CHARTISTFor democratic socialism July/August 2015 #275 £2

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Whip handCat Smith MPBucking the trendJohn PalmerUK/EU FederalismRachel RobinsonHuman Rignts ActEuclid TsakalotosD-Day for EU/GreecePeter HainAnti-austerity

July/August 2015 CHARTIST 3

Editorial PolicyThe editorial policy of CHARTIST is topromote debate amongst people active inradical politics about the contemporaryrelevance of democratic socialism acrossthe spec t rum of po l i t i cs , economics ,science, philosophy, art, interpersonalrelations – in short, the whole realm ofsocial life.

Our concern is with both democracy andsocialism. The history of the last centuryhas made i t abundant ly c lear that themass of the population of the advancedcapitalist countries will have no interestin any form of social ism which is notthoroughly democratic in its principles,its practices, its morality and its ideals.Yet the consequences of this deep attach-ment to democracy – one of the greatestadvances o f our epoch – a re se ldomreflected in the discussion and debatesamongst active socialists.

CHARTIST is not a party publication. Itbrings together people who are interestedin socialism, some of whom are active theLabour Party and the trade union move-men t . I t i s conce rned to deepen andextend a dialogue with all other socialistsand with activists from other movementsinvolved in the struggle to find democrat-ic alternatives to the oppression, exploita-tion and injustices of capitalism and class society

Editorial BoardCHARTIST is published six times a yearby the Chartist Collective. This issue wasproduced by an Editorial Board consistingof Duncan Bowie (Reviews), Peter Chalk,Mike Davis (Editor), Nigel Doggett, DavidFloyd, Don Flynn, Roger Gillham, PeterKenyon (Treasurer ) , F rank Lee , DaveLister, Andy Morton (Production Editor),Robbie Scot t , Mary Southcot t , JamesGrayson , Pa t r i c i a d ’A rdenne , She i l aOsmanovic and Patrick Mulcahy.

P roduc t ion was unde r t aken by Pe te rKenyon.

Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views ofthe EB

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4 OUR HISTORY - 61Bertrand Russell - Roads toFreedom (1918)

4 LETTERLily Murphy on the Irish referendum5 EDITORIALBattle lines drawn

19 POINTS AND CROSSINGSPaul Salveson on ‘flat cap’ democracy 25 FILM REVIEWPatrick Mulcahy on Salt of the Earth26 BOOK REVIEWS James Sweetman on Ed Miliband,

Frank Lee on Ukraine, Duncan Bowieon international government, UKIP etal, Peter Kenyon on Osborne, TrevorFisher on anti-austerity, Tony Manzion welfare reform, Patricia d’Ardenneon NHS and victims of terrorism

32 YOUTH VIEWPatty McCabe explores politicalactivism after the General Election

CHARTISTFOR DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISMNumber 275 July/August 2015

FEATURES

REGULARS

Cover�by�Martin�Rowson

Cameron’s EU headache: pages 6-7

Turkish elections - page 23

6 BRITAIN AND THE EUJohn Palmer asks if the left could embracefederalism8 LABOUR TRAPPEDDon Flynn explains party ineptitude inWestminster10 TU RIGHTS UNDER SIEGETSSA’s Manuel Cortes calls for action11 LABOUR’S LEADERSHIP ELECTIONJon Lansman lauds left candidate JeremyCorbyn MP in a flawed process12 ANTI-AUSTERITY FOR VICTORYPeter Hain presses for a break with neo-liberalism 14 POSITIVE LABOURCat Smith MP sets an agenda to win15 HUMAN RIGHTS - DIRTY TRICKSLiberty’s Rachel Robinson warns of Torythreat to the UK’s record 16 SCOTTISH LABOUR - WHAT NOW?Gerry Hassan explores how Labour lost itsway and doubts it can recover18 GREENS IN A QUANDARYDave Toke ponders the party’s futuredirection20 D-DAY FOR EUROPE/GREECEChief Greek negotiating coordinator EuclidTsakalotos sets out what is at stake 21 WELSH LABOUR LAMENTSPeter Rowlands sees need to rebuild anti-Tory defences22 UK ECONOMY - ANOTHER BUST?Frank Lee sounds an alarm23 TURKEY/ISRAEL ELECTIONSSheila Osmanovic and Jon Taylor providepost-election reports24 UK VOTER REGISTRATIONMary Southcott calls for more grassrootseffort

CONTENTS

A Labour victor: page 14

Our�timeless�task�in�the�Labour�Party�is�to�stand�up�against�injustice�wher-ever�we�find�it.�That�notion�has�driven�me�throughout�my�political�life�–�andit’s�what�drove�me�to�stand�for�Parliament�in�the�first�place....Our�party�mustbecome�a�social�movement�again.�It�was�founded�to�stand�up�to�injustice,and�too�often�we�have�lost�our�way,�ignored�our�supporters�or�been�cowedby�powerful�commercial�interests�and�the�press.

Austerity�policies�are�harming�people’s�life�chances�and�taking�away�oppor-tunities.�We�must�reject�the�notion�that�the�journey�to�prosperity�tramplesover�people�–�and�become�an�anti-austerity�movement.�You�can’t�build�afair�economy�by�casting�people�aside.

Go�to�http://www.jeremyforlabour.com/vote�to�find�out�howto�vote�for�Jeremy4leader

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4 CHARTIST July/August 2015 July/August 2015 CHARTIST 5

EDITORIAL

not unexpectedly the new Tory majority govern-ment is wasting no time in pushing throughthe more controversial measures in their partymanifesto. The European referendum bill isforemost amongst them paving the way for an

in-out referendum in late 2016 (not May). Cameron willreturn from Europe with a fig leaf and seek support forcontinuing membership. As John Palmer writes, theresult won’t be a foregone conclusion (polls can get itwrong). Eurosceptic, narrow nationalist sentiment fuelledby uKIp and the Tory right, plus a few Labour and far leftEu opponents, underlines the need for democratic social-ists to make the case for a more democratic, socialEuropean union all the greater. We also have the ludi-crous proposals to legislate for any government to run a‘budget surplus’ in ‘normal’ times (whatever they are, onlyin two years of Thatcher’s 11 years did Tories secure asurplus) and for no tax or nI increases for theterm. This means that the government willdig even deeper at the foundations of thewelfare state, public services and thenhS. half a million public sector jobsare under threat while local councils,already shrunk by a third, face cutson a similar scale, making propos-als for ‘northern powerhouses’ asempty as the ‘big Society’ eye-wash of the first Cameron term.privatisation will be the name ofthe game from health to housing,criminal justice to street clean-ing. The £12 billion welfare axewill hit working families in receiptof tax credits, those on housingbenefit, the disabled, sick andunemployed. The post-war welfarestate settlement, already undermined,will look unrecognisable. The Tories areseeking to lock in austerity and privatisa-tion indefinitely, creating a new settlementwhere the wealthy and big business control everwider realms of the public and enjoy light touch tax. It is atopsy-turvy world of a warped socialism for the rich withthe state guaranteeing the profits of banks and corpora-tions with bailouts and sell-offs like royal Mail, Lloyds,royal Mint, Met Office and rbS where tax payers will losea minimum of £13 billion and rising, while the rest endurea naked capitalism. Meanwhile the Labour party wrestleswith its future after enduring a second damaging defeat.The faint-hearts call for a return to the halcyon days ofnew Labour. Liz Kendall is unashamed, while Andyburnham and yvette Cooper are more guarded. All peddlesome version of Labour not being business friendly, notappealing to aspirational voters, overspending in lastLabour government or being too left wing. Thankfully Mpshave enabled a left candidate in the form of Jeremy Corbynto enter the contest. So an alternative view to the domi-nant austerity mantra will be voiced. Corbyn will alsospeak truth to power with an internationalist, redistribu-tive narrative. perhaps it will encourage more to talk ofthe founding values of Labour to secure social justice,equality, cooperation and an economy that puts peoplebefore profit and nurtures a society that enables all to lead

a fulfilling, creative life, free from fear and want. We would have preferred a serious discussion of policy,

programme and strategy engaging members and support-ers before a leadership election, as Jon Lansman reports.but at least having a choice of candidates representingwider strands of Labour opinion is progress. We urge allsocialists, trade unionists and Labour sympathisers to paytheir £3 associate membership and get involved in theleadership and London mayor contests. hard-won tradeunion rights are also in the Tory cross-hairs. ManuelCortes outlines their attack plan to virtually outlawstrikes and disempower unions. resistance is crucial andthe June 20th people’s Assembly demonstration againstausterity is just the first step. A major challenge will be forunions to reach out to the modern ‘precariat’, the four mil-lion plus self employed and the many millions of unorgan-

ised workers in service sectors, or on zero hours con-tracts with imaginative actions and campaigns

to build support. but it was the confusingmessage on austerity and deficit reduction

that failed to convince key sections ofthe electorate. Austerity-lite with

humane cuts meant many votersopted for the authentic austerityparty. Peter Hain provides a radi-cal plan for Labour to move out ofthe neo-liberal straightjacket bylaunching instead a programmeof green investment, sustainablegrowth and job creation kick-started with progressive taxationand modest borrowing.Leadership candidates should

read his book back to the Future ofSocialism to get the arguments. CatSmith MP who successfully over-

turned a Tory majority echoes the callfor an alternative economic policy. Of

course Scotland was the other tsunami thatbeached Labour where all but one of its 41

seats were lost to the Snp. Gerry Hassan assess-es the strange death of Labour Scotland with its failure toread the signs of growing nationalist support, complacency,ossifying membership and tired politics. Pete Rowlandsfinds a similar story in Wales though Labour lost more tothe Tories than plaid. Don Flynn discusses the fundamen-tal crisis afflicting the Westminster state, with Scotlandand the regions pressing for greater autonomy from a sink-ing London based parliament perceived as remote andover-centralised with an antiquated governance system ofLords, monarch and City in desperate need of overhaul.Frank Lee sees a new bust down the line for Osborne’sfragile property bubble fuelled recovery. Amid the hoo-haaover Magna Carta Rachel Robinson outlines Cameron’scynical threat to scrap the human rights Act. Greeceremains the front-line of the anti-austerity battle.Solidarity is vital. As Euclid Tsakalotos argues, funda-mental values of pluralism and democracy are at stake.There are divisions in our ruling elites: pro- or anti-Europe; civil liberties versus state control; centralised ordecentralised britain. The question is will a revitalisedLabour party be able to exploit these divisions and forge anew unifying political narrative.

