on the opening ceremony of the Olympics then they’d have to listen.”



High court ruling is a bump in the road



The bus strike involved 17 of London’s 20 privatised bus operators. But three companies—Arriva the Shires, London General and Metroline—obtained a court injunction to stop their workers from striking.



The full judgment was due out as Socialist Worker went to press. The Unite union says it will appeal.



But nevertheless, it marks a dangerous return to the courts by bosses using so-called “irregularities” in ballots to get strikes called off.



It comes after an appeal ruling that had stemmed the tide of employers running to the courts. Before that there was a period where it seemed almost impossible to organise a legal ballot. 



The unions need to be ready to step up the fight against the Tories’ anti-union laws—not just legally, but industrially as well.



ends London bus workers on strike: this is the power of our unity



'We all face the same attacks, but united we can stop them'



As Britain’s biggest union leaders hint at big struggles in the autumn, a Unite the Resistance conference sees rank and file workers preparing to take on the Tories, writes Ken Olende



The theme of how workers can challenge the Tories’ austerity has run through this year’s union conference season. Everyone, from union general secretaries to rank and file activists, agree that we need action against the cuts.



So Dave Prentis, general secretary of the Unison union, told its annual conference that the union would “smash the pay freeze”.



He promised “the biggest campaign this union has ever seen” including “strike action across our whole union and across the public services”.



And Len McCluskey, head of the Unite union, told the union’s conference this Monday that unions would lead “fierce resistance” against attacks on workers’ rights.



Unison delegates were united behind the leadership’s proposals for a fight over pay. But the rallying call was met with less enthusiasm than that heard for the pensions dispute last year.



This is because those union leaders who have signed up to the government’s pensions offers have opened the door to some cynicism about their commitment to fighting.



Account



Now workers are asking how they can organise to hold their union leaders to account and push struggles forward. These questions brought together hundreds of activists at a conference organised by Unite the Resistance in London last weekend.



Strikers from all the main industrial disputes of the moment sat alongside pensioners, students and hundreds of fellow trade unionists. The discussion was urgent and focused as people brought together experiences of recent disputes.



“It’s all about solidarity,” a London bus worker told Socialist Worker. “It was the first time I’ve been to anything like this. It was good to hear from workers facing the same problems.



“We’re all under the same attacks. We have to put up with the same crap everyone in the public sector has to put up with, the same erosion of our rights at work.”



There was much discussion about the fight to defend public sector pensions. Many activists were angry at the way some union leaders tried to sell a shoddy deal just days after last year’s magnificent strike on 30 November.



Mark Serwotka said that asking why the leadership of some bigger unions had blocked further action after 30 November is “not just bitterness”. He said, “If we don’t learn, we’ll repeat the mistake again in the autumn.”



His point was echoed by one PCS activist who compared the leaders’ cowardice to the sense of solidarity among rank and file workers. “We are united at the grassroots,” they noted. “So why aren’t the union leaderships? We need hard hitting action.”



People left the conference determined to learn lessons from the last six months and build for action in the autumn. The TUC’s London protest on 20 October in particular will be a priority for everyone.



Activists in rebellious mood



The spirit of rank and file rebellion at austerity marked the Unite the Resistance conference in London last weekend. More than 500 people packed into the conference.



For many it was the array of union activists who spoke from the floor that made the event special. Unite member Russ Ball from the threatened Coryton oil refinery talked movingly about the battle to save jobs.



Two GMB members from Veolia recycling plants in Sheffield announced, “As of this morning we are now on all out strike”, to cheers.



The entire audience rose to its feet as Spanish miner Segundo Menendez Collar described the scale of the battle that he and his workmates are engaged in. “For the whole working class community in the whole world there is one simple truth,” he said. “We have to fight.”



Voices in struggle



“When things go well, you fight. When things are just about okay, you fight twice as hard. And when you are on the edge of disaster you fight, fight and fight some more.”—Segundo Menendez Collar, Spanish miner



 “Let’s build a huge demo against austerity on 20 October and an unstoppable programme of industrial action. We can win.”—Jane Aitchison, PCS



 “The company was surprised to see us go out—they thought economic necessity would starve us back to work. But we are lucky to have a union that fights.”—Anthony Augustin Benjamin, BFAWU union and striker at RF Brookes pie factory, Leicester



For videos from the conference go to uniteresist.org



ends 'We all face the same attacks, but united we can stop them'



Tax workers walk out to stop job cuts that will cost us all



Julie Sherry hears from strikers about why we need more tax collectors



Around 60,000 tax office workers struck on Monday of this week. As the row over the rich avoiding tax grew, the PCS union members pointed out that they face 10,000 job losses and privatisation.



This would leave them with even fewer resources to chase down the fat cats. “Tax workers pay the price, while Cameron highlights Jimmy Carr and ignores the big Tory Party donors,” said Alex Wilson, East Kilbride Centre 1 branch secretary. “I wonder who the real comedian is here.”



Marianne Owens from Cardiff added, “This is about fighting austerity—our strike is essentially about being able to collect in tax from the rich.



“It’s also about building towards the action in the autumn. Mass coordinated action is the key, and we can’t wait till October.”



The HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) walkout was solid across Britain. The spirit of international struggle was in the air on the Euston Tower picket line in central London.



Struggles



Striking Spanish miner Segundo Menendez Collar joined the pickets. He argued the struggles against austerity are linked. “We see what’s happening to us as a result of an international crisis,” he told the pickets. “The resistance must be on an international scale too.”



A Greek journalist involved in the workers’ occupation at the newspaper Eleftherotypia also addressed the picket. She said, “The scale of the crisis we are seeing in Greece is going to come here too—we all have to keep fighting.”



Striker Andi Bridges argued a strategy to fight. “It’s got to be everybody out together,” he said. “We need a general strike. After today, we will be getting stuck into building for the big demo in October.”



Dave Plummer, the branch organiser, agreed. But, he stressed, “We can’t wait another month after that demo for the next strike. It needs to be bash, bash, bash.”



The strike goes to the heart of the question of who should pay for the crisis, he added. “David Cameron is doing nothing to close the tax loopholes—instead he attacks benefits for the poor. We’re striking because we think hospitals should get the money, not tax havens.”



Strike hits huge sites



In East Kilbride, the main tax centre for Scotland, over 2,500 workers joined the strike. Call centres were closed with a recorded phone message in place informing callers about the strike.



Over 8,000 workers are based in the Benton Park View office in Newcastle. There were upbeat pickets on every gate at the site.



In Cardiff there was a barbecue and guitar on the picket line. Strikers were joined by activists from several unions, the trades council and students.



Figure it out



£1.1 billion in tax has gone uncollected just because of HMRC job cuts, the Public Accounts Committee says



30,000 jobs in the department have already been lost



£120 billion in tax is thought to be evaded or avoided in total every year, according to the PCS union



ends Tax workers walk out to stop job cuts that will cost us all



ends News section



starts section The Troublemaker 



Forget Jimmy Carr: the real tax dodgers are the Tories



David Cameron called comedian Jimmy Carr “morally wrong” for using Jersey to pay just one percent tax on his £3.3 million income.



Yet he couldn’t bring himself to criticise Take That tax cheat and queen serenader Gary Barlow. He doesn’t seem to want to criticise top Tory donor Michael Hintze either.



Hintze’s firm pays just £77,000 in corporation tax on profits in Britain—despite raking in £125million every year. His hedge fund empire CQS handles £5.5 billion worth of investments.



Hintze’s high-earning traders, while licensed to operate in Britain, are officially registered to the company’s off-shore operation in Jersey. So his traders don’t have to pay income tax either.



Hintze’s operations are ultimately controlled through a company in the Cayman Islands.



He is estimated to be personally worth £700 million and has donated at least £1.2 million to the Tory party and given a further £2.5 million in loans since 2005.



Among the list of Tories benefiting from Hintze is the chancellor George Osborne. Osborne, like many politicians, has described tax avoidance as “morally repugnant”.



He received £37,500 in donations from Hintze and £1,254 in services provided by Hintze’s company CQS. Pure coincidence?



Bad news for Eclipse fat cats



A tax tribunal has ruled that Eclipse 35, a film partnership, is an “aggressive” tax avoidance scheme. That’s bad news for the 289 fat cats who put money into it.



Investors borrowed £790 million from Barclays Bank to buy the film distribution rights to two Disney films—and offset the interest charged against income tax. Disney agreed to lease the rights back in return for an annual payment spread over 20 years.



Baljinder Boparan is an investor in Eclipse 35 and wife of Ranjit Boparan, the owner of the 2 Sisters food group. Workers at RF Brookes, a pie company owned by the firm, are striking this week to get decent redundancy pay out of tax-avoiding bosses.



MPs think they don’t get enough time off



Feeling overworked? Spare a thought for Britain’s MPs. A few years ago their long summer break was rudely interrupted when they were recalled to parliament.



The House of Commons Procedure Committee has found that many MPs thought this a dreadful waste of time and money.



It’s recommending a Commons vote on whether MPs should return to the days when they had a full 12 weeks off over summer.



By the end of the year, according to the parliamentary calendar, MPs will have been away from Westminster for 215 days. That’s 59 percent of the year.



One welcomes one’s 20 percent pay rise



The queen is heading for a 20 percent pay rise that will take her income to £36 million a year. Her income is linked to the value of her property, the Crown Estate, which pays its profits to the government.



It posted a record profit of over £240 million in the year up to March. Under new laws that come into effect next year, the queen will get 15 percent of the estate’s profits from two years ago.



So as millions watch their incomes fall, hers will rise by £6 million. Crown Estate boss Alison Nimmo reacted to the news by saying, “I’m sure everyone’s going to be happy.” I’m sure everyone isn’t.



Liz isn’t the only royal raking it in. Prince William inherited around £10 million from his dead mother’s estate last week just for turning 30. He can also take control of half a trust fund worth over £20 million.



Beecroft: ‘Not entirely based on anecdote’



The venture capitalist who recommended that the government make it easier for bosses to sack workers based his report on “conversations”. Adrian Beecroft bizarrely claimed that making it easier to sack people would cut unemployment.



He has now admitted that his views were based on “conversations with not a statistically valid sample of people”. However, Beecroft protested that it was “not based entirely” on anecdotal evidence.



Dorries and daughter



Another week, another MP embroiled in scandal. This week it’s Tory bigot Nadine Dorries. Dorries has been paying her daughter Philippa at least £35,000 a year to work as her office manager.



The practice of MPs employing family members was supposed to have been banned after the MPs’ expenses scandal.



Flag frenzy



The government seems worried we’re not feeling “British” enough. Its solution is to emblazon driving licences with union jacks—and possibly a royal coat of arms.



Currently licences have the European flag on them. Transport minister Mike Penning said the change was the government’s way of “flying the flag for Britain”.



