Ted Grant's Notes on Marxist Economics

http://socialismiscrucial.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/ted-grants-notes-on-marxist-economics/

Thatchers brutal "them and us" legacy

Alistair Tice, Socialist Party regional secretary, Yorkshire Millions have been waiting for this day, 8 April 2013. Margaret Thatcher will never be forgiven for the devastation that her Tory governments' policies wrought on working class communities in the 1980s - and is still being felt today. "I would suggest as a memorial to Mrs Thatcher that instead of the usual headstone or statue, a dance floor should be erected over her grave". This was proposed by a writer to the Observer paper from Durham, a former mining area, on the 30th anniversary of her coming to power. Seeking to avoid the anger and opposition that a state funeral for Thatcher would invite the government is nonetheless planning a state funeral 'by any other name'. Having spared no venom to attack millions of low-paid, unemployed and disabled people forced to subsist on benefits, Downing Street discovered it had a delicate side and has declined to say how much the 'ceremonial funeral' will cost the public purse. No doubt it will be in the millions. Nonetheless many ex-miners and their families, trade unionists and socialists are now dancing - in celebration of her demise. The Guardian reported on the response in Orgreave, a town famed for the major attack on striking miners orchestrated by Thatcher in the 1980s. One veteran "said he was thinking of getting t-shirts printed saying 'Thatcher's in hell - she's only been there a few hours and she's already closed down the furnaces'." The Guardian described responses to her death: "Propping up the bar, the men compared text messages they'd received throughout the day. A typical example: 'I enjoy a good swim. But if someone asked me what my favourite stroke was I'd say Maggie Thatcher's.' Another proudly brandished a text message he'd received just after 1pm saying simply: 'Parteeeeee time.'" Myths 'By your friends shall ye be known' is a well-worn cliché but in Thatcher's case it is insightful. Many have taken to social media to remind us of who Thatcher counted among her pals - murderous Chilean dictator Auguste Pinochet and former US president Ronald Reagan, her co-architect of brutal neoliberalism. But at the same time, politicians, press barons and editors are fawning and flattering in the praise they spew out for her as the prime minister who they say made Britain great again. She was nothing of the sort. Tory MPs and right-wing commentators on the BBC and elsewhere also use the opportunity to attack the trade unions. In analysing her role and legacy, we must start with de-bunking some popular myths. The film industry tried to sell the Iron Lady as a feminist icon. Thatcher was the first female prime minister but her reactionary policies set back previous advances towards women's equality. Her commitment to 'Victorian values' and belief that "there is no such thing (as society)" were the ideological justification for cutting public services and pushing the burden onto the family, which in most cases meant women. She opposed 'subsidising' mothers to go out to work saying it would have discouraged them from staying at home to look after their children. Over half of Britain's working women were denied the right to maternity benefits, paid maternity leave and shorter working hours. Publicly funded childcare fell to the lowest level in western Europe. While being a grocer's daughter from Grantham rather than an aristocrat or millionaire may have made Thatcher more determined to succeed as a politician in an old-boys club, it was the economic and political conditions in Britain in the 1970s that allowed her right-wing policies to come to power rather than any personal qualities. Economy Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general secretary, has previously remarked that: "Friedrich Engels, alongside Karl Marx, the originators of the ideas of scientific socialism, commented that each era calls for personalities required by objective circumstances. But if they do not exist in a rounded-out form, it 'invents' them. Thatcher, without any of the scruples or hesitation of the aristocratic Tory grandees, was the brutal face of British capitalism required by the situation. She not only polarised society but the Tory party itself." Twenty years earlier during the post-war economic upswing and mixed economy consensus, she would not have become Tory leader or, if she had, not as a Thatcherite. But the economic stagnation and industrial strife of the 1970s meant that the ruling class abandoned the post-war settlement of mildly re-distributionist and Keynesian policies in favour of attacking the living standards and rights of the working class in order to restore the profitability of an ailing British capitalism. Thatcher, a convert to the monetarist, free-market ideology of Hayek and Milton Friedman, replaced the defeated prime minister and Tory 'wet' Ted Heath in 1975, and won the general election in 1979. However, it was the Labour leadership that prepared the way for Thatcherism by starting to implement neoliberal policies in the 1970s. Thatcher won three general elections and stayed in power over eleven years, giving the appearance of being both popular and impregnable. However, she was neither. According to opinion polls, she was, during her time in office, actually the second most unpopular post-war prime minister. But the Labour leadership failed to take advantage of this. On the one hand it had failed to tackle the problems of the working class and on the other hand it had directed its energy against challenging the left, particularly Militant. In this it revealed its degeneration from a pro-workers' party at bottom to what it is today, indistinguishable from the other pro-capitalist parties. After the 1981 inner-city riots her personal approval rating was only 23% and a Times headline read: "The most unpopular prime minister since records began". After defeating the miners' strike in April 1985 the Tories were 5% behind in the polls and in April 1990, when the poll tax was introduced in England and Wales, they were 24% behind Labour! Popularity? In other words, at the height of class struggles which polarised society, Thatcher was clearly seen as fighting for her class against the majority of society, the working class. Much of her perceived strength was actually the reflected weakness of the trade union and Labour leaders. While her 1983 election victory owed most to the so-called Falklands Factor, Thatcher jingoistically wrapping herself in the union flag to defeat the "enemy without" at the cost of hundreds of lives, the right-wing Social Democratic Party (SDP) split-off from the Labour Party and the beginning of the witch-hunt against Militant supporters (the forerunner of Socialist Party) meant that Labour was divided and seen as unelectable. Had the pit deputies union NACODS acted on their big strike ballot, had the docks and railway solidarity strikes lasted longer, and if the TUC leaders had called a general strike in support of the miners, then the Thatcher government could have been brought down in 1984/5 like the Heath government was in 1974. Even then, Labour leader Neil Kinnock lost his party's poll lead by attacking NUM president Arthur Scargill and the Militant-led Liverpool City council in the run-up to the 1987 election. But Thatcher was beaten. Her government was forced to retreat in 1981 when the South Wales miners threatened to strike against pit closures. Liverpool Liverpool City Council, by mobilising mass support for its policies of building houses and creating jobs, forced the Tory government to concede an extra £60 million funding in the summer of 1984. This was heralded as "Danegeld" by the Times - Danegeld was the tribute in gold demanded from the English rulers in the 13th century by the invading Danes in exchange for not engaging in pillage and plunder. Thatcher then used these retreats, although forced on her, to prepare more thoroughly to defeat first the miners and then 'left-wing' Labour councils. Poll Tax After winning the 1987 general election, Thatcher made the mistake of attacking all the working class at once by introducing the Poll Tax, a punitive and regressive charge on all adults for local services. She declared the 'Community Charge' as her flag-ship policy. Militant warned it would be her Titanic. Starting in Scotland in 1989, where the tax was to be introduced first, Militant helped initiate a campaign of mass non-payment organised by anti-poll tax unions, which spread to the rest of Britain in 1990. At its height, 18 million people were refusing to pay the poll tax, the biggest campaign of civil disobedience ever. Just after the so-called poll tax riots in Trafalgar Square (caused by the police attacking a 200,000 strong demonstration) the Tories were 24% behind in the opinion polls. Despite courts, bailiffs and jailings, non-payment grew making the tax un-collectable. It was this mass opposition and unpopularity that persuaded the Tory Party to sacrifice their heroine, and with her the poll tax which was immediately scrapped by her replacement John Major. Thatcher herself was later to lament in her memoirs: "The eventual abandonment of the charge represented one of the greatest victories for these people [the organisers of the anti-poll tax demonstrations on 31 March 1990] ever conceded by a Conservative government." [Margaret Thatcher, 'The Downing Street Years', p661.] What this showed is that all Thatcher's perceived strengths, as a resolute, determined, single-minded strong leader, epitomised in her famous "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning" speech, turned into their opposite when her divisive policies completely undermined social support for the Tory government. Decisive was the leadership offered by Militant in the campaign of mass non-payment. Then she was seen as arrogant, stubborn, pig-headed, and unwilling to listen to her cabinet, leading to Tory splits and her removal. In sinking the retreating Argentinian battleship Belgrano and in her year-long "civil war" against the miners, the "enemy within", Thatcher displayed the brutal cold-heartedness of British capitalism. But she herself became the victim of the ruthlessness of her own ruling class. We'll shed no tears for her demise. She will be remembered forever for destroying manufacturing industry and causing permanent mass unemployment. Her monetarist policies of high interest rates and slashing public spending turned the recession in 1979-81 into a depression. Manufacturing output fell by 30% by 1983. Industries like steel, coal and engineering were decimated and whole communities with them. The former 'workshop of the world' became a net importer for the first time since the industrial revolution. Unemployment rose by over a million in just one year, peaking at 3.3 million in 1986 with a 'lost generation' of young people thrown on the scrap-heap. Thatcher, representing finance capital, believed that de-regulation, especially of the City, would lead business to prosper and wealth would "trickle-down." Combined with the proceeds of the selling off of council housing and mass privatisations of public utilities, there was the appearance of growing prosperity reflected in the 'yuppie' and 'loadsamoney' culture but this was superficial and only ever benefited a small minority. Her much-vaunted "share-owning democracy" never materialised, as workers quickly sold their shares and the financial institutions became the 'masters of the universe'. Legacy By the end of the 1980s, 12.2 million people, over a fifth of the population, were living in poverty, and the gulf between the richest 20% and poorest 20% had widened by 60%. This increase in inequality was to widen further under Blair's New Labour government as it continued Thatcherite policies of curbing the trade unions, privatising state resources and deregulating the City of London. In 2001 Labour's Peter Mandelson tellingly said: "we are all Thatcherites now", before enthusing that he was "intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich". Thatcher herself claimed that New Labour (Labour's conversion to capitalist neoliberal policies) was her greatest legacy and Labour leader Ed Miliband has praised some of Thatcher's key policies, stating: "Some of what happened in the 1980s was right. It was right to let people buy their council houses. It was right to cut tax rates of 60, 70, 80%. And it was right to change the rules on the closed shop, on ballots before strikes. These changes were right, and we were wrong to oppose it at the time." This complete capitulation to the market has now led Labour to accept the Con-Dem coalition cuts and pay freeze, making the need for a new mass workers' party even more urgent. It is fitting that Thatcher should die at the very time when free market capitalism, in the middle of its worst economic crisis for 80 years, has so spectacularly failed. She sought to "roll back the frontiers of socialism" but it is now those very ideas of socialism that will make a comeback as increasing numbers of workers and youth look for an alternative to the austerity, war and environmental destruction that is global capitalism today.

