Swamped

Pause for a moment and consider why, amid the relentless targeting of immigrants to this country, a minister claiming that some UK towns are 'swamped' with EU immigrants is too much even for his Westminster paymasters. There is, after all, solid precedent for this kind of talk amongst leading Tories:



To say that we are swamped by something, is to imply that this thing is part of the non-human world. Flood waters swamp (note the language of floodgates that is never far behind talk of immigrants swamping). An office worker might be swamped by paperwork. That which swamps me is at once alien to me and something I want to do away with. When I say of people that they are swamping me I both 'other' them and to set them up as a legitimate target of hostility. And that - thanks to several decades of sustained anti-racist campaigning, these days so quickly dismissed as 'political correctness' - is no longer openly acceptable in their discourse of our leaders. Only irrelevant has-beens can now talk this way without censure.

Don't suppose for one moment, however, that this change in acceptable language reflects a change in heart. Those who thought that it was actually, as it were, wrong to treat immigrants as though they were so many pests to be exterminated would think twice before leaving them to die a hellish death in the Mediterranean.

Johann Lamont resigns

Last month's referendum certainly has the politicians dropping like flies. The latest to go is Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont. See the Graun here. George Eaton's analysis here deserves a perusal as well.

Much quoted are Lamont's scathing words about the Westminster leadership:

The Labour Party must recognise that the Scottish party has to be autonomous and not just a branch office of a party based in London.

She's right, and the criticism of over-centralisation is all the more telling coming, as it does, from someone who is a long way from being a left-wing rebel. The lording it over Scotland by Westminster Labour isn't utterly unique: absolutely definitive of New Labour was a paranoid centralism and utter fear of any public Labour figure saying anything that lacked the imprimatur of the leader's office (Lamont herself was apparently prevented from criticising the Bedroom Tax). This centralisation in the cause of the New Labour project is a good part of what lies behind Miliband's tethering of Lamont, and is equally apparent in dodgy selections, on-the-hoof policy decisions bypassing Conference and the NPF, anti-democratic 'reforms', and a good deal else on top of that.

This having been admitted, the Lamont saga cannot be entirely explained as the fallout of UK-wide institutional power-grabbing by the Labour leadership. There is a distinctively Scottish element to the tale. And with this in mind, I leave you with a question: might it not be the case that it is inevitable, for as long as the Union persists, that the London offices of UK-wide parties will be forced, by the logic of union itself, to severely restrict the autonomy of their colleagues north of the Border?

TUC Demonstration, London, 18th October

Now, as you will know, I am on the pessimism-without-hopelessness wing of the British Left. I think a lot of stuff, not least the Left itself, is rubbish, and things are not going to get a whole lot better until we realise this. This said, yesterday's TUC 'Britain Needs a Payrise' march was really quite good.

I measure the size of political demonstrations, thus: I start at the front of the march, peel off to a cafe en route, and count the number of courses I can eat whilst the march files past. I then rejoin the back. This was at least a two course and coffee affair, but I got distracted when a friend turned up, so it could well have been considerably bigger. Those preferring the more orthodox method of counting demonstrators to assess size place the numbers around the 90,000 mark.

This was pretty impressive, especially on a day when the weather was far from wonderful, and had been forecast to be worse. There was a really good feel about the demo - and an incredibly diverse bunch of marchers. The big unions were out in force, but so were smaller, and significant groups - fast food workers, the brilliant Focus E15 Mothers, peace and environmental groups, and many, many, others. Against those who question the point of A-to-B marches: one of the great things about big demonstrations around trade union issues is that they bring different groups of workers into contact, giving everyone present a sense that they are not alone, offering inspiration and providing an opportunity for conversations. They also say something pretty powerful to those who watch them pass.

Given that pessimism I was talking about, there has to be a 'but' doesn't there? Here it comes. But whilst A-to-B marches are worthwhile, they are not enough. It was brilliant that we were demonstrating the weekend after 400,000 healthcare workers had taken strike action. Wouldn't it have been better if we were doing so additionally the weekend after local government workers had also been on strike? The timidity of the Unison bureaucracy in calling off that strike in favour of 'consultation' on a sub-inflation pay proposal, is shameful. If we want the pay increases advocated by union leaderships yesterday, industrial action will be needed. There is simply no point in standing on a podium uttering fine words about pay, unless those words are followed up by sustained action.