A modest million



Don’t envy millionaires—their lifestyle isn’t what it used to be. First Direct bank claims that inflation means that £1 million can only buy “modest” things today.



They include a fancy home, holiday home, a small sea cruiser, Aston Martin, a cruise, a luxury watch and a “small diamond pendant”. Not much then.



ends Forget Jimmy Carr: the real tax dodgers are the Tories



ends The Troublemaker section



starts section What we think 



When fear is selective



The ruling elite are deeply racist—but sometimes they put their racism on hold to benefit their own interests.



This couldn’t be clearer when it comes to US and British government’s attitudes to Arab leaders, particularly those who subscribe to political Islam.



David Cameron is more than happy to sell arms to the vicious, ultra-conservative regime in Saudi Arabia, and back its attempts to crush the uprising in Bahrain. 



But when Muslim leaders are elected by ordinary people the attitude of the ruling class often shifts back to Islamophobia.



That’s why MI5 chief Jonathan Evans has “warned” that the Arab Spring is opening the door to further terrorism. He says Egypt will become a terror magnet.



And “military expert” James Corum wrote in the Daily Telegraph newspaper this week that “America must stop the policy of ignoring Arab extremism and human rights violations and offer a clear warning… Failure to act on these two issues should trigger an immediate American response.”



Imperial powers want to have strategic control over the Middle East. They want trusty guardians installed across the region to replace their fallen “strongmen”. Their role would be to protect oil supplies and maintain “order”.



The West’s rulers have no interest in democracy or the freedoms of ordinary people, anywhere in the world. They are hypocrites of the highest order.



ends When fear is selective



The lies the Tories use to attack benefits



David Cameron’s latest assault on benefits rests on the idea that there’s a distinct group of people living on the fringes of society.



According to Cameron, these “feckless” people live an easy life on benefits at the expense of people who work.



But this just isn’t true. There is no separate class in society made up of people who claim benefits and never work. 



Many of those who receive income-related benefits—such as housing benefit, council tax benefit and income support—are employed. 



In 2010, more than 14 percent of housing benefit recipients were in work. And 93 percent of new claims for housing benefit in 2010 and 2011 were made by people with jobs. 



This is because people in work are often on low pay, and underemployment means they are working fewer hours than they would like.



Most working class people spend at least part of their lives working, if not most of it. When people find themselves unemployed it isn’t by choice.



Whether they are working or not largely depends on the state of the economy—not on some fixed, “feckless” nature.



Of course some people are out of work for long periods—but it’s not their fault. Look at the growing unemployment figures. How are people supposed to find jobs that aren’t there?



Factors



Many people are also unable to work because of disability and other factors. Why should they be punished for these things?



The fiction that there is an underclass is useful for our rulers. They want us to think that unemployment and poverty are caused by immoral individuals—not by their system.



They also want us to think that their attacks on the welfare state will only affect a small number who deserve no better. 



They want to divide the working class to weaken us, precisely so they can get on with attacking our class as a whole. 



So, Cameron claims to be on the side of “hard working” people. But he does nothing to stop bosses throwing them on the dole or paying low wages. In fact he thinks pay rises would be “bad for business”.



Cameron is threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs with his assault on the public sector. He even wants to throw thousands of disabled workers out of work by closing Remploy factories.



He talks about the importance of “making work pay”. But this is the same man who is forcing unemployed people to work for free with his beloved workfare schemes.



Cameron isn’t on the side of any working class person. Socialists should defend all sections of the working class— whether in work or not. We all have the same interests in uniting against our rulers.



ends The lies the Tories use to attack benefits



ends What we think section



starts section Who says? 



Quotes from this week's news



“Spending cuts could last seven, eight, maybe ten years”



What cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood told government departments last week



“Buy at the point of maximum fear”



Convicted city trader James Sanders on how to buy property cheap—with cash from insider dealing



“I just feel like you’re not allowed to have nice things in Britain”



Millionaire heiress Tamara Ecclestone whines after her car was vandalised



“The NHS is like a supertanker heading for an iceberg”



Head of the NHS bosses’ organisation Mike Farrar claims that more health cuts can save the service



ends Quotes from this week's news



ends Who says? section



starts section International 



Rulers' Rio meeting fails to deal with climate change



Martin Empson in Rio de Janeiro



The agreement reached at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development contains almost no binding commitments.



Politicians and business lobbyists attended the summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, last week.



Rulers acknowledge its failure, but blame each other for it. The EU’s proposals for a “green economy” flopped in the face of opposition from rulers of poorer countries. 



They don’t want to be told they can’t pollute by representatives of countries that have emitted most carbon dioxide. 



Hibist Kassa, a socialist from Ghana, told Socialist Worker, “The summit is making it clear that capitalist states, north or south, won’t provide meaningful responses to poverty, joblessness and climate change.”



ends Rulers' Rio meeting fails to deal with climate change



Right's election victory leads to fresh chaos in Greece



Panos Garganas in Athens



Greece has a new coalition government—but it is already in crisis. The finance minister resigned on Monday of this week.



Before that he and several others already planned not to attend an upcoming European Union summit, citing illness. They include Greece’s new prime minister, who says he has to have an eye operation.



People in Greece see this as symbolic of a very sick government. They see the illnesses as diplomatic ones.



The Tory-style New Democracy dominates the new government. The other parties in the coalition—the New Labour-like Pasok and the Democratic Left—are keeping their distance.



The government plans to raise money for the banks and to repay debt using systematic privatisation.



This new coalition is in trouble and is already developing a nasty programme. They’ve tried to break a steel workers’ strike.



Last Friday, bosses tried to take control of the gates of one factory and bring in strikebreakers. But strikers were quickly alerted. They fought on the gates, and maintained workers’ control. 



The first attempt to turn the Greek Tories’ victory into a victory for the bosses has failed.



ends Right's election victory leads to fresh chaos in Greece



Eyewitness: 'Workers have the power to win this revolution'



Sameh Naguib in Cairo



The president of the republic, Mohamed Mursi, won’t be allowed to go to bathroom without Field Marshal Tantawi’s permission. Scaf will remain political leader.



The consciousness of the masses meant that the old regime could not win the elections. So the revolutionary possibilities are much bigger than anyone could have imagined.



Some people think there is no difference between the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood and that of the generals. From a class perspective, if we look at their programmes, there isn’t a difference there.



But there is an extremely important difference. The Brotherhood has a mass base—an ability to mobilise. The regime depends completely on its security apparatus and on creating terror. 



But the vacillating forces of the Brotherhood are under pressure from above and from below. We must make use of that contradiction.



Audience



The Brotherhood’s own rank and file, and the masses who support them, are the audience for the left in Egypt. They are the audience for the revolution.



The Revolutionary Socialists don’t “support” the Brotherhood. But in the battle between the Brotherhood and the military we are on the barricades with the Islamists.



We are there with our own independent propaganda and without dropping our criticism.



There is a huge audience looking for a revolutionary alternative that doesn’t support the Brotherhood or the military. This is especially true among the working class. 



The youth can fill the squares to overflowing. But the working class can paralyse the state. A general strike would bring Egypt to a halt.



We have to tell Egyptian workers and the masses that if the military win they will smash workers’ organisations. 



They will try to defeat the revolution. We must have confidence that the masses can stop that from happening.



Sameh Naguib is a member of the Revolutionary Socialists in Egypt



ends Eyewitness: 'Workers have the power to win this revolution'



Egypt's relief at election result



Judith Orr



The announcement that Mohamed Mursi from Muslim Brotherhood had won Egypt’s presidential election was met with relief and celebrations across the country.



Mursi won 51.7 percent of the vote while his opponent, the regime’s Ahmed Shafiq, won 48 percent. Shafiq was prime minister in dictator Hosni Mubarak’s last cabinet.



Mursi has now moved into Mubarak’s presidential palace. For decades this was the base of a regime that outlawed, imprisoned and tortured the Brotherhood.



From Cairo, Revolutionary Socialist Hisham Fouad told Socialist Worker that Mursi’s victory had dealt the counter-revolution “a serious blow”. 



Shafiq is responsible for the murder of hundreds of political protesters—and people know it.



“Shafiq’s defeat has given a boost to the revolution,” Hisham added. “There is a mood of celebration like the mood after Mubarak fell. Now the struggle will continue in the streets to defeat the rest of the military’s recent attacks.”



These include the dissolution of parliament, giving military police new powers to arrest civilians and allowing the military government (Scaf) to shape the new constitution.



The military enacted these new powers only days before the presidential election results were announced. 



This “soft” coup looked like it might be the precursor to a full military takeover.The fact that Scaf stepped back from installing its man as president shows that it fears the revolutionary movement. 



Coup



The leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood has collaborated with the military since the fall of Mubarak. Yet even it was threatened by the coup and had to take to the streets to defend the revolution.



Further repression is still a danger. But Mursi’s presidency opens up the possibility of the revolution deepening.



He faces raised expectations from all those who risked their lives and took to the streets to topple Mubarak and win freedom and democracy. 



People want to see decent jobs and an end to poverty. Youth unemployment is running at around 25 percent—a devastating figure when 60 percent of the population is under 30 years old. 



They also want to see corruption cleared out from all the institutions in Egyptian society. And they want the new president stand up to Israel and the Western powers—and support the Palestinians.



Mursi will be unable or unwilling to meet these aspirations. The Egyptian economy is in deep crisis, with foreign currency reserves severely depleted.



Mursi is the president but the military still holds the power. “This will lead to new battles and confrontations with the army,” says Hisham. 



“We will also see an upsurge in social demands on the new president and clashes as he attempts to implement his neoliberal economic programme on the people of Egypt.”



ends Egypt's relief at election result



Sudan's poor fight against cuts



Police used batons and tear gas to break up anti-government demonstrations in Sudan’s capital Khartoum last Saturday. Students have been demonstrating for weeks, but last weekend they were joined by sections of the urban poor. 



The government is reducing fuel subsidies and imposing other austerity measures. Student leaders say that they will bring down president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has ruled for 23 years. Small protests have now spread across the country.



When Sudan split into two countries, South Sudan got the majority of the oil output. The two countries agreed that oil would be exported through Sudan. But South Sudan shut down oil production after Sudan began confiscating some of its oil exports.



ends Sudan's poor fight against cuts



Syrian rebels hold strong against Assad's demoralised forces



As Western leaders discuss possible intervention in Syria, but the revolt there is deepening, writes Simon Assaf



The shooting down of a Turkish jet fighter by Syrian forces marks a dramatic turn in the Syrian revolution.



The attack, which came a day after a Syrian pilot defected to Jordan, deepens the possibility of military intervention in Syria.



Turkey has invoked a Nato clause that stipulates common defence in the event of one alliance member coming under attack.



The circumstances of what happened are murky and as yet unexplained. But it could be just the excuse Western powers need to intervene in the revolution. Nato was set to meet to discuss a response as Socialist Worker went to press.