Battle lines drawnOUR HISTORY

Bertrand Russell - Roads to Freedom (1918)

The philosopher, bertrand russell, was politicallyactive throughout his long life- from the noConscription Fellowship during the First WorldWar to CnD and the Committee of 100 in the 1960’s. hisfirst political work in 1896 was a studyof German Social Democracy. In 1916he published the principles of Socialreconstruction, in 1917 his politicalIdeals, and in 1920 he published a cri-tique of the Theory and practice ofbolshevism. This extract is taken fromhis 1918 work roads to Freedom whichreviewed the principles of socialism andanarchism, advocating a form of guildsocialism. russell was pluralist in hispolitics but can best be described as alibertarian socialist and pacifist, a con-viction he retained throughout hislife.‘The attempt to conceive imagina-tively a better order of human societythan the destructive and cruel chaos inwhich mankind has hitherto existed isby no means modern: it is at least asold as plato, whose republic set themodel for the utopias of subsequentphilosophers. Whoever contemplatesthe world in the light of an ideal –whether what he seeks be intellect, or art, or love, or sim-ple happiness, or all together – must feel a great sorrowin the evils that men needlessly allow to continue, and –

if he be a man of force and vital energy – an urgent desireto lead men to the realisation of the good which inspireshis creative vision. It is this desire which has been the pri-mary force moving the pioneers of Socialism and

Anarchism, as it moved the inventors ofideal commonwealths in the past. In thisthere is nothing new. What is new inSocialism and Anarchism is that closerelation of the ideal to the present suffer-ings of men, which has enabled powerfulpolitical movements to grow out of thehopes of solitary thinkers. It is this thatmakes Socialism and Anarchism impor-tant, and it is this that makes them dan-gerous to those who batten, consciously orunconsciously, upon the evils of our pre-sent order of society.’ ‘The world that wemust seek is a world in which the creativespirit is alive, in which life is an adventurefull of joy and hope, based rather upon theimpulse to construct than upon the desireto retain what we possess or to seize whatis possessed by others. It must be a worldin which affection has free play. In whichlove is purged of the instinct for domina-tion, in which cruelty and envy has beendispelled by happiness and the unfettered

development of all the instincts that build up life and fill itwith mental delights. Such a world is possible; it waitsonly for men to wish to create it.’

OUR HISTORY - 61

An alternative

view to the dominantausterity mantra

will bevoiced

LETTERS

On May 23rd, 2015 Irelandfinally threw off the shack-les of a conservativecatholic past and voted in favourfor social equality. The Irish elec-torate were asked to vote in a ref-erendum to include gay marriagein our constitution and we agreedin great numbers to this proposal.Many young people who had toleave Ireland in recent years dueto austerity, managed to makethe journey back home to voteyes. They sailed home and flewhome under the hash tag ‘home tovote’ which lit up Twitter. Whilethe youth turnout at polling sta-tions generated a buzz, therewere many older voters who alsovoted yes. These people are of a

generation who grew up in acatholic conservative state, a gen-eration suffocated by stringentchurch laws that prohibited anequal society. This was theirchance to reject something thathad blighted most of their lives.The margin of victory for the yesside in the gay marriage referen-dum showed modern Irish peo-ple’s rejection of church morals.62.1% of the electorate comparedto 37.9% voted in favour of mar-riage equality. All political partiesin the country supported theintroduction of gay marriagewhich left the no side backed upby conservative Christian groupsand the catholic church who ran acampaign based con fear. The

referendum had nothing to dowith children, it was a marriagereferendum, yet the no side rantheir campaign on the fear ofwhat may happen to children.Where were these people when somany children were abused bythe likes of the Christian brothersin schools and churches acrossthe country? Those times thank-fully and hopefully are gone.Ireland has voted in favour ofequality. Ireland has rejectedhate.

LILy Murphy, DubLIn

Ireland says yes to an equal society

July/August 2015 CHARTIST 76 CHARTIST July/August 2015

FEDERALISM

no sooner did DavidCameron recoverfrom his shock gener-al election victorythan he has launched

the biggest double gamble of hispolitical career: the ‘re-negotia-tion’ of the terms of britain’smembership of the Europeanunion and a further devolution ofpowers to the uK nations andregions. The two processes arebound to interact with each otherand both set important new chal-lenges for the british left. In arepeat of harold Wilson’s ploy in1975, Cameron hopes to emergefrom back room haggling with hisfellow Eu leaders with a docu-ment whose contents are suffi-ciently arcane and esoteric as toallow him to convince enough ofhis fellow Tories and the britishelectorate to vote to remain with-in the European union.

In 1975 Wilson pulled off pre-cisely this trick – but in admitted-ly very different circumstancesthan today. Although the Labourparty was as divided internallyon Europe then as the Tories aretoday, Wilson had the benefit of apopular press by and largefavourable to the uK staying in“the Common Market.” A strongpublic campaign for a yes votetriumphed before anyone hadreally twigged that Wilson’s muchvaunted re-negotiation of theterms obtained by the previousTory government led by Tedheath, involved no real changes.It will not be so easy this timeround for Cameron to pull thesame trick on his ideologicallyhard line Euro-sceptic rightwingers. They are better informedabout the minutiae of how the Euworks than was true of the ‘anti-Common Marketeers’ 40 yearsago and more determined to makea final break with the Europeanunion. There are more than a fewTory Mps willing to split theparty wide open if they are pre-sented with a re-negotiated settle-ment which does not – in effect –pull britain out of the core politi-cal functions of the Eu. And thisis without the role of uKIp –which is exercising attraction forboth the Tory right and for a sig-nificant chunk of Labour’s former

UK/EU - two federalisms brewing?

working class electorate.Today the media in britain is

overwhelmingly hostile tobritain’s Eu membership; thepopular culture has undoubtedlyalso become more Euro-sceptic.Meanwhile the establishmentpro-European lobby looks politi-cally jaded and large parts of theLabour party and the further lefthave effectively given up in mak-ing the case for a more integrat-ed, democratic and progressiveEuropean union.

To date Cameron has been reti-cent about the precise list ofdemands he intends to put to therest of the European union. hehas resorted to generalisationsabout most of the issues whichare likely to form part of his agen-da to leave himself the maximum

wiggle room. This has irritatedeven those Eu leaders most close-ly ideologically in sympathy withthe neo-liberal economic strategyof the british Tories. They havealso been infuriated by therefusal of uK government minis-ters to even try to balance theircriticisms of brussels with a cleardefence of the principle of uKmembership. What are we toldCameron will want to concentrateon a few key areas of policy inseeking new terms for britain?They include: a kind of emergency“cap” on the permitted level ofmigration to the uK from the restof the Eu; some tightening of therules governing the benefit enti-tlement rights of Eu workers inbritain; action to accelerate thecompletion of the Eu “SingleMarket” in areas like services andenergy; and agreed languagesomehow exempting britain fromthe commitment in the foundingTreaty of rome in 1957 to workfor “an ever closer union of thepeoples and states” of the Eu.Along the way there may be otherissues which the uK will wantclarified. These include – as yetunspecified – guarantees that as

the Euro-area countries withinthe Eu intensify their own inte-gration, that britain’s interests inbanking and financial serviceswill be protected against threatsfrom the voting power of the vastmajority of Eu states, which formthe Euro-area.

Finally, London wants to seeeven higher priority for newworld trade liberalisation agree-ment such as the controversialtrans-Atlantic TTIp deal.Cameron would like to see hisdemands met through formalchanges to the Eu Treaties. This,however, will be strongly resistedif only because re-opening theexisting legal commitments in thetreaties is to open a vastpandora’s box the consequencesof which could quickly spiral outof control as other states seekchanges they want. One wayround this might be some politicalpromise to examine possibletreaty amendments the next timethey come up for review. This isunlikely before 2020 when thereis talk about far reaching consti-tutional changes designed to cre-ate a Euro-area economic union(not just a monetary union). butFrance and Germany seem tohave reached agreement on fur-ther steps in this directionalready without having to changethe treaties for now. Cameron willalmost certainly press for anacceleration of his original 2017deadline for a uK “In/Out” Eureferendum – to next year. This isbecause elections are due in bothFrance and Germany in 2017which would make it even harderfor berlin and paris to agree toLondon’s demands. but centralEuropean states will also notallow laws governing the freemovement of workers to be madea nonsense of by a uK immigra-tion cap. Some other right winggovernments are willing to con-sider changes which the uK couldmake on its own account to modi-fy existing “in-work” and someother benefits paid to workersfrom other Eu states.

but a large block of govern-ments and the Europeanparliament are opposed to anyovert discrimination against theirworkers employed in the uK.

recent local elections in Spainhave also dramatically underlinedthe growth of radical new socialprotest movements, led bypodemos, which are splinteringthe mainstream parties.Elsewhere some left parties –such as Die Linke in Germanyand the Green Left party in thenetherlands - are also gainingstrength. under pressure fromsimilar left parties in portugal,the official Socialist oppositionhas shifted to opposition to fur-ther austerity policies. havingbeen burned by earlier experiencein coalitions, the European Greenparties are growing again – notleast here in britain. On the farleft, however, the austerity crisishas brought little gain.

