Where's your famous 'clear red water'?

The Labour Party in Wales often claims to be different; they talk about "clear red water" not just between the Welsh Government and Westminster but also between Welsh Labour and the parliamentary party. Yesterday Welsh Labour MPs got the chance to prove just how different they are with the vote on the second reading of the Public Sector Pensions Bill, which proposes, amongst other things, to make public sector workers, like me, work to 68 and beyond before we get our pensions.

They failed miserably; just 1 Welsh Labour MP voted against Tory attacks on our pensions. All those MPs who visited picket lines and demanded to speak at strike rallies on N30 sat on their hands while the Con-Dems stole £millions from our pensions.

Never mind 'clear red water', just like their colleagues in Westminster, Welsh Labour are swimming in a sea of muddy-coloured brown fluid. Wales needs a new mass workers' party to fight for working class people because we won't get any fight from Labour. Yesterday's vote should be a wake up call to trade unionists in Wales to stop funding Labour and instead support only candidates and parties that pledge to fight all cuts, like TUSC.

Ronnie Job, Swansea
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Labour Raises Red Flag of Revolution... but only in commemoration of past

According to some historians the use of the red flag as a symbol of revolution and working class revolt dates from the 1831 Merthyr Rising. Armed workers and the unemployed seized the town, after sacking the debtors' court, and held it for a number of days against troops sent to put down the spreading revolt and associated strike action.

Trade unionists in Wales continue to commemorate the revolt and remember the unjust execution of Dic Penderyn. On August 12 there is a memorial walk organised by NUT and supported by PCS and others, on which participants will be encouraged to carry red flags in memory of the raising of the red flag of revolution in 1831.

At this event they will be joined by Wales' First Minister, Carwyn Jones. The Labour Party, which he leads in Wales, is happy to celebrate revolutionary acts at a distance of 180 years but the current Labour Party spits on trade unionists fighting to defend their terms and conditions. Leader Milliband's demands that PCS members in UKBA not be allowed to disrupt the corporate shop window that the Olympics has become, through strike action after a democratic vote, is consistent with his refusal to back public sector workers striking to defend pensions.

Welsh Labour often claims to be different from their big brothers and sisters in Westminster but the Welsh Labour Government is presiding over cuts that threaten the Labour Party's greatest achievement, the NHS in Wales.

Trade unionists should remember the struggles and martyrs of our movement. The Labour Party has abandoned the symbol of the red flag along with support for workers in struggle. Socialists celebrate working class fighters of the past by dedicating ourselves to supporting struggles today and by struggling for a fairer society, a socialist society.


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Remploy workers have jobs and are fighting to defend them

The Welsh Government has announced with much fanfare, a scheme to support Remploy workers made redundant by the Con-Dem's factory closure programme. Private firms and, possibly, local authorities, will receive subsidies to take on former Remploy workers.

Swansea Socialist Party members will get the views of Remploy workers at the local plant on the scheme tomorrow when we support them on their picket line. Labour-supporting Welsh trade union leaders have hailed this as evidence of the Welsh Government's support for Remploy but it seems a long way short of their earlier promises to back Remploy workers in every way possible to keep their jobs and factories open.

Remploy workers have jobs. Skilled, productive, socially useful jobs in which they are trained and experienced. The vote by a huge majority, to take strike action to defend Remploy is evidence that Remploy workers haven't accepted the proposed closures. Neither have their supporters in Swansea; the Trades Council, anti-cuts campaigners and Swansea Socialist Party members will all be on the picket lines tomorrow to show their support. Come and join us and bring your banners and placards - Bruce Road, Swansea Industrial Park, Fforestfach.

Save Remploy!


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Welsh NHS Services Under Threat

It's a much repeated mantra amongst the leaders of Labour-affiliated trade unions in Wales "The NHS is under attack... in England" But, as was explained at the Wales Shop Stewards Network Conference at the weekend, Wales faces cuts in health spending as bad as or worse than any area of England.