The cries for foreign intervention were loudest when the revolution was on the back foot. But the ground is shifting.



The revolution encompasses the daily mass demonstrations and strikes in Aleppo and Damascus. And last week rebel fighters slipped into Bab Amr, Homs, capturing three military positions that were overrun by regime forces last February. 



Now the regime has lost control of Deir el-Zour in the east and the countryside around Aleppo in the north. Add to that the long-lost regions of Deraa in the south, as well as the central towns and villages around Homs and Hama. 



A grim picture emerges for dictator Bashar al-Assad. The rebels are now better organised and are receiving ammunition and some weapons.



Strings



Many of these weapons, especially from the Gulf states, come with strings attached. Rebel battalions are, on the whole, refusing to obey orders set by outside forces.



Islamist groups that have begun to operate inside the war zones remain on the fringes. The main revolutionary formations are committed to the independence of the revolution.



The West’s preferred solution, a “Yemen-style” transfer of power, cannot work if the revolutionary forces refuse to accept it.



The West and its allies have to seize control over these forces if it wants to force its “compromise”. Arms supplies are the only effective leverage it has at the moment.



The crisis of weapons and ammunition has forced the rebels to concentrate on winning over military defectors. New tactics have effectively isolated the increasingly demoralised forces.



The lack of trusted manpower has forced the regime to turn to airpower. But this is a risky option. One pilot defected with his warplane and many others have walked off their bases.



The frequent helicopter gunships are proving ineffective. This is leading many rebels to conclude that the pilots are deliberately missing their targets.



The balance of forces is now turning against the regime. Bashar Assad’s military solution, effective at first, has backfired. His army is in crisis and his base of support is shrinking.



But the decision that emerges out of the Nato meeting could have dramatic consequences on the developing rebellion.



 ‘The revolutionaries are our children’



Women in Zebdani, west of Damascus, who are at the forefront of the Syrian revolution, sent in this report to the Mena Solidarity Network



Women first became involved in the campaigns to free those detained by the regime. When we went on our first demonstration we felt that we were suddenly living a new life.



Umm Salem, one of the leading activists in Zebdani, said, “When we decided to stage a sit-in to demand the release of the detainees, one of the families in our neighbourhood was not from Zebdani.



“They did not have any people who would call for the release of their loved ones. So I went out on the demonstration on their behalf. All the revolutionaries are now our children.



“We insisted that women stand in the first line. An argument started with the enthusiastic young men as everyone wanted to lead the march. But we insisted, and pledged, that we will not allow the security forces to touch our children.”



Women are taking an increasing role in the revolution. As well as writing placards and sewing revolution flags, we are rescuing the wounded, caring for the families of the detainees, as well as joining the demonstrations in increasing numbers. The Zebdani women produce a newspaper called Oxygen which is published every 15 days.



For the women, the revolution is no longer simply about bringing down of the regime—it is about transforming the whole of our society. 



The process of change is the act of destroying what is the worst in our history and creating new social relations. Every part of our society now has a role in transforming our lives.



Go to menasolidaritynetwork.com



ends Syrian rebels hold strong against Assad's demoralised forces



Eyewitness from Spain: 'If the miners win, the government is stuffed'



Segundo Menendez Collar spoke to Socialist Worker about the indefinite strike of 8,000 Asturian miners



I’ve worked in the mines for 31 years. Life is tough, it’s dangerous. But I wouldn’t change my job for anything else.



The dangerous moments make you appreciate life that bit more. The work makes our community united—it gives rise to solidarity.



Not long ago my house burnt down and the whole community pulled together to help me out. My colleagues put in extra-long shifts in order to raise the money to pay for repairs.



Everyone depends on the mines—50 percent of the local population work in them. The other half depends on them for their employment.



We are on strike in response to government’s plan to slash the subsidy to the mines by 63 percent. They said “sacrifices have to be made at a time of economic difficulty”. They won’t stop using coal but it will be imported, almost certainly at greater cost.



Each mine in the region held a meeting to decide on the response. We voted for indefinite strike. There are now 8,000 miners out. The vast majority are active in the strike. Women in the communities are also playing a vital role—they are completely self-organised.



We have miners occupying several mines as well as the town hall of Cangas and the Provincial Government building in Leon. Those who are occupying have a disciplined schedule—rest time, visiting hours, rotas for work that needs doing, and so on. 



But we need most people to be on the barricades. We began with small blockades of roads. The intensity increases as each day goes by.



Hairy



The police said they were ready to face our methods. But they are scared. They issued a press release calling on the government to negotiate because it’s getting really hairy for them out there.



The government and the police have used brutal violence to attack us. We have to respond in the same manner. We only have one option—we have to use what we’ve got. We buy rockets from firework shops, rather than using the dynamite that is kept under lock and key in the mines.



Everything has been affected by the struggle. We have had a general strike. On the day everything closed down—pharmacies, shops, schools, colleges, supermarkets, bars. Hospitals provided only emergency cover.



There have also been big marches in every town. We had 50,000 in La Felguera on the day of the general strike. These are huge numbers.



The future of every single person is affected by what the government is doing—so it’s easy to motivate people. For the builder, the bar owner, the shoemaker—if the mine goes, the town goes.



The next step is to march on Madrid. We are going to arrive from three directions. We’ll arrive at dusk on 11 July, and will be joined by everyone from the mining areas. Then we’ll march into the city with the lights on our helmets illuminated. 



We have always shown support for other sectors. Now we need solidarity. We are a target for the government because of our strength and our history. It’s a high-stakes battle.



If the miners are defeated, the government can move forward to break everyone else. If the miners win, the government is stuffed.



As told to Dave Sewell



ends Eyewitness from Spain: 'If the miners win, the government is stuffed'



ends International section



starts section Alex Callinicos 



Europe is stuck in a banking 'doom loop'



One sign of how serious the eurozone crisis has become is the brevity with which every supposed “solution” brings relief.



There was the recent “rescue” of Spain when the eurozone promised to lend the government more than £80 billion to restructure the country’s banks.



Within days interest rates on Spanish government debt rose to over 7 percent, a level that economists regard as unsustainable.



Then there was the narrow victory of the Greek Tories, New Democracy, in the general election of 17 June. The markets rallied, but not for long.



This was followed by a flurry of excitement over a plan for the eurozone’s two bailout funds (one doesn’t actually exist yet, but never mind) to buy Spanish and Italian government debt.



By the end of last week, German chancellor Angela Merkel had kicked this into the long grass at a meeting with the chief executives of France, Italy, and Spain.



What is driving the crisis now is what one market analyst has called the “doom loop” that binds governments and banks together. 



In Europe the financial crisis began with a borrowing and lending spree on the part of banks in the middle of the last decade.



In the Spanish state, for example, regional savings banks called cajas financed a property bubble that concreted over much of the country’s coastline, usually in cahoots with local politicians.



These bubbles were largely independent of the subprime scams going on in the United States—although Germany’s state-owned regional banks bought the equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge in what proved to be worthless credit derivatives from unscrupulous Wall Street banks.



When the crash came in 2008, European governments pumped money into the banks. But much of the losses the banks had made were swept under the carpet.



Public borrowing soared, partly because of bailouts but mainly because the recession of 2008–9 pushed up government spending and cut tax revenues.



Crises 



Then came a succession of government debt crises—in Greece, Ireland, Portugal. The European Commission together with the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund mounted “rescues”.



These kept up the flow of debt repayments to the north European banks that had mainly lent the money in the first place.



But the austerity programmes mounted as a condition of these “rescues” pushed the affected economies into vicious downward spirals. This included Spain, which hadn’t been formally bailed out.



The speculation that Greece at least would crack and leave the eurozone further destabilised the weaker economies. The ECB tried to come to the rescue last winter by lending over more than £800 billion cheaply for three years to the banks.



Banks used a lot of this money to buy their governments’ debt. This bought time for everyone—but made banks and governments even more vulnerable to each other’s collapse.



Other eurozone economies are being drawn in. Interest rates on Italian government debt have sky-rocketed. There are rumours that Silvio Berlusconi is planning to return to politics on a pledge to take Italy out of the euro.



The amounts that would be required to plug the gaps are now enormous. The economist Gavyn Davies calculates that Spain and Italy will need nearly £490 billion to cover their budget deficits and maturing debt. This is probably beyond the capacity of the bailout funds.



This is not just a financial problem. Most of the eurozone economies have been shrinking for months. Only the robust state of the German economy has been keeping the region going. But the latest purchasing managers’ indices predict a sharp contraction in German manufacturing production.



Great economic crises like the present one act as a giant x-ray, exposing structural flaws. One of the biggest of these flaws lies in the eurozone, a neoliberal construction that has served to entrench the dominance of German capitalism. The probability that it will blow up continues to rise.



ends Europe is stuck in a banking 'doom loop'



ends Alex Callinicos section



starts section Comment 



Immigration row: concessions to racism will always weaken us



Labour’s Ed Miliband is playing a dangerous game when he lends support to Tory scapegoating, writes Anindya Bhattacharyya



The Tories know that their austerity policies will hurt ordinary people and that this will make them unpopular.



So they are desperate to find scapegoats to deflect popular anger towards.



This is why they have gone out of their way to attack migrants, Muslims and other minorities.



Home secretary Theresa May’s plans to strip immigrants of their rights to a family life are just the latest example of this.



May is following where David Cameron has led. Last year Cameron gave two major policy speeches ramping up his attacks on minorities—and blaming Muslims and multiculturalism in particular.



Faced with this onslaught you might have expected the Labour Party to fight back. New Labour in office made some effort to defend immigration as “good for the economy”, even as they hounded and deported refugees.



But in his latest policy speech Labour leader Ed Miliband did the direct opposite. He declared on Friday of last week that Labour’s previous lukewarm support for immigration was a mistake.



Torrent



Miliband insisted that this about-turn wasn’t about “bowing to the right”. But that’s exactly what it is. The right has spent over a decade spewing a torrent of racist lies and abuse against immigrants. And now “Red Ed” responds by running a white flag up the pole.



The right wing of the Labour Party is naturally delighted. It has always wanted to chase votes by pandering to the anti-immigrant racism whipped up by the Tory press. But the Tories are even more cock-a-hoop. They have responded by raising the stakes on their racism.



The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh wrote a noxious article declaring that it was now “rare to hear spoken English” in London. He complained about the number of “babies born to foreign parents”.



The fascist British National Party (BNP) also took heart. Its leader Nick Griffin said Miliband’s speech was a “legitimation of our message” and hailed the Labour leader as a “BNP recruiting sergeant”.



Left wing Labour MP John McDonnell was about the only prominent voice in the media to hold fast to basic anti-racist principles and decline to join the immigrant-bashing bandwagon.



He was right to criticise Miliband’s speech for being “a nuanced version of blaming the migrants for the jobs and housing crisis”. And he was right to insist that immigrants are not to blame for housing shortages, low wages and lack of training for skilled jobs.