The weakness of the organisedlabour movement and a paralleldecline in class consciousness(what Marx defined as “a class foritself, not just a class in itself”)has disoriented much of the farleft. This has been reflected inderisory electoral support as wellas episodes of bitter internal con-flict.There are some very difficultquestions to be confronted in allof this. What are the implicationsof the decline in a class whichprovided the political firepowerfor the socialist left since the mid-dle of the 19th century? Whattruth is there in the analysis ofthinkers such as Guy Standing,author of an important new book(A Charter for the Precariat?) whoargues that the precariat is theemerging new subaltern class inlate capitalism? If so what politi-cal expression will the precariatgive birth to and what relation-ship can it forge with the remain-ing strongholds of organised tradeunionism? Common ground existsbetween the new left parties, theGreens and some forces on theleft of social democracy about theurgent priority of a radicalchange of economic and politicaldirection in the European union.The commitment of parties likeSyriza and podemos to systemiceconomic and social change atEuropean level is striking. butthe doctrinaire left’s alternativeamounts in practice to little morethan a nationalist advocacy ofcurrency devaluation – a recipefor more impoverishment andinequality.

In britain another developmentseems bound to impact on the Eure-negotiation. The virtual wipeout of the mainstream parties inScotland has left the Snp is fill-ing the space for a leftist socialdemocratic party. Indeed a widerrevival of the radical left in

however insubstantial the even-tual agreement with whichCameron emerges after the hag-gling in brussels, what will be theimpact on the forthcoming refer-endum? Currently opinion pollssuggest a clear win in an Eu ref-erendum for “Stay In.” but afterthe general election we all know alittle more about the limitationsof opinion polls. The debate inbritain about continued member-ship is in part coloured by thegrowth of right wing Euro-scepti-cism expressed vehemently byuKIp and the Tory hard right.but it is also affected by therevulsion and dismay felt on largeparts of the left at the ruthlessdrive of governments in the Eufor ever greater economic austeri-ty. This has led to ill-disguisedattempts to de-stabilise the elect-ed Syriza government in Greeceand a refusal to negotiate whatevery half way numerateeconomist has long advocated – anegotiated reduction in the debtowed by Greece to other Eu cen-tral banks and the IMF. Theberlin government’s dogmaticinsistence on still further austeri-ty (with the disgraceful acquies-cence of the German SocialDemocrats) could yet bring trig-ger a full scale crisis in the Euro-area and even the wider Eu.

Serious analysis

Labour’s defeat in the britishgeneral election reflects a generaldecline in support for Europeansocial democracy. Any seriousanalysis of the way forward forprogressive politics at theEuropean level must begin with ahard look at political trends. bothcentre right and the centre-leftparties in the Eu level are weak-er and are threatened withmarginalisation by new politicaltrends. The rise of the nationalist,Euro-sceptic right (includinguKIp and the French nationalFront) is well documented.Further to the right are smallerbut growing forces of the openlyneo-fascist and neo-nazi right(most obviously including GoldenDawn in Greece and Jobbik inhungary). The longer austeritybased strategies persist thegreater the risk that these forceswill grow. but it would take aneconomic collapse similar to 1931to put the fascists centre stage.On the left, there are also signs ofprofound change under way.Syriza’s election victory hasbrought the radical left to powerin Europe for the first time sincethe Second World War. The

Scotland – outside and within theSnp – may well be a feature ofthe Scottish parliament electionsnext year. The Tories know thatthe uK “union” will disintegrateunless further devolution of pow-ers are given not only toScotland, but also Wales,northern Ireland and the bigEnglish city regions.

The Tory version of devolutionwould paralyse Scotland’s abilityto counter austerity by requiringit to finance most of its own pub-lic spending. Edinburgh is unlike-ly to accept this and have to helppay for Trident too. In spite of allthis, a referendum rejection of Eucannot be excluded. The economicrisks for capital if the uK leavesthe Eu are enormous. It is notjust a question of the terms offuture access to the European sin-gle market but the loss of the col-lective negotiating power whichthe Eu as a whole deploys whennegotiating economic and tradedeals with the uS, China, russiaand other important trade pow-ers.

Unfinished European reform

For the left there is vast unfin-ished European reform agendaincluding the urgent need for newgrowth and employment strate-gies, action to raise minimumwages throughout the Eu, laws toprotect the rights of migrants andthe most vulnerable in society,and much more ambitious “green”sustainable energy and develop-ment measures. A progressiveEuropean left alternative shouldalso aim for a federal, democraticuK constitution. This shouldinclude solidarity provisions simi-lar to those in the German consti-tution guaranteeing a limit on taxrevenue inequality between theeconomies and regions in the Eu.There are obvious attractions forthe mostly Labour run big north-ern and midlands city regions –as well as the smaller uK nations– in this approach.

A federalising – if not yet fullyfederal – uK system would stimu-late a more constructive britishrole within a still integratingEuropean union. Taken togetherthis federalising ‘Double helix’could open new horizons for asocially, economically and politi-cally different European union.Does the british left have theimagination and the energy tojoin with those from Greece toGermany, from Ireland to Spainwho want to seize the opportuni-ty?

In the face of Cameron’s in-out referendum John Palmer asks if the left has theimagination for a federal Europe

Taken together this federalising‘Double Helix’ could open new horizonsfor a socially, economically andpolitically different European Union

John Palmer is aformer EuropeanEditor of theGuardian

8 CHARTIST July/August 2015 July/August 2015 CHARTIST 9

The unexpected gift of aparliamentary majorityto David Cameron’sConservatives mightencourage some to

believe that at least one of theconstitutional crises that hasloomed large in recent years hasbeen resolved.

Once again the Westminsterstate has recovered its knack ofgranting stability and theprospect of a decent period ofoffice to political parties that winonly a minority of the popularvote. On this occasion a 36.7 percent share of the poll has provensufficient to give the Tories a 12seat majority and prospect of arun at government that will lastthem through to 2020. What hadseemed to be on the cards only ashort time beforehand – sweepingelectoral reform and the likeli-hood of the reconstitution of theparty system as a consequence –has now receded to distant grum-bling on the part of the third andfourth level parties that feelaggrieved by the current arrange-ments.

Labour seems least likely tocarp against the injustices offirst-past-the-post. Its leadershipcontest is dominated by thethemes of getting back in touchwith ‘aspirational families’ andbuilding a partnership with thesupposedly more progressive ele-ments of the business community.The task of winning more votesfive years down the line, or evenclosing the gap between theTories, will require so much focuson a conventional narrative aboutthe economy and what needs to bedone to overcome its ailments asto preclude anything that lookslike a more fundamental critiqueof power and the way it operates.

yet it is easy to make the argu-ment that it is precisely theneglect of this issue which hasbrought the mainstream left to itscurrent low point. The most obvi-ous sign of this failing is the wayin which the once secure bastionwhich Scotland provided forLabourism has been shattered by

the inability of the party in thatcountry to appreciate the natureof the national grievance north ofthe border.

Growing dis-union

The united Kingdom, forged bythe Act of union in 1707, had laidthe foundations for a country thatadopted the name of ‘Greatbritain’ primarily by offering theScottish bourgeoisie a share inthe spoils of an empire whichuntil then had been a largelyEnglish endeavour. Its benefitshad extended to the workingclasses of the developing industri-al regions of the country throughthe imperial demand for shipsand engineering products and theenergy resources of its coalmines.

Distinct elements of Scottishnational culture had favoured amodest appropriation of the bene-fits that came by way of this part-nership and rather less of the vul-gar conspicuous consumption thatwent on in England. For decadesthis strengthened the ethos ofpatriarchal ‘Lairds’ ruling in abenevolent Tory mode, which wasonly displaced when the unitedKingdom swung to the brash, freemarket right under MargaretThatcher. From that pointonwards the puritan one nationaltradition dominant in Scottish

Labour: trapped in theWestminster bubbleDon Flynn explains how Labour’s ineptitude in dealing with the crisis of the Westminsterstate has contributed to its predicament

politics was revamped as socialdemocratic welfare statism.

This was a plausible adjust-ment as long as the welfare stateitself could hold its place withinthe Great britain that emergedfrom the turmoil and class con-frontation of the 1980s. but thefact was that its position as a use-ful compromise between theneeds of the working class for adegree of social insurance againstthe risks of life in a market soci-ety, and the need of british-basedcompanies for a decently well-educated and socially disciplinedworkforce to take its place in fac-tories, coalmines and offices cameunder strain from the interna-tional competition fostered byglobalisation.