In defence of the revolutionary party

In recent times there has been a sustained attack on the left notably the SWP and the crisis within that party but the SWP is not the left and their use of democratic centralism is alien to a lot of others on the left. I thought it was a good time to revisit democratic centralism and why the socialist party the party I’m a member of still use this today. Lenin one of the great revolutionaries did not fetishes over organisational types he considered democratic centralism to be the most democratic form of organisation but was open to other forms of organisation to given different circumstances. It is necessary to begin with a basic summary on the need for a party. This flows from the position of the working class as it develops in capitalist society. It is of course true that the working class is the most homogenous, united class through its role in production. In the transition from feudalism to capitalism the working class was dragooned, disciplined and organised in big industry; it is its objective position in industry which determines that the working class develops a collective consciousness. The petit bourgeois on the other hand is heterogeneous, scattered, with its upper layers tending to merge with the bourgeois and its lower layers forced! By monopolisation, etc., into the ranks of the proletariat. There is then, of course, the ruling class, divided into different sections: finance capital, industrial capital, heavy industry, light industry, etc. These broad categorisations of the classes in society, first formulated by Marx 150 years ago, retain all their validity today. But while the working class is much more homogenous than the petit bourgeois or middle class, it is still divided into many different layers: men and women, racial divisions, skilled and unskilled, young and old, etc. Class, Party and the Leadership THE BOURGEOIS, from the dawn of its rule, has skilfully learned to play on these divisions to perpetuate its rule. A party, particularly a revolutionary party, is designed to overcome these divisions, to unite the working class for common objectives, the struggle against capitalism, its eventual overthrow and its replacement with a socialist society. A party, including the most revolutionary party in history, the Bolshevik party, is not, however, an autonomous factor in history. It is dependent upon, and springs from, the working class. The relationship between the party, its leadership and the class has been a hotly disputed issue, right from the inception of scientific socialism that is Marxism, formulated by Marx and Engel’s. The dialectical interrelationship between the class, the party and its leadership was touched on by Trotsky in his History of the Russian Revolution. Writing about the party he states; "Without a guiding organisation toe energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston box. GIVEN THAT the necessity of a party is clear then what should be the character of this party? Marxism has answered, particularly after the experience of the revolutionary movement in Russia and the successful Russian revolution, that it should be a party that should possess special features which no bourgeois or petit bourgeois organisation, trend or party could possess. It should be a 'democratic centralist' organisation. Unfortunately this term has been partially discredited; the concept mangled and distorted by Stalinism and now recently the SWP. It has come to mean, for uninformed people, something entirely opposite to its original meaning. Seeking to discredit genuine Marxism the reformists, both the left as well as the right, link this idea to the grotesque caricature of socialism manifested in Stalinism. Moreover, the right-wing Labour leadership who usually hurl insults against the Marxists on the alleged undemocratic character of 'democratic centralism' themselves actually practice an extreme form of 'bureaucratic centralism', as the experience of the witch-hunt against Militant and others on the left in the Labour Party demonstrated. A REVOLUTIONARY party is not a debating club, let alone a debating circle, so beloved of the minuscule sects on the outskirts of the labour movement, it must, of course, be thoroughly democratic. Democracy is like oxygen for a genuine revolutionary party. Without the full freedom of discussion, genuine, comradely and fraternal debate, it would be incapable of correctly arming its members with an understanding of the current situation, and the demands and programme upon which it is necessary to intervene in the class struggle. Contrary to what our opponents have attempted to argue Militant, over 30 years, allowed debate, including oppositional ideas, at every level of our organisation. Even then there was a disquieting tendency of some, mainly those who became the minority, not to want to discuss different points of view. But that we possessed a relatively homogenous, united organisation flowed not from any powerful apparatus in the possession of the leadership, but came from genuine agreement on the basis of broad perspectives, the programme, the tactics of work in the mass organisations, etc. This agreement was only gained through discussion and debate within the ranks of the organisation. To listen to some of the sects who criticise the past record of our organisation and who light-mindedly delve into the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia it would be possible to draw a conclusion that the absence of organised tendencies, factions, etc. within the ranks of Militant over a protracted historical period was itself a symptom of an unhealthy internal regime. On the contrary, Trotsky commenting on the disarray in the ranks of his followers in France in the 1930s, who presented a spectacle very similar to organisations which claim to be Trotskyist' at this moment in time, comments: "An organisation that is smaller but unanimous can have enormous success with a correct policy, while an organisation which is torn by internal strife is condemned to rot." Flowing from democracy comes centralism and for the socialist party this is unity in action once an agreed line has been agreed with the majority of the membership. This is THE OTHER and vital aspect of the question, absolutely requisite for a revolutionary party, is that of centralism. It is that part of the formula of 'democratic centralism' which is most misunderstood, wilfully by the enemies of Marxism, and unconsciously even by those who sympathise with the Marxist and Trotskyist movement. It seems to smack, particularly in the light of Stalinism and of various Trotskyist organisations which imitate Stalinism, of a top-down, bureaucratic, 'leadership-dominated' organisation. But the need for a centralised party flows from the tasks which confront the working class in our epoch. The ruling class has concentrated in its hands not just the means of production - less than 300 firms on the planet dominate most of production, distribution and exchange of the world's goods - but enormous means of repression, both legally and physically, against any organised protest. This is particularly the case in Britain with the anti-trade union laws. The centralisation and concentration of capital, which has been taken to unprecedented lengths in the modern era, means that the overthrow of the ruling class is inconceivable without a centralised party capable of unifying the working class and acting decisively against the inevitable attempts of counter-revolution when the working class attempts to change society. IT IS not possible in a revolutionary organisation to have an attitude towards forms of organisation which are 'once and for all'. It is necessary, at some stages, to emphasise the need for democracy, discussion, debate, etc. Following a debate it is therefore necessary, without precluding further discussion, to proceed to action, to a degree of centralism, to a period of implementing decisions. Which predominates at each stage, the democratic or the centralist aspect, depends upon the concrete situation? "Truth is concrete"; this is the most important law of the dialectic. The 'mobile balance' between democracy and centralism is something which cannot be established a priori, but only on the basis of discussion and estimation of the concrete situation Leon Trotsky was once asked to give a definition of democratic centralism This is not a new question. Leon Trotsky was asked to give a "clear and exact formula on democratic centralism" which would preclude false interpretations or bureaucratic degeneration. He replied that he could not give, "such a formula on democratic centralism that 'once and for all' would eliminate misunderstandings and false interpretations. A party is an active organism. It develops in the struggle with outside obstacles and inner contradictions... The regime of a party does not fall ready make from the sky but is formed gradually in the struggle. A political line predominates over the regime. First of all is necessary to define strategic problems and tactical methods correctly in order to solve them. The organisational form should correspond to the strategy and tactic." Trotsky then makes a fundamental point: "Only a correct policy can guarantee a healthy party regime." Of course this does not automatically mean that if a party has a correct programme that its organisational methods will be correct. That is an issue for debate and discussion as to what emphasis should be given, to democracy or centralism, depending upon the different situations. A formula for democratic centralism must inevitably find a different expression in the parties of different countries and in different stages of development of one and the same party. "The equilibrium between democracy and centralism establishes itself in the actual struggle, at moments it is violated and then again re-established. The maturity of each member of the party expresses itself particularly in the fact that he does not demand from the party regime more than it can give. "He is a poor revolutionist who defines his attitude to the party by the individual fillips that he gets on the nose. It is necessary, of course, to fight against every individual mistake of the leadership, every injustice and the like. But it is necessary to estimate these 'injustices' and 'mistakes' not by themselves but in connection with the general development of the party both on a national and international scale. A correct judgement and a feeling for proportion in politics is an extremely important thing." [Leon Trotsky: On Democratic Centralism and the Regime (1937)] With extracts and quotes from Peter Taaffee general secretary of the socialist party of England and Wales on democratic Centralism http://www.marxist.net/namechange/nameframe.htm

MP’s demand 32% pay increase, for MP’s workers MP’s on a workers wage!