The tragedy is that his voice was so isolated. Socialists need to say loud and clear that we can only fight austerity if we are united. That means defending immigrants against the racists and bigots, not joining in the scapegoating.



Blue Labour’s poisonous influence



The most insidious aspect of Ed Miliband’s speech is the way he dresses up anti-immigrant poison as a “class issue”.



“Immigration made things easier for some, but it also made it harder for others,” he said. “Overall, it has benefits, but there are also costs.”



The implication is that immigration is good for the ruling class and bad for the working class. It follows that attacking immigrants can be justified in terms of defending the working class.



Tragically some parts of the trade union movement have expressed sympathy with these ideas—and that always weakens workers’ struggles.



The source of these ideas is the “Blue Labour” current championed by figures such as Maurice Glasman and Jon Cruddas. Glasman has even claimed Labour should be a party that “involves those people who support the EDL”.



Rather than understanding the working class as defined by its economic position, they see workers as bound together by cultural ties such as a common religion, nationality or “values”.



This allows them to present any kind of outsider or minority as undermining this common bond. So bigotry against minorities can be justified in terms of “solidarity”.



These ideas are poisonous and divisive. Workers cannot fight the bosses effectively if they let themselves be divided into warring “communities”.



Blue Labour’s ideas empty words like “working class” and “solidarity” of their real meaning and replace them with a fuzzy racism. Socialists should reject them.



The myth that immigrants are to blame



Ed Miliband blamed immigrants for generating “pressures on scarce resources such as housing and schools”, rather than questioning why they are so “scarce”. Both Labour and Tory governments failed to invest in council housing. They have underfunded schools too.



Miliband also blamed immigrants for driving down wages. This ignores the wealth of evidence showing no clear link between immigration levels and wages or unemployment levels.



In fact wages fell after 2008 just as immigration dropped off. And the myth deflects the blame for low pay from where it should really lie—with the bosses.



For more see Do migrant workers drive down wages? (March 2010)



ends Immigration row: concessions to racism will always weaken us



ends Comment section



starts section Features 



Britain's Industrial Revolution: the birth of a new power



Owen Miller debunks the myth of a unique British genius for invention and innovation



During this summer of royal and sporting spectacles, we seem to be surrounded by the warmed up leftovers of Britain’s patriotic myths.



We’re constantly reminded of our “British values” of fair play, our uniquely majestic-yet-down-to-earth monarch and the pastoral idyll of the English countryside. Then there’s the peculiar inventiveness of the British people that brought the world the Industrial Revolution. 



The Industrial Revolution took off in Britain in the second half of the 18th century. It was one of the most significant events in human history. It transformed the way people live their lives, putting it on a scale with the development of agriculture or of complex urban societies. 



But why did it develop in Britain rather than anywhere else? Establishment intellectuals like Melvyn Bragg point to the “scientific culture” of 18th century Britain with its dogged pursuit of technological progress.



They cite inventor-entrepreneurs like Richard Arkwright and James Watt as evidence of a peculiarly British culture. They seek to explain the Industrial Revolution largely through a form of “British exceptionalism”, emphasising “great men” and the “culture” that produces them.



However, socialists look primarily to material rather than cultural causes. This means focusing on our interactions with the natural environment, relations between different societies, and above all, the relations between classes within societies.



From this standpoint, the dramatic shock of the Industrial Revolution is part of much broader historical processes. It is also the child of new capitalist social relations that had burst on the scene with revolutionary movements in 16th and 17th century Europe.



Interaction



The Industrial Revolution emerged from long processes of technological innovation and interaction across the Eurasian land mass.



Remember that a thousand years ago East Asia was responsible for much technological innovation. Gunpowder, paper and the compass were all inventions crucial to early modern Europe—and they all originally came from China.



Still, at the time of the Industrial Revolution itself, Europe—and Britain in particular—continued to practice “innovation by imitation”. 



One well-known example is that of printed calico, a type of cotton cloth much prized in Europe that originated in the Indian city of Calicut (Kozhikode).



In order to protect the English wool industry its import was banned in 1700. But an entire industry then grew up in Britain to print imported plain calico cloth in imitation of the original Indian product.



Many experts argue that neither Britain nor Europe had an economic advantage over areas such as the Indian region of Gujarat until the Industrial Revolution. They were just as commercialised and productive and sometimes benefited from better technologies.



None of this explains why the Industrial Revolution took off in Britain rather than in China or France. For this we have to turn to a number of other factors.



One of the most important was environmental—the availability of cheap, accessible coal in Britain. Coal was first used to provide fuel for heat-intensive industries such as potteries or furnaces.



Later it was used to provide steam power for the new factories. Britain was almost unique in having easy access to large reserves of coal, a far more efficient source of power than wood or charcoal.



Island



A second key factor was Britain’s geopolitical position as an island situated off the coast of the European continent. This favoured the development of British naval power and offered a degree of protection from continental warfare.



Naval power was crucial in allowing Britain to seize the trade routes and colonies that would help fund the Industrial Revolution and provide raw materials. 



Like other European nations, Britain was able to extract vast quantities of wealth from the New World and particularly from the slave trade and plantations.



But unlike feudal competitors like Spain or Portugal, capitalist merchants ran Britain. This made it more efficient at extracting wealth. It also meant that wealth could be used to fund the development of industrial capitalism.



In the 18th century, British ships transported some 1.6 million Africans to the British Caribbean alone to work and die as slaves. Britain also made extensive use of mercantilist trade policies to protect its new industries against foreign imports with high tariffs or outright bans.



But Marxists argue that there is more to the Industrial Revolution than all this. By the time of the Industrial Revolution social relations based on wage labour were already well established and Britain was essentially a capitalist country. 



The emergence of capitalism was by no means a gradual or smooth process that could be attributed to the “entrepreneurial spirit” of the British. 



It was a long period of economic and political change, punctuated by violent upheavals such as the English Revolution in the 17th century. In the early 18th century, Britain was the European country where capitalist social relations had become most firmly embedded.



Dominance



Two features of capitalism are key in understanding the Industrial Revolution in Britain. The first was the new capitalist class that had fought over the previous centuries to assert its dominance over British society.



The second was the drive of the capitalist system to accumulate capital through the relentless competition between capitalists. 



The combination of this assertive ruling class and the drive to accumulate helped accelerate technological innovation that had been going on for thousands of years. 



These factors provided the material basis for the growth of a “scientific culture” and the emergence of “inventive geniuses” like Watt.



Pre-capitalist ruling classes had been driven to raise armies to expand their territories or increase their own private consumption. But there were always limits to this sort of expansion. 



The capitalist class on the other hand, driven by competition, seeks to expand endlessly. In so doing it is constantly in search of new, more productive ways to combine human labour and technology.



One of the “heroes” of the Industrial Revolution is Richard Arkwright. He is a classic example of a capitalist who helped to drive innovation by applying new technologies in his cotton mills.



He did this not for the sake of science or innovation itself. He did so in order to out-compete his rivals and expand his business.



In 1769 he patented a spinning machine that could be used to produce cheap cotton cloth. He was able to quickly expand his business to multiple factories and hundreds of workers. This heralded the beginning of the age of factory production.



The new ruling class had already begun pushing unwanted peasants from the land. Now it squeezed them into the new mills and factories, creating the working class—the class that could challenge capitalism’s rapacious growth.



There is nothing particularly inventive about Britain or its people. Like the rest of humankind people who inhabit the British Isles can be lazy, stupid, stubbornly resistant to change and completely lacking in inspiration.



Yet throughout human history, social, political and environmental conditions have created moments when huge transformations like the Industrial Revolution can take place. These transformations were often focused initially in one geographical location that enjoyed particular advantages. 



These were moments when slowly accumulated changes were swiftly transformed into fundamental reconfigurations of the way we live.



Unfortunately we are still living in the world of capitalist exploitation that gave birth to the Industrial Revolution. If Britain gave a gift to the world it is certainly a double-edged one.

 



Industrial Revolution timeline



1619 British land first African slaves in colony of Virginia



1649 English revolution beheads King Charles I freeing merchants to develop capitalism



1709 Abraham Darby uses coke to smelt iron ore, replacing use of charcoal



1758 First threshing machine produced



1760-1820 Agricultural enclosures. Common rights lost as big farmers drive millions of poor people off the land



1765 James Hargreaves invents the Spinning Jenny, automating cloth weaving



1772 Bridgewater Canal completed, transports coal to Manchester and Liverpool. Starts mass building of transport canals



1775 James Watt builds first efficient steam engine



1779 First steam powered mills



1801 Robert Trevithick demonstrates a steam locomotive



1811-15 Luddite riots. Workers break machines in a protest at attacks on living standards and working conditions



1821 Michael Faraday demonstrates electro-magnetic rotation, the principle of the electric motor



1830 The Liverpool and Manchester Railway begins first regular commercial rail service



Owen Miller researches Korean politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in central London



ends Britain's Industrial Revolution: the birth of a new power



Drones: Waging war on civilians with a click of a mouse



In an era of hi-tech warfare, pilotless planes are supposed to kill only the “bad guys”. But, writes Siân Ruddick, the truth is that punishing civilians has always been part of the plan



Drones, or unmanned aircraft, have become a defining feature of the seemingly endless “war on terror”. The missile-loaded planes have been tested and used by the US since before 9/11.



They have no pilot—or rather, their pilot sits thousands of miles away with a joystick and a screen which shows them what the drone’s camera can see.



Barack Obama’s administration has consistently used them as its central way of carrying out bombing raids and surveillance missions.



Obama’s first drone strike in Pakistan came on 23 January 2009—three days after his inauguration. The missiles struck the house of Malik Gulistan Khan. Five members of his family were killed. “I lost my father, three brothers, and my cousin,” said Adnan, Malik’s 18 year old son.



Obama has presided over 278 drone strikes in total. And it’s not just a US tactic—Britain’s forces are increasingly relying on drones too.



This is partly in response to the simmering discontent on both sides of the Atlantic with a war without end. The deaths and injuries of soldiers make a deeply unpopular war even more so. 



So the fundamental piece of propaganda about drones is that they are precise. Drone enthusiasts claim that they only kill the people they target, meaning that they are the safest weapons for both soldiers and civilians.



Tragedy



But tragedy upon tragedy contradicts this lie. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has collated verified media and human rights reports to take a forensic look at the use of drones and the civilian casualties they cause.



On 4 June this year 16 people were killed and others injured in one of the deadliest US drone strikes in North Waziristan at Hasukhel village in Pakistan. A drone fired two missiles that struck a house in the village, killing six people on the spot and injuring five others.



A tribesman said, “Later, the drone fired another two missiles and killed ten people when villagers rushed there and started rescue work retrieving the bodies and pulling out the injured persons from the debris of the house.”