Much stress

The historical line of evolutionthat has placed the structures ofthe Westminster-centred stateunder so much stress is summedup by firstly, the dwindling of theguarantees which came from theexploitation of a global empirewhich had underpinned the Greatbritain project since its earliestdays. Secondly, althoughbritain’s position amongst theleading world powers survived fora longer period by virtue of bothits international alliances and its

Don Flynn isDirector ofMigrant RightsNetwork and amember ofChartist EB

ELECTION 2015

Palace of Westminster: gloomy outlook, crumbling edifice, taking hostages

still-influential commercial enter-prises, which allowed it to be prof-itable enough to support a welfarestate, this also began to be erodedas once national industries trans-formed themselves into transna-tionals and became less tolerantof the idea of supporting thesocial investment in human capi-tal and infrastructure represent-ed by the welfare state system.

Marked decline

As a consequence of thesedevelopments the Westminsterstate’s appeal to the broad swatheof the population in Scotland and,increasingly, the Welsh andEnglish parts of the unitedKingdom periphery, has been inmarked decline over much of thepast generation. no longer ableto secure imperial preference andincreasingly less able to support adecent level of welfare or thefuture of iconic services like thenhS, government fromWestminster has found itselfunder increasing scrutiny andprone to spasmodic revoltsagainst its ossified logic.

The one thing that has sus-tained its appeal to at least thesegments of the population forwhich such things are of primaryimportance is its role as a lastline defence of a law and orderregime across the whole territoryof the country which has the sanc-tity of property and all the activi-ties associated with chasing afterrents that come from monopolycontrol of assets, at the core of itsmission. Dysfunctional and irra-tional as the Westminster stateappears to many, it still presidesover an area of land that hasvalue and wealth locked up inmany of its cities and rural hin-terlands. While these might beflat-lining in terms of productivityand the production of new surplusvalue, at least they can be milked

South East being prominent. Theprosperity of the capital region issecured in large part because thearray of Westminster state struc-tures, from the policies of theTreasury and the bank ofEngland through to the role inworld affairs which the primeminister’s office and the Foreignand Commonwealth Office aimfor, and a great deal of this worksdirectly against the interests ofpeople who are trying to get valuecreation off the ground again inplaces like yorkshire and thenorth West.

All this will be happening at atime when leading figures in theLabour party squabble over thebest tactics to adopt to ensurethat they are able to fulfil themission set by their long-ago com-promise with the power of theWestminster state, which is topopulate the benches of the houseof Commons with parliamentari-ans who would be backing, atbest, a governing party, but morelikely just another squad for herMajesty’s Loyal Opposition.

but such is the speed at whichthe crisis of the Great britishstate is developing, we need notpin too many of our hopes on theprospect that Labour will eventu-ally ‘get it’ and start kicking outmore purposefully against thepowers and structures which haveconfined it to the minor role ofperipheral reform and minoradjustment of the direction whichcapitalism is taking in the mod-ern world. The kicking out islikely to be coming from otherquarters who are currently fur-ther down the food chain when itcomes to the attention of theWestminster powers-that-be. Theleft should be concentrating itsthinking on what its role will bewhen these confrontations startto reach their fruition and whatradical change will be required toalter the way democratic societygoverns itself.

for an income that will maintainprivilege for another generationor two.

but it is the social justiceissues which arise from theWestminster state’s continuedefforts to maintain its grip onpower in the land which havebeen entirely unaddressed by allthe generations of Labour leaderssince the end of the second worldwar. The party long ago made itspeace with the structures ofpower which prevail in the uK,preferring to operate with thedelusion that they function in arational and objective mannerand could be put to use as ameans to effect redistribution andgreater social justice just as theyserved Conservative governmentsin securing a massive social sub-servience to the demands of the

free market.In providing the means for a

Conservative party to govern as amajority in circumstances whereis has the support of scarcely one-third of the popular vote theWestminster state seems to havestaggered sufficiently back tosomething approaching rudehealth. but other elements of thecrisis of political power overwhich it presides remain activeand will dominate the agenda inthe years immediately to come.

The Scotland crisis will expandduring this time to become thenorthern England crisis as thetask of regenerating industrialcapacity in that region floundersas a result of numerous factors,but with the stark fact of theasymmetrical support thatWestminster gives to the globalservice sector in London and the

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July/August 2015 CHARTIST 11 10 CHARTIST July/August 2015

Jon Lansmanedits Left Futureswebsite

judiciary has hardly been a friendof organised labour. That is whythe proposed restrictions will seeeven more bosses running to thecourts, even though ultimately,industrial disputes can only beresolved through negotiations.Our recent union conferencereacted to these proposals byagreeing that we would work withother unions and use all means atour disposal, to defeat them. Thismeans that when our membersare prepared to take on theirbosses, we will support them,even if this brings us into conflictwith unjust laws. We will not bebrowbeaten! We take inspirationfrom our proud history - ourmovement is built on the shoul-ders of giants. Just in the sameway as the fight for justice for theTolpuddle Martyrs resulted inthem being brought back home,we will defeat these laws – don’tmourn, organise!

Defeat tastes incrediblybitter. What was onoffer at the generalelection were two dif-ferent visions of how

we run our society. The tried,tested and failed Tory trickle-down neoliberal model, and a neweconomic settlement which wouldhave started to challenge vestedinterests and ever-growinginequality. unfortunately, wenow have a vicious right-wingTory government whose mani-festo made clear that tradeunions will be one of their firsttargets. They ain’t stupid - andrightly understand that a stronglabour movement is an insur-mountable barrier towardsachieving the neoliberal nirvanathat they so badly crave. Tradeunions act as conveyor belts inmobilising people and resourcestowards progressive aims, indeedthat is what TSSA are doingwhen we help Labour fight elec-tions. The uK already has someof the toughest anti-union laws ofany democratic country. In fact noother Eu country comes any-where near when it comes torestricting the ability of workersto defend their interests. Ourcountry wilfully and repeatedlyviolates the International LabourStandards to which it is a signa-tory. It is also somewhat ironicthat for a party who pride them-selves as fighters of red tape,when it come to trade unions,there is never quite enough! Thethresholds being proposed forindustrial action ballots in publicservices, if applied to the electionof Mps, would have seen 270 lessof them sitting on the Tory bench-es. They also defy the long estab-lished democratic tradition thatany plebiscite is decided by thosewho exercise their right to vote,with the outcome settled by themajority view amongst them.Seeking to introduce a thresholdwhich will make an industrialaction ballot invalid unless 50% ofthose entitled to vote exercisetheir right, is simply undemocrat-ic. Of course this will be com-pounded when it comes to publicservices when an even greaterhurdle will need to be overcome.

Workers will only be able to takepart in lawful industrial action ifthe outcome of the ballot showsat least 40% of those entitled tovote support it. results thatwould otherwise be consideredoverwhelming – a 70% vote infavour on a 57% turnout – won’tbe enough! Of course, if theTories had the remotest interestin enhancing participation in bal-lots they would be making theprocess simpler. unions havelong argued that both electronicand workplace ballots willenhance our members’ democrat-ic involvement. At present, theanti-union laws only allow us tohold postal ballots, not just forindustrial action, but also forleadership elections and the polit-ical fund. In an age when elec-tronic means of communicationsare the norm, the anti-union lawsare keeping us stuck in an ante-diluvian age. Sadly, I don’t seethe Tories doing anything what-soever to enhance union democra-cy as their only aim is to destroyus! Some commentators suggestthese proposals will largely con-sign strikes, particularly in pub-lic services, to the dustbin of his-tory. Let’s face it – that’s exactlywhat the Tories are desperatelytrying to do. however, I am farmore optimistic. When the anti-union laws were introduced, withtheir complex balloting andnotice procedures, I suspect manythought that workers’ ability toparticipate in lawful industrialaction was largely coming to anend. however, unions reacted byenhancing our organisationalcapabilities and time and timeagain, we have outwitted theanti-union laws. In fact, theseproposed restrictions are, in abizarre way, a glowing tribute toour success! Sadly, the anti-unionlaws have turned industrial rela-tions into legal disputes. The firstpeople we consult when our mem-bers decide to be balloted is ourlegal team. These unjust lawshave clearly given bosses theupper-hand, with the threat of acostly injunction always loominglarge. As everyone knows, eversince the Tolpuddle Martyrs weredeported to Australia, the british

Corbyn: torchbearer for analternative to BlairismJon Lansman on a flawed leadership process

In the new Labour years,the Left was systematicallymarginalised and excludedfrom senior positions in theparty and ministerial

responsibility. In spite of the cul-ture of youth over experience fos-tered by Ed Miliband in his frontbench promotions, that explainswhy there was no queue of leftcandidates for the leadershipwhen Ed resigned — just one ofcandidates keen to apologise foralleged overspending by the lastLabour government.

So it was that, after failing tochallenge publicly the neoliberalnarrative on austerity which isthe primary reason why Labourwas judged wanting in its han-dling of the economy, thatwidespread dismay at the unin-spiring nature of the leadershipelection forced a rethink.

Andy burnham who had foryears fostered a left self-imageand won support accordinglybegan to tack right, competingwith yvette Cooper for theblairite votes, even arguing infavour of primaries for parliamen-tary selections which almost no-one but progress wanted.

Groundswell

but still, when Jeremy Corbynemerged from the conclave of leftMps who sought a challenger itwas surprising that such agroundswell of grassroots enthu-siasm was unleashed.

In this election – unlike thelast – the only important role thatMps could play was to make anomination. Last time it had beenpossible to nominate one personand give your first preference voteto another, but the most impor-tant thing an Mp did when theirvote was worth the same as 930trade unionists was whichMiliband got their highest prefer-ence even if that was their fourth.now that an Mp is just anothervoter, their nomination appearedto be more significance than theirsubsequent vote will have.