It seems that immediate confirmation of this fact has arrived today with the news of the closure of Afallon Ward at Bronglais Hospital in Aberystwyth. Shortages of qualified staff threaten, according to a statement made by the Health Board to BBC Wales, the ability to provide "appropriate and safe care for patients on that ward".

Earlier this year concerned Aberystwyth residents travelled to Cardiff to lobby the Welsh Government over fears that services would be lost from the hospital. Bronglais is part of the same local health board, Hywel Dda, as Prince Phillip Hospital in Llanelli where residents are fighting to retain their accident and emergency unit and last month held their own lobby of the Assembly.

It is vital that NHS campaigners link up, first on a health board basis and then across the whole of Wales, to take their fight to the Labour Welsh Government and demand they stop passing on Tory cuts. Trade unionists in Wales need to demand that leaders stop trying to hide the scale of cuts taking place to Welsh health services.
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WTUC Conference: unions need to break from Welsh Labour government implementing Tory cuts

In a leaflet I wrote for the Socialist Part for distribution to delegates at the Wales TUC Conference in Llandudno at the end of last month, I wrote the following:

"Almost every motion on the agenda deals with organising to fight cuts and privatisation of public services. All motions rightly attack the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition for austerity. But this conference can't afford to let the link between some trade unions and Labour, hamper the effectiveness of the Wales TUC in opposing cuts when they are passed on by a Labour Wales Assembly or Labour councils."

Alec Thraves: Censured!

Reflecting on the conference, I think that although there was an understandable desire for unity, amongst trade unionists facing the worst attacks on our jobs, terms and conditions, services, pensions and our very ability to organise. But there was a significant divide at the conference on some issues between those unions that remain affiliated to the Labour Party and will only fight cuts they can blame on Tories and those that are committed to fighting all cuts, no matter which party implements them. There wasn’t a lot of controversy - apart from TUSC election agent for Swansea during the recent council elections, Alec Thraves, being formally censured for criticising UNISON’s leadership for not allowing members the chance to take part in further strike action on pensions (for more see: http://www.swanseasocialistparty.org.uk/view/news/2012-05-28/150-wales-tuc---a-tale-of-two-conferences.html) – but where there were divided votes it was regularly the unaffiliated unions, including PCS, POA, RMT, FBU and Trades Councils voting against the ‘big 3’ that between them, give £millions of members’ subs to the Labour Party every year.

Welsh Government First Minister, Carwyn Jones, got a standing ovation (although not from all parts of the conference hall) for what I thought was a rather boring speech in which he claimed that there would be no downgrading of NHS services in Wales. At the same time as he was speaking, in Cardiff outside the Senedd, hundreds were protesting at plans to close the A&E unit at Llanelli’s Prince Phillip Hospital! The threat to accident and emergency services at Prince Phillip is part of cuts health Boards are making across Wales as they struggle to find the £290 million of savings that the Labour government of Wales is demanding of them for 2011-12. But this is only the beginning; they will have to save similar amounts, the best part of £300 (by coincidence, roughly the amount that’s stolen from Wales annually through the Barnet Formula for determining funding for devolved areas) or 5% of their budgets, every year for the next 3 years.

In the run up to the conference there has been a heated debate between Labour-supporting trade unionists, such as then-WTUC president Andy Richards and Plaid Cymru. Obviously rattled by concerns that with a new left leader in Leanne Woods, Plaid might threaten Labour’s support in, and finance from, the union movement in Wales, Andy Richards had claimed, “There is only one party for the working people of Wales, the party that the trade unions founded to give a voice to working people – the Labour Party. This is why it is called the Labour Party.”

I support TUSC not Plaid Cymru and I wonder if Labour had got one less seat in the Assembly elections last year, would Plaid now be in partnership with Labour, carrying through same cuts? But the debate has highlighted just how blinkered the Labour-supporting leadership of trade union movement in Wales has become. This fixed outlook, assuming that because trade unions have backed Labour for 100+ years they always will, ignores history and ignores important developments taking place in the more radicalised unions. I’m sure you would have found Liberal Party spokesmen making very similar statements to Andy Richards about the Liberals being the only party for the working person over a hundred years ago when Keir Hardie and others were laying the basis for Labour’s future growth in Wales and Labour Party pioneers were being attacked for splitting the Liberal vote. Within a generation the Liberals went from being a party of government to a broken rump.