The most intensive use of drones is in Pakistan, where the US is fighting what it claims are Al Qaida militants on the border with Afghanistan. 



The 330 drone strikes on Pakistan since 2004 have killed at least 2,500 people. Credible reports say that at least 482 of these were civilians. In should be noted that men of fighting age are never categorised as civilians by Western forces.



Reports of the attacks are horrific. On 23 June 2009 the CIA attacked a public funeral attended by thousands, in an effort to kill a senior Taliban commander. Between 18 and 45 civilians were among 83 killed. 



At first the Pakistani state tacitly supported the strikes, saying that terrorism had to be tackled in border provinces. But anger among ordinary people has forced the state to condemn the attacks.



The US regularly attacks people trying to help the injured from drone strikes. This includes in villages, mosques and at funerals and weddings. 



And on 3 June, a drone strike targeted people gathered for funeral prayers for victims killed in an earlier attack. The intended Taliban targets appear to have survived, although up to ten people died. A mosque was also struck last month killing at least three worshippers. 



Airfield



The operation is widely thought to be run by the CIA, which launches strikes from the remote Shamsi airfield. This is in Pakistan but only 50km from the Afghanistan border. Here drone aircraft are maintained and sent off on their murderous missions.



US drone strikes in Pakistan have risen from one a year in 2004 to one every four days under President Obama. And their use isn’t limited to Pakistan. In the Yemeni city of Jaar, a US drone strike killed up to 26 civilians on 15 May.



Even Afghanistan’s puppet president Hamid Karzai has been forced to speak out against them as he struggles to cling onto office.



As recently as 9 June this year, a US drone bombed Logar in eastern Afghanistan. The strike killed civilians including 18 women, children and elderly people gathered for a wedding party.



This same nightmare has kept repeating for the Afghan people since the US invaded and occupied in 2001.Night raids by troops and drone strikes make a deadly combination. The US is waging this drone war in anticipation of withdrawal by the end of 2014.



We don’t know exactly how many civilians have been killed by drone strikes in Afghanistan but the United Nations believes it is well into the hundreds. 



Although advances in drone technology continue apace, drones are part of a long history of arms-length state murder. From the first development of firearms to bombs thrown out of planes in the First World War to the use of cruise missiles, technology has been used to “sterilise” acts of war. 



Bombing raids have been used from Guernica and Dresden to Afghanistan as a way to intimidate populations, crush cities and break the resistance of ordinary people. Drones are the latest barbarism in this long, terrible tradition.



Grim reaper firms are piling on profits



Drones don’t just mean mass murder—they are also big money. There are drone research and development projects in 44 countries. Many weapons companies are now moving into the growing market.



General Atomics was awarded a £55 million contract to provide logistical support for its Warrior drones being developed for the US army. 



This follows a £33 million contract for spare parts, deployment readiness packages and ground support equipment for the MQ-9 Reaper—an unmanned aerial vehicle also known as the Predator B drone. 



But the full extent of drone profiteering remains shadowy. Noah Schachtman, a contributing editor for Wired magazine said in December 2010, “With the Pakistan strikes… you don’t know who these people are. The extent to which contractors are involved is shrouded in mystery.”



Each drone carries up to 14 Hellfire missiles, made for blowing up tanks. Each individual missile costs £43,000, weighs 45kg, and can easily kill everyone in a small building.



Part of the appeal is that drones are far cheaper than fighter planes. A drone can cost £25 million, while a jet can cost over £200 million.



The system works a bit like a console games controller. Each drone has high-resolution cameras and sensors to see things on the ground—and heat sensors, so they can tell where people are.



Losing count of the dead



Just how many civilians have drone strikes killed? The US seems unwilling to count. One White House official claimed that the number of civilian casualties from drones in Pakistan was in “single digits”.



On 4 November last year the CIA said that 60 had died. In the same month a senior US official said it was “a handful”. And in August 2011 a CIA official claimed that “zero” civilians had been killed.



Yet this would mean that fewer civilians were killed by drones under Obama than George Bush, even though drone use has increased.



UN investigates drones ‘war crime’



The UN Human Rights Council is investigating claims that drone strikes violate international law. UN official Christof Heyns this week requested information from the US government as to why they try to kill, rather than capture, suspected terrorists.



Heyns believes some of the strikes could constitute war crimes. The Obama administration has so far been reluctant to provide any information. It ignored a similar request from the UN in 2009.



Britain won’t be left behind



Drones are not just a US tactic. Britain’s use of drones in Afghanistan has risen dramatically. RAF pilots, based in the Nevada desert in the US, have fired 281 Hellfire missiles in Afghanistan.



In the past 12 months alone 105 such attacks have been ordered. The British government says it doesn’t know how many civilians have been killed in the drone attacks.



For more on drones from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism go to www.thebureauinvestigates.com



ends Drones: Waging war on civilians with a click of a mouse



ends Features section



starts section What Socialists Say 



Ballots: the height of democracy?



Our rulers encourage us to see ourselves as individuals, not as a class with collective interests and strength. They want us to feel divided and weak.



Trade unions bring workers together to fight as a collective. But there are disagreements over how best to build a strong union.



And while some ways of organising can overcome the atomisation our rulers encourage, others entrench it.



For example, some union leaders see membership ballots as the height of democracy.



Only a minority of members attend union meetings, they say. Why should they get to make the decisions? Isn’t it better to have a full membership ballot that gives everyone an equal say?



But without a chance to collectively discuss, argue and ask questions, ballots don’t give everyone an informed say. This can leave workers passive and isolated. The most nervous or cynical worker is left unable to voice concerns and hear views that could boost their confidence.



This can make all the pressures and ideological muck the system slings at workers seem stronger. When workers feel isolated, it’s easier for the idea that strikes can’t win, for instance, to take hold.



And constant ballots can grind people down instead of motivating them. In a lively union meeting where people take on such arguments, anyone wavering can be won around.



Mass meetings are a chance for workers to have arguments out. People can feel more confident to go forward if they’ve thrashed out the issues in a meeting. Mass meetings are also a chance to air grievances against the boss—and challenge union officials.



Pessimism



Some right wing trade unionists characterise mass meetings as a way for left groups to manipulate and bully other workers. In truth what they don’t like is the fact that workers can be won away from pessimism.



Meanwhile right wing politicians characterise picketing workers as undemocratic. But pickets do not force their own views, unaccountably, onto other workers.



They try to impose the democratic decision of union members to strike on all workers. That is the point of a picket line. The undemocratic thing to do is to ignore those decisions by crossing a picket line.



How workers organise makes a concrete difference in struggle. For instance, women admin workers in west Yorkshire recently picketed a bin depot and called on workers not to cross it. Bin workers held a mass meeting outside the depot and voted not to cross.



If unions had emailed bin workers to ask if they wanted to cross the result could have been very different. But the strikers talked to bin workers, and the bin workers argued with each other—collectively considering all the arguments. This made the difference.



Socialists fight for workers to be active and not simply look to other people to lead them. We want people to fight for control over their own struggles and feel empowered from being involved in them.



That means arguing for mass meetings, and workplace and union branch organisation—things where all workers can come together, discuss and argue, and organise action.



This self-activity builds confidence and makes workers aware of their own power. And ultimately these things can help workers build a different world altogether.



ends Ballots: the height of democracy?



ends What Socialists Say section



starts section Letters 



Letters



Labour council oversees deskilling of its workforce



All this week I’ve seen about 30 young people in Braunstone Park lopping off branches and trimming the grass as I walk my dogs. They didn’t seem to have any special clothes or equipment so I asked some of them what was going on.



They said they were part of a charity project for British Gas to do up the park. I asked if they were being paid. One said yes, another said no and an third said “I’m here because I want to be.” 



Then a couple of supervisors came over and started having a joke with me. I think they wanted to stop me asking questions.



Until a few years ago the park was looked after by council employees, but they were made redundant and it got more and more run down. Recently it’s been in a right state.



So now you’ve got a skilled job that people used to be paid for being done on the cheap by British Gas. The Labour council goes along with it and we’re supposed to be grateful. You’d hope a Labour council would be against replacing skilled workers with untrained people.



This kind of thing makes me so angry. I’m retired now. I joined the International Socialists (forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party) in the 1960s. My parents were both solid Labour.



My mother asked why I’d joined with revolutionaries when Labour was providing us with everything we needed. She must be turning in her grave now.



Mal Deakin



Leicester



Tax the Tories



We should tax the Tory party’s overpaid donors more heavily. It’s grotesque that such people have so much wealth while so many grow hungry.



I can’t believe the harsh poverty that’s growing rapidly in Britain. The Guardian newspaper recently highlighted how teachers are bringing in food for hungry pupils.



Food banks are appearing too, so that hungry families can get fed. It’s like a return to Victorian times.



Graeme Kemp



Wellington, Shropshire



Boss’s big pay off



Tory-run Kent County Council was forced to declare the amount paid to former managing director Katherine Kerswell, when she left her job after just 16 months.



Kerswell was on an annual salary of £140,000 when she departed last December. At first the council stubbornly refused to reveal the amount of the pay off, and now we know why. It was £420,000. Apparently we are not “all in this together”.



To put in context, £420,000 would pay for 35 teaching assistants to work in our primary schools, developing key skills in literacy and numeracy to our young children in society.



Tom Johnstone



Kent



Remember Rodney King



The media couldn’t ignore the death of Rodney King, the ordinary black man who was brutally assaulted by police. But they tried to forget that the acquittal of the officers responsible led to the biggest urban uprising in US history.



Mike Davis said in Socialist Review, “Few of the thousands arrested were actually gang members and only about a third were even African American.



“The majority were poor immigrants or their children, arrested for looting diapers, shoes and televisions from neighbourhood stores.”



Today that sounds all too familiar.



Kimberley Harris



Liverpool



We’ll miss socialist singer



I was sad to hear socialist entertainer Brian Hibbard has died. He was best known as the lead singer of the Flying Pickets who had Christmas number one in 1983 with “Only You”.



The Flying Pickets came out of the 7:84 theatre group. This got its name because 7 percent of the population own 84 percent of the wealth.



Brian was an actor in Coronation Street. He appeared as Karaoke Dai in the black comedy Twin Town and starred in the anti-racist film Little White Lies.



In 2003 he addressed a huge anti-war rally in Swansea alongside fellow actors and activists. He will be greatly missed.



Martin Chapman



Swansea



Support trans woman jailed after attack



Cece McDonald is an African American trans woman who was violently attacked outside a bar in Minneapolis in June last year. 



She survived, however one of her attackers was killed. CeCe was the only person arrested and is now facing 41 months in a men’s prison—a very dangerous place for a trans woman. 



She has been sentenced this month, the anniversary of the Stonewall riots when trans women of colour led the battle by LGBT people who were tired of police harassment, against the New York police department. 



