SOCIALIST UNITY

When I first became a feminist many years ago, one of the first feminist campaigning organisations I was first aware of was Southall Black Sisters. Set up in 1979 not long after Southall where anti-fascist activist Blair Peach was killed by the SPG.

Southall Black Sisters aim was to meet the needs of Black women. As an campaigning organisation they have gone beyond that. Their tireless activism has highlighted and changed the political landscape about the intersection of race and gender. They provide counselling, advocacy and welfare services.

They campaign around domestic violence, racism, sexism, forced marriages, mental health, criminal justice system, and immigration. Giving Black women a voice. And the importance of Black feminism. They were instrumental in setting up Women Against Fundamentalism in 1989.

Kiranjit Ahluwalia and Zoora Shah would probably not been released if it hadn’t been for SBS. They spearheaded campaigns to highlight domestic violence and the sexist and racist double-standards inherent in the criminal justice system spotlighting the law of provocation.

I remember the actvism and publicity surrounding Kiranjit’s campaign as at the time (early 1990s) there were other campaigns to highlight miscarriages of justice such as Emma Humphries, Sara Thornton and Amelia Rossiter.

I was active in the Free Sara Thornton campaign and also supported Kiranjit’s campaign. There was a massive mobalisation of women at the time to highlight these injustices, to make people aware of domestic violence (dispel the myths) and to put political pressure on the government.

The same level of mobalisation wasn’t shown when Zoora Shah was sent to prison (I used write to her while she was in prison). As SBS argue in their excellent bk, From Homebreakers to Jailbreakers:

“Lack of political activism forced us to look more to the media to raise the issues in Zoora Shah’s case. But by then, the issue of battered women who kill had lost its ’sex appeal’ in the media”.

Zoora was eventually freed.

And now Tory Ealing Council want to cut Southall Black Sisters core funding that could lead to closure. A picket of about 60+ people turned up outside Ealing Town Hall the other night. I was there. I turned up out of solidarity and support as a socialist feminist, a trade unionist and as someone who works in the voluntary sector.

The picket was lively and vibrant, women stood outside holding banners and placards, blowing whistles and chanting. Unforunately, Jason Stacey (Leader of Ealing Council) didn’t appear. The council meeting was 7pm, I couldn’t stay though I hope SBS and supporters gave Stacey et al hell…!

If you want to support SBS send an email to Jason Stacey telling him what you think about this appalling and disgraceful decision. And as the letter written by Pragna Patel (Chair of SBS) to supporters says, “The issues raised by the council’s actions have wider ramifications for all Black and minority women’s organisations. It is imperative we act now”.

SBS have been at the forefront of fighting for the rights of Black women for 29 years and now a Tory council wants to remove that voice.

Jason.Stacey@ealing.gov.uk 

Charlie Pottins has a post on SBS.

 Pics are of the protest outside Ealing Town Hall I took the other night

Caroline Flint, the new Housing Minister, caused outrage recently when she suggested that New Labour would change the law to allow people to be evicted from their homes if they were not looking for work vigorously enough. She called for new council tenancies to be conditional upon tenants signing a “commitment contract.” The long-term unemployed would have to promise to try to find work or their homes would be at risk.

Before we look at her proposals in detail it is worth reminding ourselves that Caroline Flint was the campaign manager for Hazel Blears’s attempt to become Deputy leader of the Labour Party. Blears represents the most rightwing part of the Labour Party.

She accepted a £10000 donation for her campaign from a law company that boasts it can cut compensation claims from trade unionists and workers “even in situations where the employer has an extremely weak case”.

The only union to back Blears was USDAW. Britain’s fifth biggest trade union, USDAW is institutionally right wing, with more than half their members working for TESCO where they have a sweetheart deal with management and are seemingly cooperating with TESCO bosses in breaking the TGWU representation of drivers in Livingston in Scotland.

During her campaign, Hazel Blears got into hot water by stereotyping immigrants and suggesting the public associated them with anti-social behaviour. This came only days after the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown said he wanted to see ‘British workers for the British jobs’.

The remarkable thing here is that New Labour have managed to get themselves to the right of the Tories over race and immigration, allowing Conservative Shadow Home Secretary David Davis to criticise them from the left! He said: “It is wholly irresponsible for ministers to stereotype any group in society. … It augurs badly for any idea of responsible government when both the would-be prime minister and would-be deputy leader of the Labour Party seem perfectly happy to use ultra-sensitive subjects for short-term political ends.”

So that puts Caroline Flint into perspective. She is a leading figure in a strand in the labour Party that is essentially to the right of where David Davis and David Cameron are positioning themselves.

So what should we make of her proposals on housing? Well as Liz Davies correctly observes

New Labour specialises in flying kites in order then to introduce a toned-down version of an apparently horrific proposal. It’s an old political trick. And Flint’s approach reveals a frightening philosophy, part of new Labour’s core ideology, that “rights” are somehow dependent upon a person behaving “responsibly”.

 Liz also explains why the idea is utterly unworkable:

The practical implications are ridiculous. A “commitment contract” could only, in law, be imposed upon new council tenants.
Hardly any able-bodied adults, without children, are given council tenancies these days. Would parents be subject to the contract? Disabled people? The elderly? What happens to those council tenants who are evicted as a result of their failure to find work?