That turned Mps into gate-keepers able to allow the Labourmovement a real choice or to denyit. The hurdle of 15% of theparty’s Mps is simply too high. Itshould not require Mps to nomi-nate candidates other than theirpreferred one in order for them toeven be considered by party mem-bers. And yet, in moving to a‘Collins report-based system’ ofOMOV, Scotland has now notonly introduced a 15% hurdle forparliamentarians but addedanother for councillors.

Rules

Let us hope that there will nowbe a willingness to change theserules. David Lammy, no left-winger, when he announced hewas nominating Corbyn, tweeted:‘The next Labour leader should bechosen by members and support-ers, not Mps.’

The fact that Jeremy Corbyndid qualify is a tribute to the mas-sive social media campaign whichtook place, to pressure from

grassroots members on parlia-mentarians and also to the spiritof openness and tolerance fos-tered by Ed Miliband. Manyobservers, not least amongstthose on the left and to the left ofLabour, failed to notice the leftresurgence that did take placeduring Ed’s leadership, distractedby his concessions to the right inthe name of party unity and byhis failure to re-introduce effec-tive democratic reform.

Better chance

Ironically, the new systemgives Corbyn a better chance thanany previous left-wing contender.All votes count the same, includ-ing those of ‘registered support-ers’ who can sign up for £3; plentyof people from the non-Labouractivist left will do this now theycan vote for Corbyn. how longwill it be before the right cry foulat this opportunity? but don’tblame us – we actively opposed itsintroduction.

LABOUR LEADER

Tory assault on democracyManuel Cortes says confronting the toughest anti-union laws in the EU is imperative

Manuel Cortes inGeneralSecretary oftransport unionTSSA

TRADE UNIONS

Labour Party leadership election contenders 2015: watch the odds shorten on the rank outsider

July/August 2015 CHARTIST 1312 CHARTIST July/August 2015

John Edmonds, formergeneral secretary of theGMb trade union, oftenshocked colleagues byreading the Daily

Telegraph – for the sport not thepolitics: no mean cricketer him-self. If John had glanced at thepaper’s comment section in earlyJune he might have hit his ownwicket in surprise. because therewas columnist Mary riddellacknowledging that britain ‘iscrying out for social democracy’due to the dismantling of the wel-fare state, ballooning child pover-ty, and injustice stalking theland, but meeting a less than rad-ical response from the Labourparty. Whose example did shecite as the source of the kind ofinspiration that she feels today’sLabour party lacks? TheChartists no less, plus a few otherfriends from days gone by.

Pallid imitation

She blames Labour’s 2015defeat on it having lost the pas-sion that originally motivatedmembers and supporters alike.her over-harsh but no less salu-tary verdict on the 2015 campaignis that Labour’s original vitalityhad given way to a ‘pallid imita-tion’ of Tory policy across theboard. Although unfair, she doeshave a point. Labour hardlyoffered voters a vigorous alterna-tive to Tory neoliberalism. That,rather than any supposed person-ality defects unfairly attributed toEd Miliband, was our undoing.

Several years in office havemore than once taken their toll onthe spirit that drives Labour.Tony Crosland’s classic text, TheFuture of Socialism, published in1956, arose from his concern thatthe party had lost its bearings inthe post-War world it had helpedto build, and had become unsureabout how to express its core val-ues and fundamental purposes ina society that already enjoyed fullemployment and a welfare state.

In my new book, Back to theFuture of Socialism, published

ANTI-AUSTERITY

Anti-austerity only routeto Labour victoryPeter Hain on why Labour needs to break with the politics of neo-liberalism

last January, I addressed thatsame sense of a party having lostits way after 13 years in officeand of an electorate uncertainwhat Labour stands for, unsurewhose side it is on, and uncon-vinced about where it is heading.

Mary riddell’s piece appearedthe same week that the OECDjoined the IMF in calling forbritain’s public spending cuts tobe slowed down. The IMF advisedletting higher economic growthbring down the uK debt to GDpratio gradually and urged a boostto growth through higher infras-tructure spending. The OECD’sconcern was that cutting spend-ing too quickly could endangerrecovery – exactly what GeorgeOsborne had done five yearsbefore with his 2010 savage cutspackage which choked off thepost-banking crisis recoveryunder Labour.

Our Government had given theeconomy a big fiscal stimulus(worth nearly 5 per cent of GDp)in 2009-10.  We did so mainly byallowing the ‘automatic stabilis-ers’ to operate in full (for exampleaccepting a bigger budget deficitas tax revenues went down whilewelfare bills rose as the creditcrunch sunk the economy intorecession).  The automatic sta-bilisers had contributed about 80per cent of the total fiscal stimu-lus.  The rest came from a VATcut and – very important – a dou-bling of public investment bybringing forward projects worthover £30 billion. Shock, horror –expanding public spending andinvestment during austerity!

but as Keynes had shownwould happen, in his demolitionof austerity economics, the econo-my was growing again by late2009, and the budget deficit wasstarting to come down from thestratospheric levels caused by thebank bailouts and the recession.

yet so wedded is he to neoliber-al dogmatism that Osborne’sprompt response to the OECDand IMF ‘heresy’ of June 2015was to announce £3 billion morecuts on top of the £13 billion

already declared for 2015-16.These new cuts hit local gov-

ernment, further and higher edu-cation, transport, justice, busi-ness innovation and skills, anddefence. This was even beforeOsborne’s July 2015 budget whenthe Institute for Fiscal Studies(IFS) expects £30 billion furthercuts to ‘unprotected’ departmentspending (i.e. excluding health,schools and overseas aid) between2015-16 and 2018-19 on top of the£12 billion cut in welfare benefitsrepeatedly pledged by Osborneand Cameron. Carl Emmerson ofthe IFS confirmed that the Torycuts are being speeded up sincethe 2010-15 parliament: austeritywith a vengeance.

There’s no doubt about theTories’ true ideological intentions,the kind of society they plan tocreate, whose interests theyintend to sacrifice in buildingtheir brave new world, or theirfirm commitment to shrink therole of the state. If only the samecould have been said of Labour’sintentions in the 2015 electioncampaign.

Reject austerity

I argued for the Labour mani-festo to reject austerity in favourof a substantial public investmentstimulus of £30 billion per yearover two years, with prioritygoing to housebuilding, infras-tructure, education and skills,and low carbon industry. Thiswould have reversed the slow-down in the rate of economicrecovery that we have seen since2013 and boosted economicgrowth. higher public investmenttoday would have meant lowergovernment borrowing tomorrowby keeping the economy growinginstead of slowing, since a grow-ing economy means rising tax rev-enues and falling welfare bills.

Instead, under Tory policy,growth this year is expected to beslower than last year and slowerstill next year. Once Osborne’s2016-18 spending squeeze gripsthe economy we can expect a re-

run of what happened in the lastparliament, with faltering eco-nomic growth, stagnant real liv-ing standards for all except a fewat the top, and Osborne’s deficitand debt targets – the altar uponwhich public services had to besacrificed – missed again as theywere in the last parliament.

Labour could have hammeredhome the message that slow eco-nomic growth only delays deficitreduction. We could have insistedthat reviving britain’s flaggingeconomy required dumping aus-terity. We could have explainedhow faster economic growthwould bear more of the burden ofreducing the budget deficit,reducing or possibly ending thepressure for further public spend-ing cuts. The consultancy OxfordEconomics noted in 2014 that‘none of the spending cutsplanned beyond 2014-15 would beneeded to return the deficit topre-crisis levels’.

Instead Labour promised ‘sen-sible cuts’ and to balance the cur-rent budget (i.e. excluding publicinvestment) as soon as possible.Labour’s leadership team wereafraid of appearing ‘soft’ on debtand ‘weak’ on the deficit. Thecase for scrapping austerity wentunmade and unheard, exceptfrom the Snp, leaving potentialLabour voters confused anddemoralised.

Adopting a more vigorous alter-native to austerity would haverequired Labour to confront thecurrent neoliberal orthodoxy thatwas the cause of the banking cri-sis, the consequential recession,and the obsession with debt andthe budget deficit which dominat-ed the 2015 election contest.

yet sadly Labour leadershipcontenders have started to con-cede that our last Government’spre-banking crisis budget deficitsmay have been too high, a fewimplying that the last Labourgovernment had ‘over-spent’,implying that we might haveaverted the worst impact of the2008 crisis by lower deficitsimmediately before. yet none putthe deficits into context by citingthe scale of the effort required todeal with the biggest threat to thefinancial system since the 1930sor the recession it engendered.

britain’s 2007 budget deficitwas £39 billion or 2.7 per cent ofGDp. This was dwarfed by thecolossal cost of state support tobritain’s failing banks which by2009 was equivalent to some 90per cent of GDp. The banking cri-sis and the recession it provokedcaused the uK debt to GDp ratio

to more than double over sevenyears from 37 per cent in 2007-08to 80 per cent in 2014-15. Something a bit lower on thebudget deficit scale in 2007 wouldhave been irrelevant to the strato-spheric impact of the crisis or howgovernment was able to manageit.

until Labour leaders startdefending the last LabourGovernment’s economic record inthe face of the Tory/Lib Dem bigDeceit that we ‘overspent’. untilLabour leaders start confidentlyreminding everyone that nationaldebt, borrowing and the deficitwere actually low, indeed lowerthan inherited from the Tories in1997. until we remind peoplethat Cameron and Osborne wouldhardly have signed up inSeptember 2007 to the Labour

Government’s spending pro-gramme to 2010 if they hadthought it would ‘bankrupt thenation’ (their subsequent deceit).until we start explaining withconfidence and passion thatgrowth not cuts is the route tolowering the deficit. until all thathappens, we are condemned tooffer only a neoliberal-lite eco-nomic alternative. And that sure-ly is a prescription for anotherdefeat.