This year World Pride will be in London, where LGBT and straight people will march united and demand an end to transphobia and homophobia.



Go to supportcece.wordpress.com



Max Brophy



Leeds



Real meaning of LOL texts



Remember all the jokes about how David Cameron regularly signed off texts to Rebekah Brooks LOL (“lots of love”) until she told him it meant “laugh out loud”?



After his performance at the Leveson inquiry where his most frequent seemed to be “I don’t remember”, it looks like it also means “let off lightly”.



Nigel Coward



West London



Abandon the health service?



I can only assume that the government want doctors to abandon the NHS. After all, the bills will get paid a lot quicker if they can get us to partly fund health out of our pittance of disposable income. All in this together? My arse!



Sharon Spears



Croydon



Don’t just put up with it



I can’t fathom for the life of me why the British put up with the crap our governments dish out. For god’s sake what does it take to put an end to capitalism and inequalities in this world. 



Kim O’Sullivan



on Facebook



Renationalise our transport



I work for one of the big bus companies and fully support our union Unite in calling this week’s strike. It’s about time they renationalised the buses and railways again and ran the transport network properly.



Steve



on Facebook



Bonds keep bankers happy



The morning after last week’s election, Greek ten-year bond rates were still above 25 percent. It’s not surprising the bankers were happy. Much of the capital was borrowed from the European Central Bank at 1 percent. So a risk-free profit of 24 percent is virtually guaranteed. 



Dermot Smyth



Chesterfield



ends Letters



ends Letters section



starts section Reviews 



TV: The Secret History of Our Streets



From 1886 Charles Booth spent 17 years visiting and mapping every street in London, recording the social conditions of the space and its residents. 



His maps used a colour coded system, with yellow indicating the “servant keeping classes”, down to black for the “vicious and semi-criminal”. 



This BBC2 series follows the history of six streets from Booth’s mapping to present day, exploring the development in terms of their class nature. All episodes are available until 18 July on the BBC’s iPlayer service.



ends TV: The Secret History of Our Streets



Film: Where Do We Go Now?



Nadine Labaki is the Lebanese director of Caramel. Her latest film is set in an unspecified Middle Eastern village where Muslims and Christians live.



Described as an “all-encompassing comic allegory”, it portrays a group of women organising to end sectarian fighting.



Where Do We Go Now? is on general release



ends Film: Where Do We Go Now?



Line of Duty: Is this corruption thriller a drama for our times?



Simon Basketter



The police are corrupt. That is the simple premise of the new BBC thriller series Line of Duty.



It is set in a fictional anti-corruption department run by zealous Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar).



The department’s focus is on charismatic Detective Chief Inspector Tony Gates (Lennie James), whose unit returns the best crime figures in the Metropolitan Police.



The programme swipes at a world where crimes are solved because they are easily solved. The cops are set up to meet targets and pile on convictions to keep the arrest rate high.



Gates appears to be an exemplary police officer, a hard-working family man. But there are catches. He is clearly too good to be true.



The question is just how bad he is. He is having an affair with a woman who gets him to help cover up a minor traffic offence.



Detective Sergeant Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) ends up investigating Gates, after Gates refuses to make up an account of a shooting on an anti-terror raid. 



The opening sequence that shows the raid is a powerful and promising start to the five part series. The rotten reactionary nature of the cops is on view. 



The first episode opens up the possibility that beyond the prejudice and the tendency to close ranks, there is deeper corruption.



There was a little too much staring out of windows to indicate thinking. But it’s impressively acted and scripted.



If the collection of cop show staples—the old cop, the addicted cop etc—develops to be as nasty as they first appear, the series might just be a fitting police drama for the times.



Line of Duty starts on BBC2 on Tuesday 26 June at 9pm



ends Line of Duty: Is this corruption thriller a drama for our times?



Edward Burtynsky: Lifeless landscapes that only oil makes possible



As the Photographers’ Gallery reopens after a three-year break, Jonathan Dodds takes a look at Edward Burtynsky’s dramatic vision of the oil industry



The Photographers’ Gallery in London has reopened its doors with a new exhibition by Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky.



The exhibition, OIL, features works from the artist’s trilogy of oil photography—Extraction and Refinement, Transportation and Motor Culture, and The End of Oil.



They were inspired by Burtynsky’s “oil epiphany” in 1997. “It occurred to me that the vast, human-altered landscapes that I pursued and photographed for over twenty years were only made possible by oil.”



These landscapes dominate the gallery, in images taking us from the extraction of oil in the Alberta tar sands and the fields of California to its ultimate effects on the world around us, physical and environmental.



One series of photos looks down from a helicopter onto the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. We see tankers, tiny in comparison to the vast body of water stretching out around them. Slick black oil snakes out, casting a dark sheen for miles around.



We see the effects of an increasingly dangerous and desperate pursuit of oil. Next to it, another image shows a number of ships struggle to contain a blaze following the explosion which killed eleven workers on BP’s rig.



Viewpoint



Burtynsky’s images rarely contain evidence of human life. Shot on a large format camera, usually from a high viewpoint, the people on the oil fields simply don’t register alongside the huge structures of the oil industry.



An iPad app accompanies the exhibition, containing more images from the OIL series as well as essays, video and commentary. These are available to visitors to the exhibition.



The Photographers’ Gallery was founded 41 years ago as the first independent gallery in Britain devoted to photography. After a £8.9 million refurbishment, its new site is on Ramillies Street in central London.



This is twice the size of the old location near Leicester Square, which it left in 2008, and it now includes dedicated research and teaching spaces. New permanent features include a camera obscura onto Ramillies Street (opening times should be checked in advance).



Also new is the The Wall, a large screen on the ground floor. It forms part of a new digital programme seeking to explore the way that technology has altered our experience of images and our relationship to them.



The wall currently displays a series of images in the GIF format widely used on the internet, commissioned from artists to mark GIF’s 25 year anniversary.



Burtynsky’s OIL runs to Sunday 1 July at The Photographers’ Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW. Admission is free. Go to thephotographersgallery.org.uk for more details



ends Edward Burtynsky: Lifeless landscapes that only oil makes possible



ends Reviews section



starts section Background check 



The tax scams that shore up the profits of the rich



David Cameron has condemned Jimmy Carr’s tax scam as morally wrong but the Tories have entrenched tax benefits for the rich, writes Simon Basketter



Avoiding tax isn’t just for comedians and ageing boy bands—it is the way British capitalism operates.



The City of London is itself one big tax haven. Dodgy accountants and David Cameron talk about the importance of “being tax competitive”. 



What they really care about is making it easy for the rich to pay less tax through “light touch” regulation—which allows tax scams to flourish.



Here’s how one scheme works. Fat cat income and bonuses are paid into an offshore trust (see right). The trust then lends the cash back. There is no tax payable on a loan. This is only one of a myriad of mechanisms that the rich use to avoid paying tax.



First New Labour and then the Tories cut tax on profits. But it’s not enough for the rich. Out of the top 100 companies on the British stock market, the FSTE 100, 98 use tax havens.



At least £25 billion in tax is avoided every year according to the TUC. Rich individuals avoid £13 billion while the 700 largest corporations make up the rest.



A study last month by HM Revenue and Customs found that firms are using avoidance schemes to cut their income tax rate to an average of 10 percent.



Companies only pay tax on their profits. This means that it’s possible to structure your company so that, on paper, you are making almost nothing.



That’s how one third of Britain’s 700 top businesses got away with paying no tax at all in 2007, according to the National Audit Office.



Ownership



That year Debenhams received around £9 million in government money and paid nothing in tax. It did this by having a complex chain of ownership, structured to take account of “liabilities” which its owners control.



Debenhams can always make a loss—because the private equity firms that own it can juggle the interest rate on the loans they used to buy it up.



Another technique for avoiding tax is transfer pricing. Here, purchases and sales take place within the same company. Items are sold from high-tax countries to low ones, so cutting the amount of tax paid.



Tax havens come in to enable the rich to move their cash around but still have easy access to it. This is why just 90,000 people live on the British Channel Islands—yet 800,000 companies are registered there.



It’s estimated that there are 400,000 firms and around one trillion pounds worth of assets registered in Jersey alone. All are untaxed. Similarly, the British Virgin Islands have 30,000 people and 457,000 companies.



And according to the US government, some 75 percent of the world’s hedge funds are “located in” the British Caymans. There are some £4.5 trillion of US bank deposits located in British “crown colonies”.



British bosses sit at the heart of a global scam. The idea is to make poor people pay too much tax, rich people pay too little, and really rich people and companies pay hardly any at all.



Even a Jimmy Carr joke is funnier than that.



Tories protect the bosses



The Tories introduced a scam allowing companies to move more money to tax havens and pay just 5.5 percent tax on it in the last budget.



They are also introducing territorial taxation for companies. This means that once money is declared in one place it can’t be taxed in any other. This will encourage offshore tax avoidance.



On top of this, planned new rules on tax avoidance could hand more control to private accountants. The plan will have more tax experts looking at which tax exemptions are illegal, rather than HM Revenue and Customs.



Tax campaigner Richard Murphy has compared this to “putting the foxes in charge of the hen house”.



Lib Dem Vince Cable says he wants to make companies more transparent. His proposals mean that companies will have to say how much they pay their bosses. But the plans won’t force firms to pay bosses any less.



Laws make sure the poor pay



Most workers simply pay tax. But for the wealthy and for companies, tax law is designed to cut the amount they have to pay. British tax law is the longest and most complex in the world. 



The complete Tolley’s Tax Guide—the handbook of tax law—is 11,520 pages long. That’s more than double the 4,998 pages of the 1997 edition. The section on corporation tax on profits alone is now 1,897 pages.



Nicholas Shaxon writes in his book Treasure Islands, “Imagine you are in a supermarket and you see well-dressed individuals passing through a special checkout.



“There is also a large item added to your bill, extra expenses, which subsidises their purchases. Sorry, says the supermarket manager, if we didn’t charge you more they would shop elsewhere. Now, pay up.”



Amazon in Luxembourg



Shopping giant Amazon generated sales of £7.6 billion over three years—but did not pay any corporation tax on the profits. In 2006 ownership was transferred to Luxembourg.



Vodafone and Apple are also based there, making it the download capital of Europe. And it is, on the basis of bank transfers, rather surprisingly the richest country in the EU.



Cameron keeps it in the family



Cameron’s father was an early adopter of tax avoidance schemes. Cameron senior was the chairman of Close International Asset management and other tax avoidance firms that ran funds in Guernsey, Jersey and Panama.



Cameron’s father-in-law, Viscount Astor, has a home on the Scottish island of Jura. It is a favourite holiday spot for the Camerons. The home is owned by a company registered in the Bahamas.



Millionaire cabinet members including Andrew Mitchell, Philip Hammond, and Jeremy Hunt all avoid tax too. George Osborne has a £4 million trust fund, most of which is invested offshore.