All in this together? Now MPs demand a 32% pay increase as £65,000 they earn 'is not enough' • Anonymous survey by expenses watchdog reveals extraordinary demand to earn three times the average salary • Tories want the most - £97,000 - but just one MP wants less than £40,000 • MPs currently earn £65,738 but politicians want £86,250 MPS are demanding a 32 per cent pay rise, after complaining they cannot live on £65,000 a year. A survey reveals 69 per cent believe they are ‘underpaid’ following the introduction of a new expenses regime that forces them to provide receipts for all claims. On average they said they deserved to be paid £86,250 a year – an increase of almost £21,000. One in 12 said MPs deserved a salary of more than £100,000 and just 6 per cent said they were paid too much. Only 15 per cent thought MPs should be forced to swap their gold-plated pensions for defined contribution schemes. And more than half thought they should hang on to their controversial ‘golden goodbye’ payments, even if they quit voluntarily. A separate survey of members of the public found most think MPs are already paid too much. On average they suggested MPs’ pay should be cut by more than £5,000. The studies were commissioned by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which is reviewing whether MPs’ pay should be changed from its current level of £65,738. The watchdog said it was not proposing to introduce performance-related pay, regional pay or to take outside earnings into account. On average, Tories said their salary should be £96,740, while Lib Dems thought the right amount was £78,361 and Labour £77,322. Other parties put the figure at £75,091. This is a huge insult to the millions of workers across the country facing benefit cuts, pay freezes and so on. Back in the 80’s militant MP’s Dave nellist and Terry Fields and Pat Wall all took the wage of a average skilled worker no more and no expenses. Only enough to do their job. The socialist party proudly stands by this principled stand and any of our future elected representatives will abide by this too as we do not feel we should elevate ourselves above those we have been elected to represent. Many MP’s cry wolf saying to us if we are not paid this huge salary this will put off people coming into politics. We say good lets keep those middle class fat cats out of representing ordinary working class people lets have MP’s who live and earn the same s those who vote them in and truly do understand their plight not just become a MP to advance their career and bank account. MPs are already very privileged, receiving a basic wage almost three times the average. That, and the level of their generous expenses allowances, insulate and isolates them from the normal problems affecting the majority of the people they represent. The Socialist Party requires all its members elected into public positions, such as MPs, to take the same wage as that of a skilled worker. WhenDave Nellist, Terry Fields and Pat Wall were MPs in the 1980s that worked out at around 40% of an MP's wage or the equivalent of £26,000 today. The 'surplus' was donated to socialist and trade union campaigns and causes, and accounts were regularly published in newsletters to be transparent. Expenses should only be allowed where clearly necessary to do the job, and again be published and accountable, particularly to the working people locally who had elected that representative. Much of the protocols of an MP's life, and the privileges lavished on them, are designed to suck them into defence of the system, so that (whether consciously or not) they feel more in common with the rulers than the ruled. Breaking with those traditions, living in the area that you represent, and on the same wages, facing the same bills and problems as working people in a constituency can go some way to countering those pressures, and start restoring faith that elected, socialist officials would be different. Only the Socialist Party regularly and consistently argues for that, and has the track record to prove it is not just simply words. A recent report showed that only 7% of current MPs have a manual worker background. What we need is a party that will put forward socialist policies and stand working-class candidates, who will only take a worker's wage. Only then will most voters truly get MPs they deserve.

Help re elect Dave Nellist in Coventry a socialist fighting alternative to the cuts

This year socialist councillor Dave Nellist is up for re election. One of the few remaining anti cuts councillors left in the country it is vital Dave is re elected to stand up to the pro cuts parties of the Tories and new labour.
Dave Nellist, Socialist Party councillor has been a lone voice against cuts on Coventry council. He stands in the tradition of councillors who stand up for those who elected them - such as in Liverpool in the 1980s and Poplar in the 1920s.


Dave is a fighting socialist who backs up his words with actions. Standing on a proud record of never voting for cuts and standing by his principles by demonstrating alongside workers whenever he can. Dave never paid his poll tax and was expelled from the Labour party for doing so he was part of militant who lead a successful mass non payment campaign where at the height of the battle up to 18 million people across the country refused to pay their poll tax.

More recently Dave has turned down the opportunity to become the deputy mayor of Coventry having stood for the longest on the council now. He didn’t feel he could take the position as he’d be obliged to vote with the ruling party and that would be labour and would therefore mean voting for cuts. He also wrote back to the council saying this
“I have taken soundings from a number of local people, and other Socialist Party supporters, and I don't feel, at this time, able to accept.
I appreciate the honour of the ceremonial role and the greater contact over two years, with people young and old, in the city. I would enjoy mayoral visits to everyone from schools to care homes, celebrating with local people. I would take seriously being the voice of sympathy for the city in commiserating with those who have suffered loss.
Some of your colleagues urged me to accept, saying I could bring a radical edge... to the job of Lord Mayor. And I have been tempted.
The first thing I thought I could have done, for example, would have been to invite all those in the queue for food parcels on a Sunday morning by the Swanswell to eat at the expense of the Lord Mayor's hospitality budget that day (and pay for it by cancelling all the normal municipal dinners and attendances at other Lord Mayor's dos across the region).
You see, I think we urgently need to review the council's role and responsibility in the matter of dealing with growing austerity, not leave it to the generosity of individuals or of faith organisations.”


. The Coventry Telegraph commented: "It is not the first time Councillor Nellist has chosen principle over personal privilege. As an MP he refused to accept more than the average worker's wage - considerably less than the salary to which he was entitled."

Fighting the government's attacks. Dave still to this day has only ever taken the average wage of a skilled worker in his area and has donated the rest back to the working class be that trade unions, communities or back in to campaigning for a socialist transformation of society.
This is socialist party policy and we are proud that Dave demonstrates this policy and how it can be done quite easily whilst being assessed by an outside independent auditor.

I was lucky enough to meet Dave and his wife Jane at socialist party summer camp last year and what a pleasure it was too. Dave is and I hope he doesn’t mind me saying this is just like you and I he is a councillor but doesn’t do it for the power or the money he is simply there to represent ordinary working class interests and give them a voice on the inside. I am proud the socialist party has class fights like Dave Nellist in our party even if he fails to get re elected this may few can doubt his record of fighting the cuts at every opportunity and raising the need to change society on a socialist basis.
Hearing Dave speak you get the feeling every word is meant and nothing at all is false or put on. Many politicians these days make lovely speech’s and twist and turn all the time and you are left wondering what exactly they said if anything. With Dave you left know where he stands exactly and his passion is clear for all to see. One of the best the militant and the now socialist party has ever had and Dave is a shining example how Marxists can work in bourgeois elections and win for workers on the outside.

I am hoping with others in eastern region to get up to Coventry to help campaign for Dave and his comrades before may and I hope others who recognise Dave’s contribution to the working class and the labour movement will offer their support and solidarity too.

What's in a name ?

With todays labour party quite clearly not supporting workers or working class people at all i wondered should they be forced or even not think about dropping the name labour ?

To me a young person involved in politics i have only known a pro market, pro privatisation, pro imperialist war labour party and for them to rest on their past success's if you can call them that is a insult to ordinary working people.

It is a fraud to be quite honest for the labour party today who no longer has a working class base like it used to. lenin was right labour was never a socialist party yes but it always had a duel complection having a workers base with a bourgeois leadership. Even in Militant we realised this for those who thought we were reformist for working inside the labour party. But today how anyone can seriously suggest labour represents ordinary working people or is vaguely socialist at all is living in cloud cookoo land to be quite honest.

The likes of the LRC and other good socialists point to the fact the labour party still have the trades union link. This is all very well if this hadnt been severaly hampered by many many anti trade union laws incidentily not repealed by a labour government in power for 13 years.

Small cabals - who have no connection with the radical and heroic periods of Labour - run a machine totally alien to working class people. Any socialist - inside or outside the Labour Party, and it is mostly the latter - is bound to come into collision with them.

This does not preclude "heated debate", not just with the Con-Dems but also with and against Labour councillors and the majority of Labour MPs who are doing the dirty work of the government in justifying cuts and carrying them out at local level.

It is unrealistic to think that workers who are losing their jobs - some of them never to work again - and many seeing vital services destroyed should engage in polite exchanges with 'Labour... Yes Labour councils and councillors'. It is legitimate to express anger and, yes, rage - not just against the Tories and Liberals - but against a Labour caste at local level which is inflicting terrible punishment on working people.

It is also necessary to forcefully take up and oppose those who seek to excuse Labour sell-outs. Some on the left refused to endorse the Socialist Party's implacable opposition to 'all cuts'. But we were at one with those like Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS civil servants union and Bob Crow, leader of the RMT transport workers union. Those who are prepared to accept 'some cuts' are acting as a left flank, apologists for Labour councillors and councils who are betraying everything which the Labour Party originally stood for.

For instance, Waltham Forest council - controlled by Labour - has inflicted £3 million of cuts to wages and conditions of its workers yet £18 million has been paid to 'consultants' whose main job is to make these cuts to jobs and services! And this is as typical of 'Labour' councils as Tory or Lib Dem.

Will local government emerge at the end of the 'cuts programme' in the absurd position of the NHS where "in 2006, Accountancy Age reported that the NHS was spending more on consultants than all Britain's manufacturers put together"?

This scandal was pushed through by the likes of New Labour health ministers Alan Milburn and Patricia Hewitt, who then got cushy, well-paid jobs in the health private sector!

However much of the debate in the labour movement at present is on the character of the Labour Party at present and whether is it possible to reclaim it in the future. We can never say never where politics are concerned. Nor is it theoretically excluded that if a mass workers' party is not urgently built, the impulse for a new party could come from within even a bourgeois party.

Such is the depth of the present economic and social crisis that, in time, this can find an expression even in such a party leading to a left split, out of which could come the basis of a radical or even a new mass workers' party.

Something like this happened in Greece where the 'left-wing' of the liberal capitalist party the Centre Union - led by the late Andreas Papandreou - came out of that party following the overthrow of the Greek military junta in 1974.