The fundamental choiceremains between the right’s insis-tence on shrinking the state andthe left’s case for an innovative,socially supportive state; betweenthe right’s backing for a free mar-ket free-for-all and the left’s beliefin harnessing markets for thecommon good. That basic choicewill never go away.

Former LabourCabinet MinisterPeter Hain wasMP for Neathfrom 1991 to2015.

His book Back tothe Future ofSocialism ispublished byPolicy Press

People’s Assembly Anti-Austerity demonstration - 20 June 2015

July/August 2015 CHARTIST 1514 CHARTIST July/August 2015

For most of the pastdecade, the primeMinister, homeSecretary and formerJustice Secretary, Chris

Grayling, have taken every oppor-tunity to condemn the humanrights Act and spread misinfor-mation about it. It is a dark ironythat in the same year that thesesenior government ministers lineup to celebrate the 800th anniver-sary of the Magna Carta they  arehell-bent on repealing the humanrights Act – our modern day billof rights that protects the vulner-able from arbitrary abuses ofpower. Government proposes toreplace the hrA with a ‘britishbill of rights andresponsibilities’.

According to a Tory policypaper from October 2014 its basicfunction would be to strip awaythe rights of british residents.Like the constitutional documentsfavoured by despots the worldover, the Government wants tomake rights dependant on goodbehaviour and have the final sayon which (or whose) rights areworthy of protection.  not verybritish and like no bill of rightswe know in the rest of the demo-cratic world.

Cross party support

While Labour should take enor-mous credit for its passage in1998, far from being ‘Labour’s’bill of rights, as Government hastried to coin it, the hrA waspassed by parliament in 1998with considerable cross party sup-port. It incorporates theEuropean Convention on humanrights (EChr), which was adopt-ed in 1950 by the Council ofEurope (a completely separatebody from the Eu). TheConvention was WinstonChurchill’s post-war legacy, draft-ed by some of our greatest legalminds, and was adopted voluntar-ily by the uK in 1951. but morefundamentally, human rightsdon’t belong to the Conservatives,or Labour, or any political party.They were never meant to make

the mighty comfortable. They arefor everybody – universal andindivisible. They’re ours – andthere are so many reasons wemust fight to keep the bill ofrights we already have.

The EChr was our response tothe horrors of World War II andthe holocaust, designed to ensureno group could ever again berobbed of its most fundamentalrights on the whim of those inpower. Since its introduction in1998, it has helped countless peo-ple – soldiers, survivors of rape,domestic violence and slavery,bereaved families, journalists –but only a minority make theheadlines.

Take the case of Darren Fuller.he has no convictions, but, likemany black Londoners, he hasbeen continually stopped andsearched – without explanation –by police.  On one occasion, hewas pushed into a fence, kickedand bundled off to a police sta-tion, where his fingerprints andDnA were taken.  Thanks toArticle 5 of the hrA, the right toliberty, Darren received compen-sation for being unlawfullystopped.

Or the case of FGp who wasrushed to hospital with severeabdominal pains while being heldin immigration detention.  Theprivate security firm responsiblefor him insisted on restraininghim at all times, 24 hours a day –for example, by handcuffing himto a guard using a 2.5-metrechain.  The high Court ruled thatFGp’s right not to be subjected toinhuman and degrading treat-ment, under Article 3, wasbreached.

Then there are all the caseswhere the hrA has held the stateto account for a basic failure in itsobligation to protect the public.After Joanna Michael was brutal-ly murdered by her ex-partner –

despite calling police twice on thenight she was killed – theSupreme Court ruled that herfamily could bring a case againstlocal police thanks to Article 2 ofthe hrA.

Spin in overdrive

painting the Act as a ‘crimi-nals’ charter’ is a cunning way forpoliticians and profiteering news-paper editors to dupe people intobelieving that their best defenceagainst state abuse and neglectshould be scrapped. The hrA letsus defend ourselves – and that’snot always convenient for those inpower. This isn’t the only exampleof the machinery of Governmentspin in overdrive.

The Conservative leadershipwould have us believe that thehrA trumps parliamentarysovereignty; in reality it is morelight touch than most bills ofrights. It doesn’t give courts anypower to strike down an Act ofparliament. If a court finds pri-mary legislation is incompatiblewith human rights, it can say so –and leave it to parliament todecide how to respond.

Contrary to the spin, under thehrA uK courts are only requiredto ‘take account’ of EuropeanCourt of human rights judg-ments. The Supreme Court isalready the ultimate arbiter ofhuman rights cases here – andbritish courts regularly departfrom EChr jurisprudence. beforethe hrA, british courts had nosay in human rights decisionmaking and british claimantshad to take their cases toStrasbourg instead.

The Government is playing asly confidence trick with incredi-bly dangerous ramifications. butthe public and manyparliamentarians know whatthey stand to lose – and we won’tlet them get away with it. The uKis a beacon of human rights,democracy and the rule of law –and that global reputation willcrumble if we let the Governmentrepeal the Act.

Tories playing dirty withhuman rights

HUMAN RIGHTS

Rachel Robinson argues that the universalism of the Human Rights Act is at risk

Positive visionCat Smith says beware lazy conclusions

We can be under noillusion. The 2015General Electionwas a disaster forthe Labour party.

We were all but wiped out inScotland and failed to make any-thing like the gains necessary inEngland and Wales to prevent theTories from forming a majoritygovernment, let alone obtain amajority of our own. Worryinglyin many areas we went back-wards, meaning we now need aneven greater swing at the nextelection than we required thisyear if we are to secure a LabourGovernment. under the circum-stances it is vital that we learnthe lessons from this defeat butwe must be wary of drawing lazyor simplistic conclusions.Following the 2010 election weallowed the Tory myth thatLabour spent too much to gounchallenged for too long until itbecame the narrative widelyaccepted across the mainstreammedia. Sadly too many in ourparty appear to have repeated themistake this year swallowing theline of Tory columnists that

Labour lost the election because itwas too left wing. The reality ofcourse is much more complex. Itwould be ludicrous to suggest, forexample, that we lost 40 seats inScotland to the Snp because wewere too far to the left. In myown marginal seat of Lancasterand Fleetwood a refrain I heardmuch more frequently was thatpoliticians, particularly thosefrom the mainstream parties,were all the same. While we hadmany policies of which we couldrightly be proud, our core econom-ic message of fewer cuts, less fastdid little to dispel this impression.Instead, after accepting the Torynarrative for so long our attack onthe scale of their cuts appearedconfused and did not inspire con-fidence. We cannot follow thesame path for the next five years.We need to offer a positive visionfor voters based on investment,jobs and growth building on thework of nobel prize winningeconomists paul Krugman andJoseph Stiglitz and others. Weshould talk about reducing thedeficit by challenging vestedinterests, for example ending the

huge subsidies paid to privatelandlords, rather than attackingthe most vulnerable and cuttingthe support which they dependupon. The planned Tory austerityfor the next five years will exacer-bate the damage done over theprevious five. Greater welfarecuts will place an even largerstrain on the most vulnerablepeople in our society. Wages willbe squeezed further and employ-ment will become less secure as aresult of legislation aimed atmaking our trade unions weaker.Even greater sections of our pub-lic sector will be scaled back orsold off to the private sectors asshown by the announcement ofthe sell-off of our remaining stakein royal Mail. As these cuts startto bite now is not the time forLabour to be seen as Tory-lite. Aswe have moved into the Labourparty leadership election withJeremy Corbyn on the ballotpaper it has provided the plat-form we need to make the case foranother way, one of investment injobs and growth and a rejection ofausterity.

LABOUR

Rachel Robinsonis Liberty’s policyofficer

The Government is playing a slyconfidence trick with incrediblydangerous ramifications

Cat Smith was amember ofChartist EB forfive years. Shewas successfullyelected asMember ofParliament forLancaster andFleetwood,defeating theincumbant Toryin May 2015

July/August 2015 CHARTIST 1716 CHARTIST July/August 2015

british Labour has suffered one of itsworst and most unexpected electiondefeats in post-war times. The post-elec-tion debate and leadership contest is sofar struggling to come to terms with the

scale of Labour’s rejection and the uphill task itfaces in votes and seats to make an impact in 2020.

All of this pales compared to the state of ScottishLabour. Once a bastion and ballast for the nationalparty, 2015 was a watershed moment for the previ-ously impregnable party. In one Westminster con-test it went from 42.0% to 24.3% of the vote – itsworst showing since 1918 – and it fell from 41 seatsto one – its lowest ever. The Snp won 49.97% and56 out of 59 seats, and now look set to dominateScottish politics for quite some time.

post-election, things are continuing to go in thewrong direction for Labour – with a TnS June pollfor next year’s Scottish parliament election puttingthe Snp on 60% and Labour on 19% in the con-stituency vote – an all-time high and all-time lowrespectively.

Scottish Labour setbacks: 2007, 2011, 2015

how did things change so quickly and go wrongso spectacularly for Labour? And is there any hopein the short to medium term? There are immediateand deeper answers to the first question. ScottishLabour has suffered three significant and increas-ingly emphatic reverses at the hands of the Snp,and until now, chosen to do little to leave its comfortzones.