The very rich pay very little



There were 71 billionaires in the UK in 2010. The total tax they paid in 2009-2010 was estimated to be £174.5 million. That’s a tax rate of 0.17 percent.



In 2006, the last time there was a breakdown of the figures, two billionaires made up some 65 percent of the payments. 



If billionaires stuck their money in an ordinary savings account and received two percent interest, they would pay around a billion pounds in tax on the interest alone. That’s 250 times more than they pay now.



Nice “work” if you can get it.



A helping hand for hedge funds



Nearly all hedge fund managers pay a 10 percent tax rate on their income. There are 15,000 earning more than a million a year.



Income from private equity and hedge funds is classed as “carried interest”, which keeps it away from the tax collectors. This technicality was brought in after payments in gold or antiques were made taxable.



ends The tax scams that shore up the profits of the rich



ends Background check section



starts section News & Reports 



Unite conference: Debate over union link to Labour Party



Dave Sewell in Brighton



The Unite union’s conference debated the union’s link with the Labour Party on Tuesday morning. The union donates more than £20 million to the party each year.



General secretary Len McCluskey spoke for a motion from the union executive calling for more “engagement with Labour at the grassroots”.



“This is about winning our party back so it that it represents working people again,” he said, “and it's about winning working people back to Labour so they can sweep the Tories back at the next election.”



He called for 5,000 members of Unite to join or rejoin Labour and get active in their constituencies.



McCluskey added, “When Labour gets things wrong we will speak out against them. That's why I spoke out against Miliband's shameful comments on public sector pay. But I welcome their argument that austerity isn't working. That's the argument that can win elections.”



A different motion called for putting pressure on Labour by making Unite's funding conditional. The motion called for 10 percent of funding that would have been spent on Labour diverted into campaigns for trade union freedom, unless Labour campaigns on the issue.



Diverted



Another 10 percent would be diverted to the union's dispute fund unless the Labour leadership publicly supports Unite members taking industrial action.



Ray Morrell moved the motion saying, “Ed Miliband is at best looking both ways and at worst offering more of the same. He even boasted about crossing picket lines.



“It's all very well to send members to join Labour and eventually hope to replace MPs when they decide they have a better future on the board of some corporation. But that won't win anything for our members now.” 



Sally Pirrie from the IT and communication sector said, “Of course we are Labour people and there's no shame in that. But we've had years of saying that there will be change and reform in the party. We cannot keep paying into Labour if it does not deliver.”



Ray concluded, “We need some leverage over the party if we are to have any clout to support reps who are fighting for Unite policies inside Labour.” Around a quarter of delegates voted to support the motion—but the executive's policy was eventually passed.



ends Unite conference: Debate over union link to Labour Party



Sheffield journalists ballot over job losses



Journalists working for newspapers in Sheffield are preparing to ballot against job losses. Eight page production roles have been targeted at the Johnston Press division covering North Midlands and South Yorkshire.



Five of those work for the Sheffield Star and Telegraph, where the ballot is due to take place. The justification is a change in working practices as the papers are being relaunched. Two chief photographers in Sheffield and Doncaster are also targeted to go.



Consultation between management and the National Union of Journalists was starting this week, as the company's cutbacks to enable it it to pay its £350 million debt to the banks has also seen it announce a 15 per cent cuts in journalists' jobs in Leeds and another 3.6 newsroom posts going in Portsmouth.



In other non-unionised parts of the company, the latest cuts have been severe: advert preparation work is being outsourced to India, losing at least 60 jobs across the company, and at Sheffield alone, 10 out of the 21 advertising staff are to go.



NUJ convenor in Sheffield, Julia Armstrong, said, "We already passed a motion of no confidence in our management after they axed one editor and deputy editor, because hard-pressed staff have to take on the work they do, and the latest redundancies were the last straw. The anger and demoralisation are huge.



"The company expects us to pay the price with our jobs for its poor investment decisions that have left it hock to the banks, who have just upped the interest rates on their loans. It's getting so that people dread Fridays, as that's when our MD keeps announcing job losses."



ends Sheffield journalists ballot over job losses



Downing Street protest against extradition



Some 300 people protested outside Downing Street last Saturday against the extradition of British citizens to the US for trial.



The families of Gary McKinnon, the families of Richard O'Dwyer, Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan came together with MPs and Human rights organisations to present a letter to the government. 



Some protesters wore “Extradite me, I’m British” T-Shirts, with “It could be you written across the back.”



The people resisting deportation are held in detention. The families have resisted media attempts to divide off the Muslim families over the different issues for extradition.



All say that no one should be extradited under the 2003 law which says British citizens can be sent to the US without the American government having to provide evidence to back its request.



ends Downing Street protest against extradition



Pensioners on the march in Blackpool



Mary Phillips



More than 1,000 angry pensioners marched through Blackpool on Tuesday of last week at the start of the annual Pensioners’ Parliament. 



At the rally speakers said the Health and Social Care Act marks a low point of democracy in this country. 



The official poverty level in the UK is £178 a week, but the guaranteed state pension will only be £140. 



The care minister Paul Burstow had agreed to speak at the parliament on Wednesday and answer questions from the floor. He pulled out at the last moment.We had a much better event anyway without him.



ends Pensioners on the march in Blackpool



Fire authority cuts plan burns out



London’s fire authority has reversed its decision to privatise fire control in a victory for the unions.



The authority had been planning to sell off the 999 service. But fire authority workers’ Unison, GMB and FBU unions campaigned against the plans.



ends Fire authority cuts plan burns out



RF Brookes pie workers fight bosses' carve-up



Workers at the RF Brookes pie factory in South Wigston, Leicester were set to strike again from this Thursday. 



They are fighting plans to cut hundreds of jobs and slash redundancy pay.



The BFAWU bakers’ union members plan to be out until next Tuesday. They struck for two days last week and the week before. 



Anthony, one of the strikers, said, “With these bosses it’s like a poker game. They make promises to some workers in an attempt to divide them from the others, but we know they can’t keep them.”



ends RF Brookes pie workers fight bosses' carve-up



Cambridge student Owen Holland has his suspension cut



A Cambridge university student who was suspended for taking part in a protest against Tory minister David Willetts has had his punishment dramatically cut.



Owen Holland’s suspension was reduced from two and a half years to one term. 



Staff and students showed their support for Owen outside of his appeal hearing last Friday.



Go to www.defendtherighttoprotest.org



ends Cambridge student Owen Holland has his suspension cut



Dewsbury says no to racist EDL



Anti-racists were set to stand up to the English Defence League in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, this Saturday.



They have organised a “Celebration of Unity in Dewsbury” to counter them.



Assemble 11am, Saturday 30 June, corner of Foundry St and Market Place, Dewsbury.



ends Dewsbury says no to racist EDL



Gove says he will force Downhills school to become academy



Tory education secretary Michael Gove plans to force Downhills Primary School in Haringey, north London, to become an academy.



Gove announced the move after the results of a consultation showed that 94 percent of parents opposed the plan. He wants to hand the school over to the Harris Federation.



One teacher told Socialist Worker, “It’s important that we struck because we’ve shown we won’t take things lying down.”



Julie Davies, branch secretary of Haringey NUT union, added, “We’ve got a live ballot and we can keep striking. It doesn’t end here.”



Meanwhile NUT members at nearby Noel Park school are balloting for strikes over similar plans.



ends Gove says he will force Downhills school to become academy



Kimberley School on strike



Teachers in the NUT union at Kimberley School in Nottingham began a three-day strike on Monday of this week.



This follows strikes on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, strikes on 13 and 14 June and 29 May. The walkout was the latest action in their campaign to stop the school becoming an academy. The school is due to be privatised from September this year.



Send messages of support to maria.fawcett@nottsnut.co.uk



ends Kimberley School on strike



Education round-up



Birmingham university strikes over pay



Support staff at Birmingham University struck over low pay last Thursday and Friday.



Over 100 Unison union members turned out in the rain to take part in protests. 



Support staff who earn as little as £13,200 a year compared to the vice chancellor’s £419,000 salary. 



Students, including newly elected student union officers, joined the protest in a show of unity between students and staff. 



Matt Raine, secretary, Birmingham University Unison



Don’t sack Manchester Met rep



Workers are preparing to lobby governors at Manchester Metropolitan University in defence of union rep Christine Vie.



Christine, who has worked at the university for 20 years, is the only worker facing compulsory redundancy. 



Christine is vice chair of the UCU union at the university and is also on the union’s national executive committee. 



Management want to close the department she works in and make her compulsorily redundant.



Christine told Socialist Worker, “They want to make me redundant by 31 July. 



“I’ve tried to get redeployment to work in a different department. But management have said they are not prepared to pay for retraining.”



The lobby is at 9am, 29 June, Ormond Building. Rush messages of support to c.vie@mmu.ac.uk and messages of protest to john.brooks@mmu.ac.uk



Sign the petition at ucu.org.uk/supportchristinevie



Salford university fights redundancies



Lecturers at Salford university walked out on strike on Tuesday of this week against compulsory redundancies.



More than 70 percent of the UCU union members backed strikes in a recent ballot.



Scottish protest over teaching cuts



Education workers and students lobbied the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh on Wednesday of last week. 



They were protesting a 21 percent cut in funding for teaching and learning and the loss of over 1,000 jobs in further education.



ends Education round-up



Socialist Teachers Alliance AGM: Vote yes to strikes in autumn



Paul McGarr



The Socialist Teachers Alliance (STA) held its annual general meeting last Saturday. There was serious discussion of the prospect of major campaigns and strikes in the coming months.



The STA is one of the key left groupings within the NUT union and has supporters in leading positions within the union. Supporters of Socialist Worker in the NUT are active within the STA.



The NUT has just launched a national ballot of members to back strikes and action short of a strike over pay, pensions and workload. It hopes to take action alongside the other main teaching union, the NASUWT.



A yes vote is likely to lead to action short of a strike by both unions in September followed by a national strike in October or early November.



Such a strike would involve 500,000 teachers and close almost all schools in England and Wales. 



It would come around the same time as the TUC march against austerity, and other unions could coordinate their struggles against the government with it.



Priority



Everyone at Saturday’s meeting agreed that the key priority had to be on winning the ballot with the biggest possible turnout. 



This means pushing for the maximum number of school-based meetings to engage as many members as possible. 



Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS civil service workers’ union, also spoke at the meeting.



He warned that lessons had to be learned so that we did not repeat the previous errors in the pensions campaign.



STA members discussed the tensions between a focus on sectional unity within teaching and wider unity with other unions. This will be needed to defeat the government rather than simply secure sectional concessions.



It is important that these discussions and debates are carried out among rank and file members of the union at the same time as prioritising winning the ballot.



ends Socialist Teachers Alliance AGM: Vote yes to strikes in autumn



Ballot for DWP call centres



Dave Owens, PCS DWP executive committee (pc)



Over 6,000 PCS members in 32 call centres are voting in a consultative ballot on industrial action over working conditions. It closes on 11July.