Such was the sweep of the revolution in the post-1974 period and the colossal changes in consciousness which this evoked that the objective basis for the new mass socialist party Pasok was created. The present 'Pasok' is a million miles removed from its socialist origins.

But we do not think that it is likely that Labour could be transformed in Britain in the next period. We cannot just 'wait' for future events to hopefully change the Labour Party, while in the meantime the working class goes to hell in a handcart.

We have to seek to exert pressure now through a new workers' party, no matter how small initially. The Labour party has been transformed under the New Labour counter-revolution carried out first by Blair, then by Brown and today by Miliband into a capitalist formation.

In fact, Tony Blair recognised this when he declared that New Labour was an entirely 'new party'. Conversely if Labour is to be 'transformed', as some still hope, then this would effectively mean setting up a new party, which by standing on clear socialist policies would represent a clear break.

Labour's current policies are a continuation of Blair's pro-capitalist agenda. This is expressed in terms of policy; witness Miliband's completely pro-capitalist assault on the trade unions at the TUC. It is reflected also in the internal organisation and character of the Labour Party which is fundamentally different from what existed in the past.

The old Labour Party, of which we were a significant force (through Militant - now the Socialist Party), involved the participation of the working class and the trade unions. It was a 'bourgeois workers' party' - with a pro-capitalist leadership at the top but a base among workers below. But it was also very open and democratic, and the leadership was forced to take account of the rank-and-file and its views.

Those who seek to argue that 'nothing has fundamentally changed' in the character of the Labour Party are mistaken. Compare the present situation in the Labour Party to the 1960s. Harold Wilson, supported by Barbara Castle the Labour minister at the time, tried to push through anti-union legislation.

This was massively opposed by the rank-and-file of the party and the majority of the National Executive Committee. If Wilson had not retreated he would have been compelled to resign. Neither could he militarily support US imperialism on the Vietnam War- despite the urgings of the then US President Johnson - for the same reason.

Tony Blair, however, got the support of Labour's conference delegates - who in the past were solidly to the left of the leadership - for the obscene and criminal Iraq war.

Some object that to describe New Labour as 'capitalist' is an 'exaggeration', because workers are still voting Labour. This, it is argued, indicates that Labour - 'warts and all' - is 'different' from the other two capitalist parties.

Yes, Labour is 'different', in the same way as the Democratic Party in the US differs from the right-wing Republican Party. The Democrats are more 'liberal' but are still a pronounced capitalist party.

So also was the Liberal Party in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. Sections of the working class and the trade unions in Britain saw it as an alternative until mighty events - the decline of British imperialism and its inability to continue to grant concessions to the working class - undermined this. This prepared the way for the rise of the Labour Party itself as a mass political expression of the trade unions.

Those who furnished the mass basis for the Labour Party were the sons and daughters of workers who previously voted Liberal. This will happen with the building of a new party. Those who have voted Labour and still do can be won to a new mass workers' party.

Even to those who hope that Labour can be changed, we pose the questions: 'What do we do now in the political and electoral arenas? How does the labour movement exert pressure on Labour in order to defeat and change its present craven capitulation to big business, which is disheartening its former and present supporters? By propaganda or vague hopes for the future alone? The bureaucratic caste which dominates Labour is totally impervious to this.


So i would suggest all that are serious about a new workers party should suggest that any new workers party in the future which i'm confident will happen should not include the name labour as it has been shamefully wrecked by the current party which claims to stand for working people but clearly does not.

Marxists attitudes towards parliament and elections

We are faced with the fact that Parliament exists and that the mass of the population, despite their criticisms, look to it for change. In 1940 Trotsky, while discussing the question of war, explained how Marxists must make use of bourgeois institutions like parliament. “The courts are bourgeois but we don’t boycott them as the anarchists. We try to use them and fight within them. Likewise with parliaments. We are enemies of the bourgeoisie and its institutions, but we utilise them.”

Trotsky carried the argument forward – to the question of war: “War is a bourgeois institution a thousand times more powerful than all the other bourgeois institutions. We accept it as a fact like the bourgeois schools and try to utilise it.” He continues:

“In the union I can say I am for the Fourth International. I am against war. But I am with you. I will not sabotage the war. I will be the best soldier just as I was the best and most skilled worker in the factory. At the same time I will try to convince you too that we should change society.” (Writings, 1939-40, p. 256).

So with parliament. There is no contradiction between understanding, from a revolutionary point of view, the true nature of a bourgeois parliament and at the same time fighting for every crumb, every concession we can gain from it. In the same sense as Trotsky in 1940 advocated that the members of the Fourth International, while opposing the war; in the case of that particular war should be the “best soldiers,” we must be the “best parliamentary representatives,” the most effective in squeezing every possible concession and, at the same time, the most resolute in revealing its limitations. If we are to expose the limits of change through parliament we have to struggle within it to reach those limits and thereby bring them into the view of the working class.

Instead of such sterile ultra-leftism we explain that we are fighting to become the majority in parliament and go on to spell out what we would do if we had that majority. We say we would pass legislation to take the wealth out of the hands of the ruling class. But, as the bitter experience of Chile showed, the ruling class will not peaceably surrender their wealth and power. They would use their control of the armed machinery of the state to resist. Under those circumstances we would mobilise the working class to confront them, just as the Bolsheviks did in August 1917. Part of this resistance would be the formation of workers’ councils, of committees in the army, in short of the emergence of an alternative state based on the independent power of the working class. In this way the real question of power would be posed.



The sociaist party and its sisters organisations in the CWI have had people elected to parliaments in the past and still do currenty have 2 TD's in Ireland and a MEP in the European parliament. We dont see this as a end goal but a way of fighting for concessions for the working class in the most critical way of the system possible.
The election of Joe Higgins is not the first occasion that we have participated in parliament. In Britain, Dave Nellist, Pat Wall and Terry Fields, all members of Militant, sat as Labour MPs and were able to use parliament as a tribune for socialist ideas. Terry Fields went to prison for refusing to pay his poll tax. None of these representatives succumbed to the parliamentary pressures. Sadly, Pat Wall died while an MP and the Labour leadership saw that he was replaced by a right-winger. Terry Fields and Dave Nellist were expelled from the Labour Party and eventually lost their seats because they refused to abandon their ideas and their principles.

Like Terry Fields, Pat Wall and Dave Nellist, Joe Higgins has not adopted the lifestyle or adapted to the customs and norms of bourgeois politics. He lives on a workers wage and provides the Dublin West electorate with an account of where the rest of his salary and all his allowances go. He has used the Dáil chamber to challenge the establishment. He has brought the scent of the class struggle into the otherwise rarefied atmosphere of the Dáil, as with his handcuffed gesture in solidarity with jailed building workers. He has used his position to promote working class struggle outside the Dáil, speaking at countless meetings, protests and pickets. He has intervened in debates on legislation, with opposition proposals and amendments. On top of this he has carried a huge constituency case load, trying to use his influence to help working class people in Dublin West with day-to-day problems.


The CWI has 20 sections and a number of other supporting groups. We work in a total of 35 countries and on every continent. Our World Congress brings together delegates from all sections and is the supreme decision making body of our International. Points of difference are debated in a democratic manner and decisions arrived at through debate.

A debate on any major issue is not the property of a small circle at the top of the organisation, but is something in which the membership needs to be involved. Whenever differences have arisen within our International, or when it has been necessary to adjust our position or to correct past mistakes, we have involved the full membership in the discussions. International Discussion Bulletins, containing all the material from all sides of a debate, have been produced and made available to every member. Only in this way can we educate and involve the membership and only then can the members, in turn, become fully informed, intervene and act as a check on all decisions made.
But when it comes to participating in such roles we will always keep a firm grip on democracy and keep it with us at all times.
In order to withstand the pressures of moods, temporary or longer lasting, which develop within the working class, it is essential that a revolutionary party maintains a democratic centralist structure. This means the fullest internal discussion on all issues including points of difference, but unity in action when it comes to putting agreed decisions into effect.

The need and the role of an international

We as socialists do not take a middle class petti-bourgeois attitude to class struggles we take a internationalist outlook of events. As we know full well that capitalism a global system based on exploitation and greed is a global system that any challenge to this system needs to be met with a international global response.

Many of the great revolutionaries realised this with Karl Marx and Frederic Engels forming the 1st International in the 19th century. In the time since then there has been several attempts to bring together a new international with a common theme and all speaking the language of revolutionary socialism .


Today the socialist party of England and Wales formally Militant is part of the CWI the Committee for workers international one of the few if not the only ral organised internationals still going today with any serious marxist and class analysis.
The CWI was founded at a meeting of 46 comrades from 12 countries in April 1974. This was not the beginning of international work by supporters of the British Militant (now Socialist Party), who were the main initiators for the founding of the CWI. Many efforts were undertaken in the previous ten years to extend the influence of the ideas of the British Militant internationally. Even without a single international contact, Militant always proceeded from an international standpoint. An international is, first of all, ideas, a programme and a perspective. The general ideas are the linchpin of any organisation. From this alone flows the type of organisation that is required. Therefore, the history of the CWI, as with the British Militant, is a history of the ideas of this body, in contrast to the ideas advanced by other rival Marxist organisations.