The Scottish party first lost to the Snp in the2007 Scottish parliament election, when AlexSalmond narrowly defeated Labour by a whisker invotes and one parliamentary seat. he was then ableto show his competence and political touch runninga popular minority government for four years. Whilethe Snp remade the political landscape, Labourunder Wendy Alexander and then, Iain Gray, wait-ed for normal service to resume, and the nats toimplode due to internal contradictions.

Labour weren’t aided in the long run by doing rel-atively well in the 2010 Westminster elections, over-interpreting this result as ‘Labour’s coming home’and acting as if the 2011 Scottish parliament elec-tion was in the bag. They were anything but, andproduced a Snp landslide and majority governmentin a proportional representation parliament.

This is when Labour alarm bells should havestarted ringing, but they didn’t. Instead, the partycontinued in its complacency, fighting an inept,indistinctive campaign in the Independencereferendum where the party came out on the win-ning side in terms of the result, but lost the argu-ment and post-referendum political debate.

Labour wasn’t a happy party in the Independencereferendum. Two months after the vote, the party’sScottish leader Johann Lamont resigned, citing thatthe London Labour leadership treated the party as

From Labour bastion to basket case Gerry Hassan asks whatever happened to the Scottish Labour Party

nothing more than a ‘branch office’ and that funda-mental change had to happen in how it did politicsand autonomy.

Cometh the hour cometh the man or more accu-rately the seventh leader in sixteen years: JimMurphy. In his six short months before his resigna-tion he tried to press everything to reignite theparty’s fortunes. The former blairite called himself a‘socialist’, campaigned like crazy, rewrote the party’sconstitution, and in a brazen attempt to win backpro-independence working class former Labour vot-ers in the West of Scotland, talked incessantly about‘football’. All of this had no effect whatsoever.

Labour fell to its third reverse in the last fewyears, but one which made the previous two seemlike glorious victories. The party that once dominat-ed Scottish politics and elected 50 Mps in 1987 and56 Mps in 1997 (out of then 72 seats) saw its repre-sentation reduced to one single seat (EdinburghSouth). A host of Labour grandees: Jim Murphy,Douglas Alexander and Margaret Curran all losttheir seats to huge swings to the nationalists.

Murphy has now gone, leaving the party to electleader number eight in a contest between KeziaDugdale and Ken Macintosh. both have qualitiesand are personable, but there is little for them todraw on in the party in terms of ideas, resourcesand energy.

The Three Crises of Scottish Labour

The predicament Scottish Labour finds itself inhas to be understood as part of three interlockingcrises. First, there is the Scottish aspect. The partybecame the political establishment, failed to developa positive devolution agenda, and then struggled toadapt to the rise of the Snp as their main chal-lenger.

Second, there is a british dimension to this. Thisbegan to become a problem with the collapse of thepost-war consensus and its progressive pillars of fullemployment, public spending and redistribution,and then what came after this.Lastly, none of this can be seen, as it usually is, inisolation. nowhere in the Western world is socialdemocracy in good health. Look across WesternEurope and none of the mainstream social demo-cratic parties are making the political weather.

This situation isn’t just about lack of presenta-tional skills or a plethora of Ed Milibands across thecontinent. It is instead about some pretty funda-mental and long-term factors. It is about the col-lapse of the managed capitalism of 1945-75 whichgave workers, trade unions and most of the workingclass and middle class a powerful stake in growing

prosperity.

Beyond Labour ‘Back to the Future’ Politics

What is on offer at the moment in Scottish andbritish Labour revolves around two versions of‘back to the Future’. One is a new centrism return-ing to blairite assumptions and talking endlesslyabout ‘aspiration’ and ‘the middle ground’. The otheris a left nostalgia and romanticism, which yearns forthe certainties of a past, which isn’t coming back.

A successful politics would have a few key ingre-dients. For a start, it would not be based on a pro-found pessimism about what people think. For allnew Labour’s glossy upbeat rhetoric it actuallybelieved britain was ‘a conservative country’. Andtraditional left-wingers have been fighting changeand people’s decisions for decades.

Second, it would not settle for a defensive politicswhich sees the highest progressive aspiration as thestatus quo in public services. That gives the agendaof change to the right. So whether it is the bbC, thenhS or state education, left-wingers have to comeup with a different agenda of change.

Third, Scottish Labour has to lose its sense of dis-appointment and bitterness at the people. Inresponse to May 7th, one former Scottish LabourMp, brian Donohoe said he could now tell his ex-constituents to ‘fxxx off’. Another former Mp, Tomharris commented that ‘I don’t trust my electorate.They lied to me for the best possible reasons’. Asenior Scottish Labour politician commented pre-vote that ‘I hate Scotland and can’t wait to leave’.That’s the mindset of a party which has forgottenthat its mission is meant to be to serve, not for thepeople to serve the party.

Scottish Labour has to use its defeat as a release.To recognise that they can free themselves fromtheir old assumptions and dare to step outside theconfines of being Scotland’s political establishment.

Trapped in its own past

That moniker no longer fits; but the party hasbecome one which doesn’t shape the future and istrapped in its own past. More profoundly, ScottishLabour has in the last two decades squandered adeep well of goodwill which voters felt towards thevalues and idea of Labour, distinct from the day-to-day reality of the actual party.

Scottish Labour by its lack of imagination, dig-ging itself into its own bunker, and showing its dis-appointment with voters, has transformed into alost cause. It has become a party which mostScottish voters see themselves as moving on fromand in their distant past, and which has little to sayor offer about modern Scotland. Does it have aviable future? That remains to be seen, but the nextdecade or so will only bring hard times for the onceseemingly omnipotent Scottish Labour party.

.

The Scottish Labour Party’s message - General Election 2015 : Wrong

Gerry Hassan isco-author of ‘TheStrange Death ofLabour Scotland’and author of‘CaledonianDreaming: TheQuest for aDifferentScotland’

SCOTTISH LABOUR

18 CHARTIST July/August 2015 July/August 2015 CHARTIST 19

The Greens trickle ratherthan surge. With partymembership topping75,000, making it thethird largest party in

England and Wales, prospectslook moderately good for theGreen party - despite the factthat no extra Green Mps will bejoining Caroline Lucas in theCommons. but can the Greenparty break out of its role as arefuge for disaffected left-leaningLiberal Democrats? Moreover,can the Green party itself avoidthe pitfalls of the coalition disas-ter that has befallen the LiberalDemocrats themselves, or moreprosaically, the problems of whatto do when faced with power?Analysis of who wanted to voteGreen suggests that Green partyvoters largely consist of left-lean-ing Liberal Democrats. Greensseemed to do best in relativelyleft-leaning places like bristolWest, Sheffield Central andLiverpool riverside where LiberalDemocrat votes collapsed. As theLSE’s James Dennison put it:‘Green party voters look like LibDems, think like Labour votersand are as dissatisfied as‘Kippers’.

Took votes off the Lib Dems

Often Labour activists havewaxed at length that Greens takevotes off Labour. however, theevidence is that they did not do soin any significant degree (proba-bly a lot less than uKIp!). rather,they took votes off the Lib Dems.A problem for the Greens now isthat the room for continuing thistrend is limited given the crash inLib Dem votes. Another problemis an international problem forthe Greens –what to do whenthey get into power? IndeedCaroline Lucas faced this problemin brighton as the Green con-trolled brighton and hoveCouncil struggled with the reali-ties (faced by every other council)of limited resources and the drivefor cut-backs. Lucas dealt withthis problem by distancing herselffrom the Council. Effectively, shewent into opposition against herown party’s control. This strategyworked. Whilst the Green party

lost several council seatsand Council control (toLabour) Lucas achieved aswing of 6 per centagainst Labour and, asyou may have guessed,the biggest part of thischange seems to havebeen the near annihila-tion of the LiberalDemocrat vote. peoplehave wondered whyCaroline Lucas gave upthe party leadership,despite her obviouslygreater experience com-pared to natalie bennett.The fact is that Lucasneeded, above all, to holdher seat, and so theparty’s interest was not wellserved by her having to divertmuch of her efforts to campaign-ing around the country as Leaderwhen her opposing candidatescould devote all of their effortstrying to overturn her (then) thinmajority. but a collateral (if not

initially intended) benefit was thefact that Lucas was much moreable to distance herself from herown party-controlled Council thanif she had been party leader!

The Green party has beenwidely ridiculed for its allegedlyloopy left sounding policies. butthere’s a danger if this is seen asthe major problem. Well, it is truethat ideas such as a citizen’sincome, however good in theory,would in practice (if set at a suffi-ciently high level) be unfundable.Obviously (to me) things like thatneed to be scrapped from mani-festo commitments. It shouldavoid dalliances with far leftgroups. rather, the problem isdifferent, - that the party mightape the Lib Dems and veer to thecentre, maybe even doing disas-trous coalitions with right wingparties. A far prospect you mightsay in the uK, although not somuch at a local council levelwhere parties may be seduced

into odd looking alliances in pur-suit of policy objectives that donot materialise in practice. Infact, as in London withLivingstone-Labour, Greens havedone best when they have alliedwith parties with an overlappingagenda on issues such as energyand transport. The coalition withthe SpD in Germany from 1998 to2005 can be regarded as a successin many respects – indeed despitesmall losses in 2005, the experi-ence left the Greens stronger thanbefore 1998.