The PCS union Department for Work and Pensions group executive committee met last week to discuss the campaign. 



A number of improvements have been achieved following strikes last year, including an end to restrictions on toilet breaks. But letting workers piss when they want isn’t enough to settle. 



Workers are still denied access to genuine flexible working as available elsewhere in DWP and are pressured by unrealistic call time targets.



And in a staffing dispute in the Mersey Job Centre district, the four branches involved are resolved to strike again if an agreement cannot be reached.



ends Ballot for DWP call centres



Unite conference: Len McCluskey attacks Tory anti-union laws



Dave Sewell in Brighton



The second policy conference of the Unite union began in Brighton on Monday of this week.



Opening the conference for the first time as general secretary, Len McCluskey attacked “judges and governments of both parties” for using anti-union laws to prevent strikes.



“Any politician thinking of putting unions outside the law should beware what they wish for,” he warned. “You will rue the day.”



McCluskey praised Unite’s strategy of “leverage”—organising protests and stunts to put pressure on intransigent employers. He also defended the union’s link with the Labour Party.



One motion would have seen 10 percent of Unite’s funding for the Labour Party diverted towards campaigning for trade union freedoms. This fell though a quarter of delegates voted for it.



The conference agreed on economic strategies, including demanding the banks are nationalised under democratic control.



In the session on health and safety, one haulage worker listed colleagues who had died from cancer and argued for stronger action against diesel fumes.



A fringe meeting in the evening discussed Unite’s campaigns against the far right, with the union’s political director Steve Hart and Weyman Bennett from Unite Against Fascism.



ends Unite conference: Len McCluskey attacks Tory anti-union laws



Fighting to save jobs at Coryton



Around 100 people protested in Purfleet, Essex, on Monday of this week as part of the fight to save the threatened Coryton oil refinery.



The Unite union’s protest was a last-ditch effort to demand the government steps in to save the threatened refinery. Some 800 workers face the sack if it shuts—200 of them this week alone.



Russell Jackson from Unite was on the protest. He said, “We’re hoping to bring notice to Coryton oil refinery. 



“We don’t seem to be listened to at the moment. We need to pull attention to our plight. No one will listen to us unless we take some action.”



The protesting workers blocked the gate of the nearby Vopak oil refinery, in an effort to block oil tankers. 



They held a petrol station banner in front of the entrance. It read, “Shell apologise for the temporary closure of this site.” But police broke up the picket.



Coryton is owned by Petroplus, which went bust in January. The job cuts are being made by administrators Price Waterhouse Coopers.



Linda McCulloch, national officer for Unite, said, “The workers at Coryton feel as though they have been led down the garden path by the administrators and let down by the government who continue to sit on their hands and refuse to offer state aid.”



ends Fighting to save jobs at Coryton



PC Simon Harwood trial



The manslaughter trial of a police officer accused of killing Ian Tomlinson has heard a witness describe Tomlinson as “not posing any threat to the officers”.



The witness added, “I had the impression that the officer was making an example of him.”



Ian Tomlinson died shortly after PC Simon Harwood struck him with a baton and shoved him to the ground during G20 protests on 1 April 2009.



The evidence came from a statement from American businessman Christopher La Jaunie, who filmed events on his mobile phone.



Giuseppe Di-Cecio, who worked nearby, also said Tomlinson did not look like a threat to the police.



PC Harwood denies the charges. The trial continues.



ends PC Simon Harwood trial



Sean Rigg inquest hears from hostel manager



The inquest into the death of Sean Rigg has heard how staff at the hostel he was staying in made five 999 calls to police.



Sean had a history of mental health problems and was staying at a hostel that specialises in caring for people with similar problems.



On Tuesday of last week hostel manager Angela Wood told the inquest, “I remember remarking that we’d see Sean in a couple of months when he was well.”



She recounted how she felt when the Rigg family barrister told her the news of Sean’s death.



“I think at first I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying and then disbelief, because I’d gone to my bed thinking Sean was safe,” she said.



Sean died in Brixton police station in August 2008 after being arrested and restrained by police.



The inquest continues.



ends Sean Rigg inquest hears from hostel manager



Unison conference: Leadership wants to move on from pensions



Tom Walker in Bournemouth



There was little debate on pensions at the Unison national conference in Bournemouth last week. The union’s executive did its best to try to move on from the issue.



The conference spent half an hour on pensions on its last day, with eight speakers on a motion in total. 



The composite motion passed does include some dissenting amendments. It says the deal “breached a number of fundamental principles” such as raising the retirement age and replacing final salary pension schemes with career average ones.



But unfortunately the motion did not talk about industrial action, only a TUC-backed campaign. On the pensions deals, it called for individual consultation over each pension scheme within the union’s different service groups.



The conference voted to change Unison’s rules to allow it to expel members of the BNP and other fascist groups.



This had been blocked in previous years by fears that such a rule could be used against the left as part of the “witch hunt” in the union. 



But left executive member Jon Rogers said that this year’s rule was specifically about banning members of groups that are “contrary to the equality objectives of Unison”.



Tower Hamlets delegate John McLoughlin added, “No more delay. Get the fascists out of the union.” The rule change passed overwhelmingly.



Conference also voted to put a cap of three years on the length of “rule I” suspensions and bans from office.



Last year a call for two years was narrowly lost on a card vote, reflecting the widespread desire to see an end to the witch hunt. This year the executive backed the three years position, which passed unanimously.



Joan Pritchard-Jones from Bolton pledged, “This doesn’t mean two years is off the table—I’ll be back.



Around 100 people came to a fringe meeting to oppose the witch hunt. Socialists Yunus Bakhsh and Glenn Kelly spoke about the treatment they have faced at the hands of the union machine.



After the meeting their supporters marched back to the conference hall, chanting “When activists are under attack, stand up, fight back.”



After a hard-fought debate the conference backed a hard position on Palestine. The motion passed calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions and brands Israel an “apartheid” regime.



The executive supported the motion. Some delegates spoke against but found themselves in a small minority.



Sue Brierley from Wolverhampton said, “I’d like to say to the people who oppose this motion: Palestine will be free.”



The conference also passed a motion supporting the Tamil people’s struggle against the Sri Lankan state.



Neville Lawrence, the father of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence, was a guest speaker at the conference.



He spoke about how unions have been a key part of the campaign for justice for Stephen.



“Every door was closed to my family and I,” he said. “It was not until Unison’s conference that doors began to open. I’m here because I want to say thank you.”



ends Unison conference: Leadership wants to move on from pensions



Reclaiming Our NHS: activists challenge government's assault



Around 400 people gathered at the Reclaiming Our NHS conference last Saturday in London. The conference was jointly organised by the NHS Support Federation and Keep Our NHS Public. 



Speakers included Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee. She said the government’s attacks on the NHS are “a template for their plan for all services”.



She added that the plan was “completely insane because the NHS is the issue that is going to bring this government down”.



John Lister, who recently produced a study into A&E closures, said, “We need some very specific campaigning, but the more we build a unity of purpose, the more we can defend the public sector.”



Activists argued that, since privatisation will be implemented unevenly across Britain, there was a need to campaign at a local and a national level. 



Activists discussed protesting outside and inside council scrutiny meetings and targeting private firms as well as building the national TUC demo on 20 October.



Celebrate the NHS to keep Virgin out of it. Keep Our NHS Public protests across the country Saturday 30 June. www.facebook.com/events/363297050379410



ends Reclaiming Our NHS: activists challenge government's assault



Essex firefighters set to strike



Over 1,000 firefighters in Essex were set to strike for eight hours on Thursday of this week.



Their FBU union says that if the latest cuts go ahead, one in five firefighters in the county will have lost their jobs since 2008.



The union was in conciliation talks at Acas as Socialist Worker went to press.



lThe union has set future dates for a one-hour strike on 7 July, 24 hours on 18 July, two hours on 18 August and five hours on 18 October.



No national action



The FBU leadership again called no national action over pay, jobs or pensions at its conference—but did abolish the union’s equality representatives.



This year’s scaled-down “special conference” was the first to be held since the union voted to switch to biennial conferences last year to cut costs.



The only thing that seemed to be special about the conference was that executive council resolutions all carried while delegates hardly got a look in. 



In the debate on reorganisation of the union, delegates arguing to keep the LGBT, black and ethnic minority, and women’s reps got good applause.



But when it came to the vote, the sections lost. They will now have no voting reps at any level of the union. This prompted them to leave the floor of conference in protest.



Problems in the FBU will not be solved by axing equalities sections, but by fighting back.



Jaz Thomas, vice chair, Avon FBU



ends Essex firefighters set to strike



Sheffield recycling strikers are going all out to win



Dean Wragg and Mark Bailey, Sheffield recycling strikers, and Bea Kay, Sheffield GMB steward



Some 35 GMB union members from Sheffield Recycling Centres began an all-out strike last Saturday.



The workers are fighting against cuts to opening hours, the loss of five jobs and reduced pay for remaining workers.



They have already taken 21 days of intermittent strikes. Now they have escalated.



Sheffield council, private firm Veolia and charity Sova Recycling have refused to meet to discuss strikers’ demands.



Management has also refused to meet at the conciliation service Acas to discuss the dispute.



Strikers know that money from recycling at the five sites in the city could easily cover the costs of running the service without making cuts. 



And there is enough for workers, who are currently paid the minimum wage, to get decent hourly pay.



Workers are also baffled as to why, if money is so short, it takes three tiers of management to run this service. Management has not been threatened with cuts.



Veolia gets £941,000 from the council for recycling and gives Sova £600,000 to run the service.



The proposed cuts will see opening hours on four sites reduced to weekends only for the public. They would leave one site open all week for companies only.



This means that workers will only be paid for 22 hours a week between October and March. 



Opening the Blackstock Road site for companies only will allow Sova to use publicly funded premises to compete with other private sector trade disposal sites.



Workers are concerned that this could lead to more job cuts.



The site that is to become solely for business use is the only one with level access.



So the proposal will deprive disabled and some older people from using the recycling sites.



Management at Sova has also refused to pay for washing time or for training for handling asbestos and other important health and safety issues.



This comes alongside other environmentally damaging changes introduced by Veolia.



These include charging for emptying garden waste bins and a proposal to move to fortnightly bin collections.



It’s important to note that Sova Recycling is part of the Sova charity. 



They have threatened to use volunteers for the charity to work during the strike.



It is important that this dispute gets widespread support.



If you are in Sheffield, visit the picket lines at the recycling centres and show your support.



Send messages of support, workplace collections and trade union donations made payable to GMB, c/o Pete Davies, GMB Office, 188–192 Norfolk St, S1 1SY



ends Sheffield recycling strikers are going all out to win



ends News & Reports section



ends Socialist Worker 2309