The need for an international organisation flows from the very development of capitalism itself. The great historical merit of capitalism is that it developed the productive forces, of which the working class is the most important, and bound individual nations together through the world market. Internationalism, as Marx pointed out, flowed from the very situation created by capitalism, i.e. the creation of the world market and the world working class. This idea is even more important today in the period of globalisation. The linking together of companies, continents and different national economies on a world scale has been taken to an extent never even imagined by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

First International
The first attempt to set up an international was, of course, undertaken by Marx and Engels with the founding of the First International. Marx attempted to bring together in one international organisation the most advanced sections of the working class: French radicals, British trade unionists, and even the Russian anarchists. Great work was undertaken by the First International, culminating in the heroic Paris Commune. Engels pointed out that the International was "intellectually" responsible for the Commune although it had not "lifted a finger" to create it.

This first great attempt of the working class to establish their own state made the bourgeois tremble. They drowned the Commune in blood and conducted a witch-hunt against those who they held responsible, above all the leaders and adherents to the First International. But the defeat of the Paris Commune also coincided with an upturn in capitalism and a serious crisis within the First International especially because of the role of the anarchists, led by Bakunin. Marx and Engels led a successful struggle against the ideas of anarchism but, alongside the disruptive activities of the anarchists, the upswing of world capitalism created reformist illusions in those like the British trade union leaders, which led to splits and divisions within the First International. Marx and Engels then drew the conclusion that the First International had done its job, had established the idea of internationalism and of an International in the consciousness of the working class. But they also concluded that, having exhausted this historical mission, it should be wound up after moving its offices to New York.

Second and Third Internationals
The period which followed saw the creation of mass parties of the working class. These parties were mostly influenced by the ideas of Marx and Engels. This process culminated in the foundation of the Second International in 1889. This organisation developed in a generally progressive phase of capitalism. Tens of thousands of working-class people were mobilised by these parties, attracted to the ideas of socialism and given a basic class education. But because of the objective conditions - the steady progress of capitalism in developing the productive forces - this led the leaders of the parties who adhered to the Second International to collaborate with the capitalists, seeking compromises, which became a way of life. In effect, a stratum rose above the working class, with catastrophic consequences, once capitalism’s progressive phase had exhausted itself. This was clearly shown in the onset of the first world war. The overwhelming majority of the leaders of the parties of the Second International supported their own bourgeois in the bloody slaughter of the war.

The adherents to genuine internationalism were reduced to a handful. Some who may feel that the genuine internationalists today have been enormously weakened by the collapse of Stalinism and the ideological offensive of the bourgeoisie, should ponder the situation of Lenin, Trotsky, Connolly, MacLean, Liebknecht, Luxemburg and other genuine Marxists, in the first world war. At the Zimmerwald conference, which gathered together those who were opposed to the first world war, the old joke went that the delegates could have fitted into two stagecoaches! Yet two years later the Russian revolution exploded, and within nine months of this, the Bolsheviks were in power and the first genuine workers’ state had been established. This set in train the ten days that shook the world.

Out of the Russian revolution came the creation, in 1919, of the Third International. If anyone has any doubts of the effects of the Russian revolution, read John Dos Pasos’s USA. He gives many headlines from the US press about the Russian revolution. Not just the yellow press, whose editors dipped their pens in mad-dog saliva, but also the so-called "responsible and informed" journals of capitalism, like the New York Times, which carried headlines such as, "Lenin Assassinates Trotsky", or "Trotsky Kills Lenin". Even more lurid was the edition which claimed, "Trotsky Kills Lenin in Drunken Brawl". The Hungarian workers attempted to follow their Russian brothers and sisters, as did the German and Italian workers. In fact, the whole of the European working class was striving in this direction. It is not possible to go into detail on the causes of the Third International’s degeneration. Trotsky traces this out in detail. The main causes were the isolation of the Russian revolution and the development of a privileged strata which usurped political power. The defeat of the German revolution and the later betrayal of the German working class with the coming to power of Hitler consolidated the political counter-revolution carried out by the Stalinist elite.




The question is how to build such a mass International. We have a vital role to play in this process. We have in the past, as I described, sent comrades to different countries and continents throughout the world to establish the first forces of genuine Marxists. If necessary we will continue to do this. But a new mass International will not develop in a linear fashion. The process will involve fusions, splits and the reassembling of genuine revolutionary forces on an international and national plane.

We have been very successful in this regard. From the beginning we managed to absorb into our ranks organisations that did not agree with everything that the CWI stood for. In Cyprus, for instance, the group mentioned earlier that eventually joined us, after quite lengthy discussions, was somewhat heterogeneous. Many of those who remained with the CWI and who played a key role in building a very important section in Cyprus were, from the outset, committed to the general perspectives and programme of the CWI. But there were others who could be described as occupying a left centrist position, vacillating between the ideas of the CWI and centrist ideas. Some of them dropped by the wayside as the group became more serious, while others evolved into genuine revolutionaries

The development of the British section has always run alongside the growth of the CWI. But it would be a mistake to see the CWI as a mere adjunct of the work that we did in Britain. The CWI has a separate identity. It was impossible to replicate exactly the experience of the British Marxists in every country even in Western Europe. Painstaking discussions ensued with comrades in different countries in elaborating different and varying strategies and tactics to enhance the profile, numbers and effectiveness of the supporters and members of the CWI. As explained above, even when we were restricted to the small island of Britain, we always had an international outlook. We never took a purely British position but always proceeded from an international analysis, only then examining how the situation in Britain fitted in with this. We were always on the lookout for international contacts. Many of the international contacts that we made appeared to be purely "accidental". But these "accidents" were related to the changes in the objective situation which was affecting the working class and their organisations.




It is key in the upcoming period that we continue to take a international outlook on struggles of workers and look to interveen where we can. Workers across the world will be looking for ideas out of this crisis and we will look to be there ready and looking for them.

(pieces taken from the history of the CWI by Peter Taaffee on www.socialist world website www.socialistworld.org.uk)

The Liverpool 47, forgotten by many but not by militants

Whilst many last week would have been glag to see Ed Miliband attacking Militant in the 80's over their role in the city of Liverpool struggles and thought he was right to do so i do not agree. I think the moveemnt that was around at the time which provoked some of the most vicious slanders on militant members at the time has to be remembered. Many of the great labour movement moments in history are rmembered and used to inspire new workers today but the lies and the smears the right wing in the labour movement and the official labour party of today and since the 80's has meant many workers fear looking into the struggles of the Liverpool city council back then.

The mantra 'not going illegal' seems to be the catch-all excuse for implementing the most savage cuts in Liverpool's history. [the Liverpool 47 group and the Socialist Party - Eds.] have argued for a needs budget not an illegal budget. This means using every legal device to defend jobs and services - using council reserves, taking privatised services back in-house.

Such action would need to be linked to a mass anti-cuts campaign involving trade unions, community organisations and council workers on a clear policy of compelling the Con-Dem government to abandon its punitive policies, with an appeal to other local authorities to do the same.

Jobs, wages and services are being cut while the income of CEOs increased hugely last year; the culprits for the crisis, the bankers, continue to gorge themselves on obscene bonuses; Cameron's advisers say the NHS should be up for grabs to the private health companies.

This outrageous situation cries out for courageous leadership committed to defending workers and those least able to defend themselves.

As for the argument that the conditions for mass struggle don't exist: history shows that, where leadership is given, support will be forthcoming as the Liverpool 47 showed in the 80s, as did Tom Mann in 1911 in Poplar.

Liverpool city council's struggle in 1983-87 for more funding from the Thatcher government was an inspiration to workers,
AFTER 20 years of slashing jobs, of privatising and cutting services, Liverpool's ruling parties - New Labour and the Liberal Democrats, with almost identical free-market policies, have decided to inflict a catastrophe on the local authority workforce.

1,500 will lose their jobs, the already high number of families without a wage-earner will grow. Despite Labour council leader Joe Anderson's pledge to protect the poor, public services will suffer and already are suffering.

Labour is the majority party but a key component of Anderson's strategy to deal with the cuts is to form an alliance with the arch-proponents of privatisation and cuts, the Lib Dems.

In 1987 the House of Lords backed Thatcher's district auditor's decision to remove the 47 fighting Liverpool Labour councillors from office undemocratically i might add. Since then, the city council's workforce has been reduced from 30,000 to fewer than 10,000.

The spectacle of a Labour leader going into an alliance with the local Lib Dems, a party which is part of a national coalition with the millionaire Tory cabinet, shows catastrophic abdication of leadership by a Labour party which was elected by the city's working families to protect them from the Tory onslaught.

Council leader Joe Anderson detailed how the council intends to make £91 million of savings over the coming year. It aims to cut half its senior management posts, saving £4.5 million, and to reduce budgets for children's services and adult social care.

It 'hopes' it can reduce predicted job losses from 1,500 to about 1,200. Anderson claimed the council had tried to protect frontline services but the scale of the cuts meant that 'real pain' would be felt in some communities.

Funding for voluntary groups has been cut by £18 million, almost 50%. The council says savings in this area were necessary to protect 'life and death' essential services to the most vulnerable.

'There is no alternative' claims the Labour leader. But there is always an alternative to supine capitulation and that is to fight - to form a coalition with the organised labour movement and community organisations, instead of a coalition with the capitalist parties and their allies.

This fighting policy, following the example of the Liverpool 47 councillors, would show Cameron's Tories they have a battle on their hands. In 1983, the incoming Labour council inherited a catastrophic financial situation.

The outgoing Liberal-Tory alliance deliberately under-spent throughout the 1970s to try to maintain electoral support; in one year they actually cut household rates.

They wooed their natural Tory-voting base by increasing rents, terminating the house-building programme and shedding thousands of jobs, plus making cuts in other sectors.
Much like today where the chancellor has announced council tax will be frozen for another year further putting pressure on councils to put through cuts to compensate for the loss of extra council tax.