PCS was never affiliated to Labour but RMT and FBU were and no longer are; the FBU disaffiliated after a bitter strike dispute against a Labour government. Even in those unions that give the most financial support to Labour, members are not all happy about the uncritical support their leadership gives to a party that has done nothing to support them. They are unlikely to go through but 25% of the motions at this year’s GMB conference are on disaffiliation. Only UNISON’s bizarre rules in this respect – rules that say that only the union’s Labour Link can determine the union’s relationship to the Labour Party – prevent all union members discussing this issue but the leadership will not be able to rely on this to hold back members for ever.

The growth of disenchantment with Labour may be quicker for Welsh trade unionists because, unlike the rest of Britain, we have a Labour government in Wales and, after May’s council elections, Labour in power in many council chambers as well. If, as they have given every indication they will, the Welsh government and Labour councils say they have no choice but to pass on Tory cuts, the disintegration of Labour’s base of support could be extremely rapid. Supporters of TUSC can speed that process up by intervening in struggles against cuts and posing the question of the need for a new, mass workers’ party. TUSC has already taken important, if modest steps, in the direction of attracting trade union support. In the May council elections, TUSC was backed officially by a national trade union, the RMT, for the first time. 3 union general secretaries, from RMT, POA and FBU, gave their personal backing to TUSC. 

Unless the government collapses, which could happen if the tops of the trade union movement prove capable of building a campaign that matches the anger of their members, the only elections in Wales in the next 3 years will be the European ones. The main focus for TUSC supporters now should be the trade union movement, which is where the campaign against cuts and austerity will be fought in the immediate future. All TUSC supporters, particularly anyone who hasn’t been before should definitely try to attend the 6^th annual National Shop Stewards Network Conference (see http://www.shopstewards.net/) next Saturday and the Welsh Shop Stewards Network Conference in Cardiff on June 30^th.

After the elections... back to the fight!

Like many Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition Candidates, I suspect, I was happy to put the election work behind us this week and get back to the main arena for fighting the cuts - the trade union struggle. Today, around 400,000 members of UNITE, UCU, PCS, RMT and NIPSA took action over their pensions and reminded the government that the pensions struggle is far from over. They were joined in an unofficial walkout by POA members, for whom the last Labour government made striking illegal.

Refusing to cross a picket line of my UCU comrades at the College where I work, I joined other Socialist Party members and fellow delegates to the Trades Council, in visiting a number of picket lines. Everywhere we went there was a determined mood to see this fight through no matter what it takes. Most of those on strike today have laready begun to see the effect of increased pension contributions in their pay packets. The other thing common to every picket line, was the desire to see the other public sector unions commit to the fight, in particular my own union, UNISON.

Today was not a day for the half-hearted picket as the Swansea weather seemed determined to throw everything at us - rain, hail, howling winds. The strike rally has to be moved from Castle Square to the Unitarian Church. Nonetheless it was well-attended and everybody was in fighting mood. Visteon pensioners, fighting Ford for the pensions they've had stolen for 3 years now, reminded anybody that might have forgotten that this struggle is about all pensions - public, private and state pensions too.

Everybody at the meeting was determined to rebuild the unity of November 30 and to fight not just on pensions but against regional pay, in defence of our health sevice and in opposition to all cuts. It is in these struggles that TUSC will be built.

Support May 10 strike action. Defend all pensions.

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition urges everybody who voted for us last week and all trade unionists to do what they can to support the strike action tomorrow. Upto 500,000 trade unionists in PCS, UNITE, RMT, UCU. NIPSA will be taking co-ordinated strike action. Visit picket lines to offer solidarity and join the rally in Castle Square at 12:30pm.

Defend pensions - public, private and state pensions.