Whilst we're on the subject of action, union bosses are supposed to be in the business of political, as well as industrial action. Here again, the leaders of the UK's big unions struck exactly the right chord yesterday. As reported by the Mirror, Unite's Len McCluskey said,

The Tory mission is to destroy the welfare state, characterising anyone on benefit as a scrounger. This country needs more than a pay rise. We need a government that fights against cuts. We say to the corporate giants who say we can’t afford it: Pay your taxes.

Bang on the the money, Len. Meanwhile Unison's Dave Prentis told the crowd,

We are here to say enough is enough. We shall no longer sit back and allow pay to decline

Exactly right.

Unison and Unite, along with other unions represented at the demo in large numbers (such as the CWU) are affiliated to the Labour Party. Given the, admirable, opposition the leaderships of these unions have expressed to austerity and low pay, you'd assume that they'd use this affiliation to push Labour towards anti-austerity, pro-worker policies, wouldn't you? Yet here's a curious fact for you to mull over. With the sole exception of BECTU, the representatives of all affiliated unions at July's national policy forum voted against a future Labour government rejecting Tory spending plans. That is to say, they voted in favour of continued austerity.

Britain certainly does need a payrise. Or rather, the British working class, or even better, the working class, need a payrise. (Some bits of Britain seem quite adequately paid already). We won't get it unless we fight for it, and increase pressure on those who are supposed to represent us.

Unpleasant

Your host is not, in the great scheme of things, poor.

I can, however, only dream of being able to pay £2,800 a month for a flat.

Alas, it is not only Boris who is pushing 'affordable' housing ("affordable" meaning, in general, 80% of market price - reduced to a still astronomical 60% in the Mount Pleasant case). The term is all over Labour policy documents, in London and nationally. A modest proposal for you to ponder over the weekend: let's stop talking about 'affordable' housing and start talking about social, or even better council housing, which is increasingly the only sort of housing that any normal person can actually afford.

Friday Video Corner

This week, NICE want you to be very frightened of alcohol in order to save money and make you a more productive worker. I paraphrase this news story.

Anyway, here's my considered response.

Missing in Action

The evil of ISIS understandably provokes a desire to 'do something', and this has caused not a few people who should know better down a bellicose path. One voice of wise caution in recent weeks has been Michael Meacher, who - in an interesting blogpost - said this,

It is imperative that Britain isn’t drawn into this imbroglio all over again. Britain’s record in the Middle East has been irredeemably negative and counter-productive from the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadeq in Iran in 1953, through backing for the Shah as a weak Western puppet and then the arming of Saddam Hussein to fight the proxy war against Iran, and then to the illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq in 2003 on utterly false pretences to gain a permanent foothold on the oil.

Quite.

Yesterday, parliament voted to authorise air-strikes on ISIS. Labour whipped in favour, 23 MPs rebelled . They were:

Diane Abbott (Hackney North & Stoke Newington), Graham Allen (Nottingham North), Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South), Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley), Martin Caton (Gower), Katy Clark (Ayrshire North & Arran), Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North), Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West), Paul Flynn (Newport West), Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow), Kate Hoey (Vauxhall), Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North), Sian James (Swansea East), Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North & Leith), John McDonnell (Hayes & Harlington), Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde), Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby), Grahame Morris (Easington), George Mudie (Leeds East), Linda Riordan (Halifax), Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield), Dennis Skinner (Bolsover), Graham Stringer (Blackley & Broughton) and Mike Wood (Batley & Spen).

Notice a significant absence?

Michael Meacher was in parliament yesterday.

Off message

Harry Leslie Smith is the author of Harry's Last Stand, an engaging book calling - on the basis of his experience of the Great Depression and the Second World War - for the preservation of the Welfare State. He is the face of a politics of social democratic nostalgia, tinged with a certain 'progressive' British (or perhaps, these days, English) nationalism. This is not without severe problems - see Owen Hatherley here, or comments in Richard Seymour's latest book. That said, there is a dignity and conviction about the man, and he serves as a living reminder of the horrors that devastated lives before the 1945 settlement.

Earlier this week, Harry Leslie Smith gave a speech at the Labour Party Conference:


His role in the conference, carefully carved out for him by Party managers was to speak about the NHS. Notice, however, that at key points he goes beyond this brief. He talks about "welfare cuts" and "austerity". And what he says about these things is spot on.

But here's the problem. The Labour leadership is committed to both austerity and welfare cuts. Ed Balls has pledged repeatedly to constrain a future Labour government with current Tory spending limits. Not only is there precious little sign of Tory benefit cuts being reversed, but this week Balls promised more - announcing a policy of real terms cuts in child benefit.

Austerity destroys lives. That is indeed the message of history. Is it one that the Labour front bench is prepared to hear?