Liberal council leader Trevor Jones could claim he presided over the lowest rate increases in Liverpool's history and was knighted by Thatcher for services rendered.

An angry Liverpool working class kicked out this Liberal-Tory alliance and returned Labour to power in 1983 on a clear, fighting socialist programme. The brave 47 Liverpool Labour councillors refused to cut jobs and services and defied Thatcher, mobilising support from the council workforce and from local people.

They won an extra £60 million from the government in 1984 and gained six new nurseries, and five colleges. Over 5,000 council houses were built.

Time has not diminished the achievements of the 47, nor undermined the importance of the struggle. The record of the 47 remains stubbornly intact.

Today Joe Anderson, however, tells council workers that the 47 were responsible for Labour's decline in the city. That is a complete falsehood.

The 47 received magnificent support from the council workforce and the wider trade union movement and at the ballot box. If some leadership was shown in this present crisis then the council could win that support again.

Anderson and Co say: 'We have no choice.' But there is a choice. The mass movement built by the 47 did not drop from the sky.

It was developed with the Liverpool District Labour Party (DLP) hammering out a clear policy which included: opposition to cuts, no rent increases, cancelling redundancies, creating jobs, expanding social services, campaigning to retrieve the millions which the Thatcher government had cut from the city's grants, and linking this programme to the need for a socialist society.

This drew the local authority trade unions, the Labour Party Young Socialists, the women's organisations and others into the decision-making process through the DLP.

At that time the DLP democratically determined council policy and Labour councillors were constitutionally bound to carry it out! A 'trade union and labour movement organising committee' was created, representing all sections of the working class with the 47 providing the cutting edge.

This committee organised the mass rallies and demonstrations which were so important in the Liverpool campaign. This body also participated in the electoral campaign which delivered the highest Labour votes since 1945.

There were many high points of the campaign: one was on 7 March 1985, when a mini-general strike involving 30,000 council workers and 10,000 dockers, plus other sections of workers took place with a demonstration of some 50,000 marching through Liverpool opposing the Thatcher government's policies.

That mass campaign was born out of the social conditions in Liverpool, which had seen 65% of its industrial base collapse in the decade before the 47 were elected.

Mass participation in the movement was also the antidote to the hostile forces of capitalism: the Murdoch/Maxwell Press, ITV and the BBC, the local press, the pulpit, with Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and the national trade union bureaucrats underpinning the establishment's crazed campaign against the 47.

Joe Anderson and other labour party councillors recent 'demonstration' against the cuts may confuse sections of the population for a while and temporarily deflect hostility away from him and his allies.

But as the cuts bite there will be greater focus on Labour's role locally, with a corresponding call for a fighting leadership basing themselves on the policy, programme and campaigning activity of the 47.


A strategy to beat the cuts
IN AN open letter last December, a group of the 47 suggested to Liverpool's present-day Labour leader Joe Anderson and his allies that they follow the example of the 1983-87 Militant-inspired council and set a 'needs budget'.

This would protect temporarily council workers' jobs and services provided or supported by the council. Joe Anderson's response was to tell us to live in 'the real world' and accept that nothing could be done other than for him to carry out the cuts while crying bucketfuls of tears! But our letter raised important questions such as a strategy to oppose the Con-Dem onslaught.

"The first step should be to use the council's budget reserve, reported in the Liverpool Echo as £80 million, to maintain current funding levels in areas which the Con-Dem alliance is cutting.

"This would buy time for more decisive measures to defeat the cuts. Then, as we did in 1983-87, you should work out how much is required to fund existing council services in 2011 and pass a budget in line with inflation.

"This would no doubt produce a shortfall in the council's income. The amount of the shortfall could be identified, say £50 million.

"A campaign could then be launched to oppose the cuts with the specific demand that £50 million be restored to Liverpool city council as a means of defending jobs and services.

"You could call for all local authorities to embrace the same strategy and for support from the local authority trade unions and the wider labour movement, in concert with community organisations which are planning to resist any cuts in their own localities.

"If Liverpool makes a courageous stand, this could act as a beacon to other local authorities and campaigning organisations to join the campaign. If a number of the main local authorities adopted this strategy of refusing to cut jobs and services to compensate for Tory cuts, backed up by a campaign of mass demonstrations and industrial action, the Tories would be compelled to retreat.

"We call on the Labour group to totally reject the cuts and to join, not with the Lib Dems, but with the trade union and labour movement in defending the mass of Liverpool's working people."


SO please dont let the inspiration and the spirit of the Liverpool 47 die. Dont listen to the lies. Do as i did and read up on the struggle myself independently of any influence and decided for myself the truth and what really went on. Adopting a marxist strategy on the cuts that all cuts should be opposed to defend workers and working class people is the only way to go in my view. There is no excuse for Labour councillors who if they wish to warrant the name Labour councillors not to follow this route of the 47.

Learning from the struggles of yesterday

So as socialists we have been involved in many struggles throughout the yars most notably in the Militant socialist party ranks the poll tax and the struggles around the liverpool council in the mid to late 80's.

I want to make this appeal to many trade unionists and activists campainging against the cuts to not repeat the mistakes of history as a famous quote goes.

We must not dismiss big important struggles on the left. We as members of the CWI who have been involved in very tough struggles over the poll tax leading to over 18 million non payments of the poll tax across the UK. We as Militants leading the fightback to the nasty Maggie Thatcher and eventually forcing her to resign as a sign of her going far too far and working class people saying enougg is enough.

Sadly i do not think the same pressure is out there today. Even though this con-dem government is extremely weak having made more u-turns than my grandad on a bad day and being completely split on many issues the labour movement has failed to organise itself properly as yet. June 30th will be a big step towards rectifying this situation with a co-ordinated strike but this must be followed up in the autumn with bigger wider mass action.

But my main point is that we as socialists get ridiculed for reading about past struggles and how we could have won but these lessons from history must be learnt or we face making the same mistakes again.

Although this time with the trade union and labour movement at possibly its weakest its ever been this could speel tradegy for many workers with a ultimate fall of the movement. i Certainly hope this will not happen.

But the risk is there we win and we gain in huge confidence to take forward we loose we set the tone for the movement of a air of defeatism and a downward spiral. This first test comes on June the 30th and we must win to take workers confidence and continue to build for the autumn which shall hopefully see up to 4 million workers joining the 3 quarters of a million estimated to be out on June 30th.

We as Marxists look forward and look to predict what will happen but this coming tide is unclear and we wait to see how much the labour movement can mobilise itself. We of course in the socialist party will be there on every picket line, every protest and every class based action we can to interveen and put our points across that there must be pressure put on the TUC for the autumn to get behind a one day public sector general strike.

Failure to put this message through to the mass's of workers will bea failiure on our part as even if our messages are not carried through we can be sure that we had the right ideas and the best strategy for the wider anti cuts movement to take forward in trying to forge the biggest and broadest anti cuts movement possible.

We must not forget what comrades have been through in the past. The struggles they had to overcome and today can recount such struggles to us so we can learn lessons from them. Where they went wrong and felt we could do better and where we got it right. As we well know we are not perfect by any means and assessing our strategy for the future is key to winning more workers to our ideas and theories .

On a similar note we must not be detered by defeats in the movement and continue to explain our ideas and theories to the mass of workers in the hope some will start to take note of our thoughts and join us in our battle of ideas with the movement.

One of our main ideas that sets us aside from otehr left organisations is our idea and belief in the formation of a new workers party. As we believe the vehicle for a working class fighting party in labour is a unlikely happening and workers and increasing amounts of them including the unemployed and others are looking for a alternative to not nessesarily bring about socialism but certainly campaign for it and stand up for workers wherever and whenever it can. As we in the socialist party point out we dont nessesarily believe in socialism coming about via the ballot box whilst at the same time we recognise it is important for workers to feel they have a political voice to stand up for them and their rights. We stand by this and hope as part of our work this new mass workers party can become reality.

The fight has just begun

So as we see councils across the country passing their budgets for the year 2011/2012 it wont be long now untill the first real cuts start to bite in early April. With a national budget set to unviel even more cuts and probably tax rises for fuel and other such taxable items they can get their hands on we are left wondering about the battle ahead.

So far the cuts are happening so widespread and scattered its hard to know where to focus all of your energies. I do think the anti cuts movement do need to step it up a bit over the next few months as the cuts begin to deepen as local communities begin to suffer at the hands of this tory lead government of ours.

A few key dates will be on the 5th of March myself and other comrades will be getting out in protest for the first official NSSN anti cuts body's big scale protest. This will be a joint protest with comrades on teh same day taking their voices and placards down to cardiff where the lib dems are meeting. The one i will be attending in London will be the national conference of labour councillors. To highlight their hypocrisy of putting through cuts in their areas whilst saying they are against the cuts.

We need to make them realise they are just as much to blame for the cuts as the tories and lib dems. Ok maybe they are not the governing party of the country of course but when cuts are being passed down to a local level it is then their choice if they do the tories dirty work for them or not.

I was at the budget council meeting for the stevenage borough council this week which is a labour run council and was saddened to hear that they all voted through the cuts resoundingly. Very sad i thought to myself as i came away from the meeting.

We put up a good if small protest before the setting of the budget but it came to nothing as the cuts agenda rolls on.

Back in the 80's there were labour councils out there prepared to fight back against Margret Tatcher and say no to her cuts. They were almost successful. They even gained 60 million pounds of concessions from teh cuts through a well organised mass campaign and for them days a 60 million addition to your budget was a lot and something to feel very proud of.