Poisoned chalice of coalition

Since then the Greens have leftthe SpD to be emasculated ingrand coalitions with the CDuand have avoided the poisonedchalice of coalition with the right.however, at Lander level this hasnot always been the case. usuallythey ally with the SpD, but twicethey have formed coalitions withthe CDu. nearer home the IrishGreens formed a disastrous coali-tion with the conservative FiannaFail which saw them wiped out inthe aftermath of the financialcrash. One plausible strategy forthe Greens to adopt is to be agreen, but also mainstream left,party that taps into the discon-tent with the establishment. If(and here’s wishing) uKIpimplodes, the Green party’s abili-ty to capitalise on this strandmight grow.

The Greens trickle rather than surge – but is the future to the left, or centre? asks DavidToke

GREEN PARTY

Green dilemmas

David Toke isReader inPolitics at theUniversity ofAberdeen

The Green Party has beenwidely ridiculed for itsallegedly loopy left soundingpolicies

Iwonder if looking back in 30 years time theMay 2015 election will be seen as a tippingpoint in british politics? Against most people’sexpectations, Labour lost heavily after going tothe electorate with a programme which offered

little in the way of a ‘narrative’. you’ve heard it allbefore but it’s worth re-emphasing how very differ-ent politics in different parts of the uK havebecome. Scotland, London, the north, ‘MiddleEngland’ and – to a degree Wales and Cornwall –have changed markedly. Of course, northernIreland has always been completely different.building a single, uK-wide centre-left party thatwould have broad appeal is, arguably, asking theimpossible, particularly if it sticks to a traditionalcourse which most of Labour’s hopefuls seem to beoffering, whether left or right. here in Colne Valley(West yorkshire) there are signs of a change, thoughit’s currently below the radar.

I stood for regionalist party yorkshire First andgot just under 600 votes. There was a high turnout(about 70%) and five hustings events, which were allwell attended. The biggest took place in the oldMechanics hall in Marsden, with 200 crammed intothe main hall and 50 people turnedaway because there was no room left.So there was no lack of political inter-est. A lot of people liked our messagebut many said they'd vote Labour 'thistime' to keep the Tory out. In the end,the Tory got back in with an increasedmajority. Several friends who wereinvolved in the Labour campaign weredisappointed with the lack of a strong message com-ing from the party. 'Too much supermarket politics'was one comment - no vision, just a freeze on energyprices, train fares etc. At the same time, many ofthem genuinely thought they were going to win. Ihad no such expectations, though 572 was less thanI’d hoped for. Across the country, small parties gotsqueezed. yet where we stood in parish and districtelections we did extremely well - people just weren'twilling to take the risk of what they saw as a 'wast-ed' vote in the parliamentary. I got just over 1% ofthe vote; but in the rural Fulstone ward of holmeValley parish Council, in Colne Valley constituency,we got 433 - about 45% of the vote. The same hap-pened in Leeds northWest, penistone and hornsea.

There seems to be a growing appetite for regional-ist ‘quasi-independent’ politics which can be bothprogressive and related to local or regional identity.yorkshire First isn’t a party in the conventionalsense as we don’t have a centralised hierarchy witha party whip. Candidates are expected to sign up tothe ‘bell principles’ which are a code of conduct forpolitical independents set out by former indepen-dent Mp Martin bell. There is a growth of radical‘independents’ in widely different parts of the coun-try. John harris’ piece in The Guardian (May 22nd)on the 'people's republic of Frome' highlighted oneparticularly interesting example, where a group of

local campaigners now have all the seats on thetown council. Their approach is about grassroots,bottom-up campaigning with a strong ‘green’ tinge.One of the Frome Independents, peter McFadyenhas dubbed it 'Flatpack Democracy'. Frome is anaffluent rural market town in Wiltshire. Similardevelopments are happening ‘up north’ which onecomic described as ‘flat cap democracy’ to counter-pose to the ‘southern’ variety! In a semi-rural areasouth of huddersfield, a group of independents runMeltham Town Council and the ward (part ofKirklees Metropolitan Council) returns three ‘ValleyIndependents’. They form a ‘Green/Independentgroup’ of seven councillors on Kirklees Council. Allthree independents could be described as ‘progres-sive’ and two are very much of the left. however,they don’t have any fixed policies other than a verybottom-up approach to addressing local issues byasking and engaging. In what could be a very excit-ing development, the political reach of the ValleyIndependents is likely to extend to neighbouringwards and communities. Furthermore, they want toaffiliate to yorkshire First and effectively becomethe local association of the progressive regionalist

party. Which takes us back to the‘bell principles’. how can a localpolitical body function in a very differ-ent way to theconventional partybranch, which is always subservientto the leadership? It’s quite easy ifyou startthinking in a different way.The Valley Independents are alreadyconstituted as a political party. They

would affiliate to yorkshire First, whose main policyis democratic devolution for yorkshire with a sub-set of policies which could be determined by a futureyorkshire parliament, e.g. energy, transport,health, culture, economic development and educa-tion. At the local level, affiliated groups or yorkshireFirst branches are free to develop their own localpolicies based on community engagement and ‘vil-lage meetings’. At the same time, local candidatesare encouraged to have their own views on nationaland international issues. Acceptance of The bellprinciples automatically rule out potential racist,homophobic or other discriminatory attitudes.Frome and Colne Valley are not the only placeswhere progressive independent politics is starting todevelop. It has the potential to re-shape how we dopolitics in the uK and particularly in an increasing-ly diverse England. Flat-pack or flat cap? Let a hun-dred hats be worn......

In praise of flat-capdemocracy

POINTS & CROSSINGS

PaulSalvesonon re-shapinglocalpolitics

The Bell Principles - a code of conductfor political independents can be foundat

www.independentnetwork.org.uk/about-us/bell-principles

Whatever fits

Bennett to Lucas: You look left and I’ll look middling

July/August 2015 CHARTIST 2120 CHARTIST July/August 2015

The election results inWales were dire! Theswing to the Tories wasgreater in Wales (1.1%)than that to Labour

(0.6%), unlike in England whereit was 1.4% to 3.6%, but seven outof nine English regions swung toLabour, leaving Wales alongsideonly two English regions thatswung to the Tories, EastMidlands and South West.Theswing to uKIp in Wales (11.2%)was greater than that in England(10.7%), and there were hugevotes for uKIp in most of the oldmining valleys seats which musthave mainly derived from Labouras there was only a limited Toryvote in most of these seats.

The two Welsh Labour seatslost to the Tories, Gower and Valeof Clwyd, were the worst losses inthe uK, excepting Scotland, interms of swing required, and com-pare to seven such losses inEngland, where Labour gainedten seats from the Tories butnone in Wales, including thehighly marginal Cardiff northwhich should have fallen butactually swung back to the Tories,as did the other two Labour tar-gets, Carmarthen South and Valeof Glamorgan.

plaid only marginally increasedtheir vote, from 11% to 12%, andfailed to take Ceredigion or ynysMon, but achieved a large swingin rhondda and more modestswings in other valleys seats, butfailed in Llanelli where there wasa swing to Labour. This was oneof the few positive signs forLabour, its only gain in Wales.Apart from the predictable swingsagainst the Lib-Dems in SwanseaWest and hugely in CardiffCentral, there were only fiveseats which registered a swingfrom Tory to Labour, only two ofthese, both in Cardiff, withswings of over about 2%. butelsewhere, shockingly, there wereswings from Labour to Tory in 16seats, six of them above 2%, andfrom Labour to uKIp in six tradi-tional, mainly valleys seats inSouth Wales.

The Greens did relatively poor-ly, gaining only 2.6% of the voteagainst 4.2% in England,although this is still a hugeincrease on their previous vote.

The far left got their usual

D-Day for Europe andGreece Euclid Tsakalotos says it is decision time for an inclusive democratic Europe

GREECE

Three facts on the recentrumourology concerningthe Greek delegation'ssupposed walk- out onthe recent brussels

meetings on 14th June 2015:We did not walk out from the

recent brussels meetings on 14June 2015.

We faced a team with no man-date to negotiate.

We remain ready to negotiatewith a team that does have such amandate.

The discussions focused on fis-cal issues. There is no disagree-ment with the institutions on thefiscal gap for 2015. Discussionsfocused on the 2016 fiscal gap.Theinstitutions: estimate a fiscal gap2.5% of GDp for 2016 whichshould be covered only with newparametric measures i.e. mea-sures that are more easy to esti-mate (such as increasing taxrates).

The Greek government esti-mates a fiscal gap of 1.65 % butas a compromise we proposedmeasures, of a parametric kind ofaround 2% of GDp. What aboutthe gap between our 2% and the

2.5% proposed by the institu-tions? We argued that a reason-able compromise could constitutewith either the gap being filledwith administrative measures ofwhich we have already presenteda comprehensive list of such mea-sures amounting to 2.3 billioneuro (for instance measuresagainst tax evasion – after all wewere elected on a programme offighting tax evasion) or by theinstitutions giving a bit of groundon their estimate of the fiscal gap.Of course we could have had acompromise based on a combina-tion of the above two factors. Theinstitutions refuse to allow anyadministrative measures to helpclose the fiscal gap on the groundsthat they are uncertain. This isquite extraordinary since 500 mil-lion euros worth has already beencollected from our new install-ments scheme for tax arrears.Moreover they insist that theparametric measures shouldincorporate a large sum from pen-sion cuts – 1% of GDp. Anextroardinary demand for a coun-try in which