This came about due to the role of militant labour in the city who along with Terry fielding and Derek Hatton took a stand against teh government. Along with Lambeth council who a few interesting stories of councillors being expelled from teh labour group there made a admirable stand.

The main reason these campaign eventually broke down was due to a mass purge from the labour right including the then leader neil Kinnock. The isolation of these brave councils, who were not realy brave if you think about it they were just doing right by their residents and people who voted them in.

Which i'm afraid is what we expect of all of our elected representitives sadly a left wing labour council as Dave nellist rightly said at the last NSSN conference is as rare as a poor banker in this day and age.

If one labour council stood up and said they are not doing the tories dirty work and refuse to put through their cuts it will send a message out there that other councils may follow in inspiration. Its all it might take to spark a wave of resistance to teh cuts which will send shockwaves back to Eric Pickles and the tory party. We should not be scared of big fat Eric Pickes coming in and setting our budgets for us as if in between refusing to vote the cuts through a mass campaign linking local anti cuts groups, unions, public sector staff and local charities and workers can rally around and create a mass resistance to Eric Pickes and his nasty tories. I really do think if you do not even attempt to fight back you have no chance of winning. Even if you fail you have still made a stand and stood by your principles.

People talk to me saying you cant set a illegal budget when setting your council budget. But a illegal budget is only when you havent set a budget at all. A needs budget is not illegal at all and is something i'm hugely in favour of.

An needs budget is where you set out which key essential services you cannot loose and what your local community and area needs and cant do without and spend its reserves and borrow in order to save jobs and services as the campaign builds

Councils are able to borrow at a good rate and can do this to bridge the gap in cut in funding. Quite often councils have large pool of funds they can draw on in the emergency/reserve budget that can keep local councils going if they do get stuck.

I found this piece which i have refered back to plenty of times to people in debates over council budget and cuts debates i've engaged in. This is a piece from the socialist a newspaper produced by the socialist party on The 7th of October 2010 and which i feel highlights things brilliantly and explains why councillors should fight the cuts.

IN THE mid-1980s Liverpool Labour council, under the political influence of the Militant (forerunner of the Socialist Party) and the pressure of a mass working class movement, successfully led a campaign to secure extra resources for the city's urban renewal programme from a hostile Tory government intent on cutting funding.

Subsequently, in an act of political revenge, 47 Liverpool Labour councillors were undemocratically removed from office and surcharged thousands of pounds. Every penny of the surcharges was raised from the labour movement in a magnificent fund-raising campaign.

If any council today showed a milligram of the courage and conviction of the 47 Liverpool councillors we would be living in a better place. Unfortunately New Labour councillors are raising the spectre of surcharge as an excuse for not fighting coalition cuts, but instead for passing them on.

I have done a quick question and answer guide of council law for New Labour councillors worried that the twin terminator toffs - Cameron and Clegg - will come and batter them.

If I don't vote for these cuts and annoy the government I will be surcharged and lose my home?
Oh no you won't! The power of surcharge was identified as wrong by the Nolan Commission and abolished as part of the 2000 Local Government Act. The only possible remnant of this system is if a councillor personally benefits from any financial losses incurred by a council.

But if I go against the cuts I could be barred from office.
If you do not "have regard" to financial advice given by your council's chief finance officer and fail to explain the reasons for not going along with his or her advice then, according to their statutory duty, you could be referred to the standards board for breach of your council's code of conduct which could bar you from office for a period.

But it would not be easy for a finance officer to do this if, like Liverpool, you took a stand as part of a mass campaign to defend your services and communities. Remember it is the local people who put you where you are, not unelected finance officers.

Margaret Thatcher's vicious Tory regime only moved to surcharge the Liverpool councillors after the 1984-85 miners' strike ended and Liverpool council was left isolated by the Labour leadership. If the twenty other Labour councils that had pledged to defy the Tory government had not crumbled at the first hurdle, the government would not have been able to surcharge the Liverpool councillors. On the contrary, the government would have been swept from office.

But the government will just take over and send in commissioners to run things.
Despite the threat, it did not happen in Liverpool. Instead the Labour Party, under the spineless leadership of Neil Kinnock did Thatcher's dirty work for her in witch-hunting the district party. Recently, the only notable time when commissioners were sent in was in Doncaster following a media storm about the running of social services.

For a weak coalition government to try this against a council fighting to preserve services, and especially one with local workers mobilised in support, would be an entirely different matter.

Naturally all this would depend on mobilising support but tens of thousands supported the councillors in Liverpool on mass demonstrations. This organised fightback actually won extra cash for services.

The next Labour councillor who tries to back away from saving local services should recognise that by voting for massive cuts they will in effect be voting to abolish themselves. After all, if the services go, what is the point of having these surplus-to-requirement back bench councillors anyway?


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Local democracy
Just how responsive to local people was the Militant-influenced Liverpool city council? London Evening Standard journalist Simon Jenkins recently wrote:

"The most distinctive feature of the militant Left's rule of Liverpool in the Eighties was its impact on urban renewal. Responding to the local public, the council smashed most of the hated towers to the ground and left neighbourhood groups to plan their replacements. The result was no more decks, stairwells and broken lifts set in windy parks, as dictated by professional architects. Instead people decided to revert to terrace houses, like those taken from them in the Sixties. It was an object lesson in democracy."

A far cry from today's councils!


So as the cuts austerity project rolls on by the tories and attacks fall on the ordinary good people of this country this is just where the fight begins.

Lastly i do hope you can join me on the protest for an alternative on the 26th of March in central London where myself and hundreds if not thousands will be marching against the government and telling them there is another way.

Lets keep the fight going to preserve our public services before it is too late!!

We need councillors who will fight the cuts

i just thought i'd share this article i read on the TUSC website. it summerises things excellently. It highlights the issues and problems many councillors will run into this year. With a large amount of labour councillors set to win big this year i suspect this will become a bigger and bigger issue. It will sort out which labour members/councillors have the bottle to stand up for their local peoples rights and services or bend over and allow the tory cuts through which will show a real weakness. In this article it outlines ways labour councillors can oppose teh cuts and keep public support on their side. THis can be done and has be done successfully in the past. It just needs people to be brave enough to stand up to the coalition governemnt and not let working class people suffer at the hands of the tories.

Here is the article from the TUSC website. check it out if you can.

The Con-Dems' savage austerity plans announced in October's comprehensive spending review put local councils firmly in the front line. Funding for councils from the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) will be cut from £31 billion in 2009-10 to £22.9 billion in 2014-15 - a 27% fall, the biggest 'departmental cut' of all.

At the same time councils will be expected to administer many of the cuts announced under other budget headings. These include the cuts to housing benefit funded from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) budget but administered by councils; the Department for Education's 12% cut in 'non-school' spending on young people (including the abolition of educational maintenance allowances for 16-19 year olds); and a 're-adjustment' of NHS social care funding.

Setting council tax benefit, averaging £900 a year and currently paid out by councils on behalf of the DWP, will be devolved to councils, but with a 10% cut in overall funding.

Councils will also become the final agency to apply the £500 'total household benefit' cap, through housing benefit deductions. "Outsourced", was an apt headline in The Guardian - "town halls must do Osborne's dirty work", it went on.

To say councils "must do" this dirty work, however, is wrong. Not unexpectedly, Labour councillors are already saying there is 'nothing we can do' to stop the cuts from being implemented locally, even where they control the council. But that is just not so. Councillors have a choice.

That's why the decision of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC - see box) to facilitate the widest-possible challenge in the local elections that will take place in England next year is an important part of building the anti-cuts movement. 32 million people will be able to vote in these elections, in every part of England bar London. TUSC is also involved in discussions to ensure an anti-cuts challenge is organised in elections to the Welsh assembly and the Scottish parliament, also in May 2011 (there are no local elections in Wales and Scotland).

The TUSC steering committee has agreed a draft policy platform for the English local elections, which will now be open for discussion in trade union branches and anti-cuts campaigns and finalised at a conference of prospective candidates in January.

It starts from the basis that councillors can refuse to pass on the cuts. Voting in May, it argues, can be not just a 'protest vote' but can actually stop cuts to local jobs, benefits, and services. Building support for TUSC candidates can be an important means of putting pressure on current councillors when they decide council budgets in March, and in shaping how they respond to the 'new responsibilities' they will have to administer.

What can councils do?
WHAT ROLE could councils play to stop the cuts, if the political will was there to seriously oppose the Con-Dem government's austerity measures?

Over the years councils have been stripped of direct funding responsibility for many different services. The TUSC election platform notes that former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who began this process, famously said: "I must take more power to the centre to stop socialism" - in other words, that public services that 'crowded out' the private sector should be curbed or, where they exist, should be opened up to private companies to make profits from public needs. New Labour continued this process throughout its 13 years in office - the turnover of private companies running public services reached over £80 billion in 2008, for example, 126% higher than 1995-96 under the previous Tory government. Now the Con-Dems' spending review announcement includes plans for 'private provider quotas' for councils' elderly care, early years, youth and family support services.

Despite this however, as the TUSC election platform states, councils still have enormous powers and responsibilities. They control budgets totalling billions of pounds spent on services from housing to schools, youth clubs, libraries, adult social care, crime reduction, sports centres, highways maintenance and refuse collection, to name but a few. They have legal powers over non-council provided services, including many of those now 'outsourced' that could be used, if the will was there, to defend jobs and services.

Councillors could - and TUSC councillors would, as the policy platform states - "vote against the privatisation of council services, or the transfer of council services to 'social enterprises' or 'arms-length' management organisations, which are first steps to privatisation". They could - and TUSC councillors would - push for councils to "use all their legal powers available" to "oppose both the cuts, and government polices which centrally impose the transfer of public services to private bodies".

That could mean that, for example, faced with the Con-Dems' housing benefit cuts, councils would refuse to evict council tenants who fall into arrears as a result of the changes - and withdraw from 'partnership agreements' with housing associations (HAs) and other 'social landlords' who fail to do likewise (and actively support HA tenants' organisations to fight for this policy).

Councils could also intervene in the private rented sector. The government hypocritically claims that its aim is to 'bring rents down', after housing benefit payments have ballooned to £21 billion - although the Tories began this by abolishing rent controls in 1988 and slashing council house-building (policies not reversed by New Labour). Councils cannot impose a legally-binding private rent limit but they could, for example, threaten compulsory purchase proceedings against multi-property landlords who move to evict tenants suffering housing benefit cuts.

But housing is just one area where councils with the political will to oppose the Con-Dem government could play a key role in resisting the cuts. They could use their powers to 'call in' and refer local NHS re-organisation proposals, for example. With a King's Fund survey showing that fewer than one in four doctors believes the government's new GP consortia commissioning plans - opening up £80 billion of NHS primary care funding to private companies - will improve patient care, councils could galvanise opposition to the Con-Dems' dismantling of the NHS.

Defending councils' budgets
Even some Tory and Lib-Dem councillors are criticising the government's 'free schools' plans (particularly in relation to faith schools) as endangering socially cohesive local education. Councils could use their 'schools organisation' and admissions monitoring powers, governor appointments etc - and initiate consultative parents' ballots, for example - to build a public campaign of opposition to these and the equally divisive accelerated academies programme. Councillors, it is clear, have a choice - they don't have to do the government's 'dirty work'. They can resist.

But what can councils do when faced with government cuts to the centrally allocated 'revenue support grants' they receive to pay for council-funded services? The TUSC draft election platform states that councils should refuse to implement these cuts, and reject above inflation increases in council tax, rents and service charges to compensate for them. If even a handful of councils were to make such a stand it would electrify the mass opposition to the cuts that is developing.

As Margaret Thatcher's resignation 20 years ago this November shows, in the face of mass non-payment of the poll tax, even the seemingly most imposing government - and the Con-Dem coalition is not that - can be forced to retreat if it faces a sufficiently powerful mass campaign of opposition. Not only was Thatcher removed but the Tories were forced, within weeks of her downfall, to put an extra £4.3 billion into local government funding (around £7 billion today) to finance the abolition of the poll tax.

The TUSC policy platform argues that the best way that councils can contribute to mobilising the mass campaign necessary to defeat the cuts is to set budgets that meet the needs of their local communities, without massive council tax hikes, and combine together to demand that the government makes up the funding shortfall. That is the 'Liverpool model' which in 1984 enabled the city's Labour council, led by Militant supporters, the predecessor of the Socialist Party, to compel Thatcher's government to concede extra resources to the city worth up to £60 million (£98 million today).


The campaign built by Liverpool city council in 1983-87 to win extra funding inspired thousands of workers, photo Militant (Click to enlarge)
But the campaign in support of Liverpool's 'needs budget' had been long prepared, even before Labour won a majority on the council in 1983. A 25,000-strong demonstration was organised in November 1983 and the budget meeting itself, in March 1984, just weeks after the start of the miners' strike, took place against the backdrop of a city-wide one day strike and a 50,000-strong march to the town hall. The anti-cuts movement will grow rapidly, given confidence by events such as the student demonstration in November and the combative stance of unions such as the Fire Brigades Union, the PCS civil servants' union and the RMT transport workers, but it is still at an early stage. There is certainly no group of councillors who have prepared the ground as the Liverpool councillors had in 1984.

So, for the next budget-setting period, the draft TUSC policy platform also includes support for councillors who are prepared to use councils' reserves and 'prudential borrowing' powers to avoid passing on government cuts. Such a policy is completely within a council's legal powers.

Council finance officers can challenge a budget they believe to be 'knowingly unbalanced', in other words, a planned deficit - which a 'needs budget' without massive council tax rises would be - but they can only question an individual council's ability to meet short-term debt re-payments. The use of reserves to meet such initial debt re-payments, for example, is legally a 'matter of judgement' for councillors to make. Councillors have a choice.

In some respects this approach would be a 'Liverpool in reverse sequence'. In 1984 the mass campaign led by the council was able to extract extra resources from the government. The campaign continued in 1985 but, with the defeat of the miners' strike, and under ferocious attack from a Labour Party leadership doing Thatcher's work for her - effectively, with Liverpool left isolated - the council had to resist cuts and sustain its house-building programme for a second year by using its borrowing powers.

'Legality' and a mass campaign
COUNCILS USING their reserves and borrowing powers to avoid making cuts in this budget-setting period would only be buying time before they faced an inevitable showdown with the government for extra resources. Ultimately, there is no 'clever tactic' that can avoid the need to build a mass campaign against the cuts.

There is, of course, no guarantee in any struggle. Most Labour councillors are 'New Labour', indistinguishable from the Tories and the Liberal Democrats in their pro-market policies and outlook. But even those who sincerely want to oppose the cuts still hesitate before the Liverpool road. Eventually, having defied the government for four years and won lasting gains for the city, the Liverpool councillors were surcharged and dismissed from office in March 1987.

The law has changed since the 1980s. The 2000 Local Government Act abolished the power of surcharge, for example, except for cases of personal gain. As importantly, the actual course of the events in Liverpool needs to be rescued from right-wing myth-making. It was not the setting of a needs budget or the later decision, in 1985, to fall back on the council's borrowing powers, that the councillors were surcharged for. It was the decision to delay setting a rate at all (rates were the local tax levy then), that was used as the legal pretext to charge the councillors with 'wilfully incurring financial loss' to the city.

This 'no rate' strategy was decided on by the leaders of 20 other Labour councils, ironically against the Liverpool councillors' advice (Liverpool went along with it to keep a united front), who then all - bar Lambeth council - backed down to leave Liverpool to fight alone. Nobody is proposing not setting a council tax rate today.

It was also significant that the councillors were only taken on by the district auditor in 1985 and not in 1984, when they had also delayed setting a rate (as some Labour defections meant no party had been able to get a majority for its budget in the council chamber). It was only when the mass campaign had ebbed - not in Liverpool but elsewhere - after the miners had been defeated, the other Labour councils had capitulated and Liverpool had been attacked and left isolated by the Labour Party leaders, that the Thatcher government felt confident enough to 'apply the law'.

The situation today is different. The Con-Dem cuts are the worst in generations, permanently changing life in Britain, as Cameron himself has explained. They will be resisted, no matter what the axe men decide - in parliament or the council chamber - and the opposition has only just begun. Councillors who are prepared to fight could play a historic role in the inevitable resistance

Fight or stand aside - or face a challenge
THE CLAIM that there is 'nothing Labour can do' to stop the cuts 'until the next election' - leaving aside its support for 'less deep and fast' cuts if it did come to power - is disproved by one simple demand.

If Ed Miliband was to stand up tomorrow and commit an incoming Labour government to meet the debts incurred by councils who borrowed rather than made the savage cuts demanded of them, then not one council would have a reason to make the cuts. The same pledge could be made to other public and semi-public bodies like universities, health authorities, school governing boards, housing associations etc which incur 'temporary' deficits to avoid implementing cuts.

Many trade union leaders still hope that 'Labour will listen' and resist the cuts. Let them ask for such a pledge, which would, in local government, save the 100,000 jobs at threat and the services they provide. But if, as is almost certain, they don't get it, then they must admit that the only option is to fight and build a mass campaign, including standing or backing candidates in the 2011 local elections who will fight the cuts.

Some Labour councillors will no doubt sincerely wish to oppose the cuts but draw back at the prospect of taking a bold stand. They should resign and make way for those who will. Whatever, it should be made clear to all councillors: councillors can fight the cuts and TUSC candidates will - and will contest the seats of those councillors who vote for cuts.


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What is TUSC?
The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition was set-up in 2010 to enable trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists who wanted to resist the pro-austerity consensus of the establishment parties to stand candidates in the 2010 general election. By registering TUSC with the electoral commission, candidates could appear on the ballot paper as Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition rather than as 'Independent' which they would otherwise have to do under electoral law.

TUSC came out of a series of discussions by participants in the No2EU - Yes to Democracy coalition, which contested the 2009 European elections with the official support of the RMT transport workers' union, the Socialist Party, Solidarity - Scotland's Socialist Movement, and others.

TUSC is a coalition with a steering committee which includes, in a personal capacity, the RMT general secretary Bob Crow, and fellow executive member Craig Johnston; the assistant general secretary of the PCS civil servants' union, Chris Baugh, and the union's vice-president, John McInally; the vice-president of the National Union of Teachers, Nina Franklin; and the recently retired general secretary of the Prison Officers Association, Brian Caton. The Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party are also represented on the committee.

TUSC was established as a federal 'umbrella' coalition, with an agreed core policy statement endorsed by all its candidates but with participating organisations accountable for their own campaigns. Its core policies include, amongst others, opposition to public spending cuts and privatisation, student grants not fees, the repeal of the anti-trade union laws, and a clear socialist commitment to "bringing into democratic public ownership the major companies and banks that dominate the economy, so that production and services can be planned to meet the needs of all and to protect the environment".

The draft local elections policy platform agreed by the steering committee is a supplement to the core policy statement. It will be finalised at a conference in January and will form the basis on which any prospective council candidate can stand under the TUSC name in May's elections.