Crucially, why would it work? The able-bodied unemployed are already required to “actively seek work.” Their daily activities are monitored and jobseekers’ allowance can be withdrawn if the DWP decides that you are not “actively seeking work.”
Finally, for Flint to prevail, the whole of our housing and homelessness law would have to be rewritten. Council tenants can only be evicted by a court order and the court can only make a possession order after investigating the whole of the circumstances of the case.

Flint’s proposals would see judges given the task of deciding whether someone has genuinely tried to find work and failed or is deliberately avoiding work, what that tenant’s future intentions are and whether it would be in the interests of that person’s family, his or her neighbours and the council itself for such a recalcitrant tenant to be evicted.

Caroline Flint is one of that new generation of Labour MPs, like Hazel Blears, James Purnell, Anne Snellgrove, Liam Byrne and a few others, who have absolutely no connection with traditional Labour Party values or traditions. The Trade Unions should look long and hard at why these closet Thatcherites are being pushed forward as government ministers.

Yesterday saw an important ‘Eco-build’ husting for the London mayoral candidates to scrutinise their credentials on Green issues. This is a decisive area of policy difference between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson, and I am hoping that at some stage in the campaign the Green party will make a high profile call for a second preference vote for Livingstone by their supporters. It would be a serious set-back if a climate change sceptic became mayor of London.

Boris Johnson totally exposed himself during this green debate, and exposed the shallowness of his attempt to give himself a green veneer. He was clueless about key aspects of environment policy and out of step with the most modern solutions to climate change.

It exposed the potential danger of a Tory Mayor with no interest in the environment or climate change.

At the debate Boris Johnson:

- dodged every question on why he opposed the Kyoto Treaty on climate change
- repeated his support for a new airport in the Thames gateway - which is opposed by all major environmental organisations for the potential increase in carbon emissions and its threat to natural habitats;
- failed to back the Low Emission Zone;
- admitted he did not know about “contraction and convergence”, the policy that every person on the planet should have the same allowance
for emitting carbon, and had to have it explained to him by a member of the audience;
- was challenged from the audience by a leading journalist on when his Damascene conversion from long-standing anti-green positions had
occurred and couldn’t explain it;
- said that London’s bus fleet should be run on bio-fuels, which cause deforestation and contribute to climate change through the energy-intensive methods required to produce them – Ken Livingstone instead backs hybrid buses to reduce fuel consumption overall.

Ken Livingstone’s campaign said:

“Clear policies to improve the environment and deal with climate change are vital for any candidate in a modern election, but Boris Johnson failed every litmus test at today’s debate. Johnson shows no interest in real green policy, backed Bush over Kyoto, opposes the £25 CO2 charge, attacks the Low Emission Zone and supports a new airport in the Thames Estuary. Boris Johnson’s claim to be green falls at the first hurdle - he makes a mockery of his party’s claim to have changed in any way.”

It’s all about payment by results, apparently. It’s all about taking welfare reform to the next level and comrades, it’s about innovation. Rock ‘n roll.

The more I read James Purnell’s blue sky thinking the more I imagine him as the Del Boy of this so-called ”‘compelling vision of radical change’. And delivering his strategy, Purnell announced:

“The private and voluntary sector already plays a role in delivering our work programmes. I want to take this to the next level, free them from central control and allow them to innovate. Their involvement is here to stay and set to grow”.

So, here we have it. The private sector taking over the public sector and turning it into profit and competition. And unsurprisingly…David Freud is very chipper about this strategy. Well, he would, wouldn’t he….

“The new strategy also has the potential to open up a whole new type of competition in the market place, offering openness and transparency where competitors can measure each others successes.’”

With longer, 5-7 year contracts expected to be the norm and rewards available for sustained outcomes, linked to the amount of time a person remains in employment or whether they are in a ‘hard to help’ group - the government said today that the first employment programme to be contracted under the new strategy will be the Flexible New Deal - announced last week and to be introduced from October 2009.

Interestingly, the Commons Public Accounts Committee have published a report stating that 40% of jobseekers allowance claimants who get a job are back on benefits within 6 mths.

And the DWP is to lose 12,000 full-time posts over the next 3 yrs, around 7,000-8,000 to be lost in Jobcentre Plus. Mmmm. Some of these people will become customers of their former employers.

In addition the process of welfare reform coninues to make the benefits system even more difficult for people to navigate; especially those people navigating a way through low paid insecure jobs, the tax credit system, the Jobcentreplus system and the Housing Benefit/Local Housing Allowance/Council Tax systems…all with their own complex rules that are not designed to work together.

The following press release was sent out by Respect Renewal at 11:30 pm last night:

Respect press release for immediate use 27th February 2008.

TORIES SHOW THEIR TRUE COLOURS VOTING TO END MOTHER TONGUE FUNDING

“I am utterly disgusted at the behaviour of the Tory councillors at tonight’s full council meeting, when they voted to end mother tongue funding,” said a furious Abjol Miah, Respect Group leader on Tower Hamlets Council. “They have singled out the Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets for attack. I wonder if any Tory councillor consulted with any of their Bangladeshi members. I don’t think their Bangladeshi members would have given this any support had they known this was what the Tory councillors planned.”

The funding of mother tongue studies for 500 young people in Tower Hamlets is fully justified in terms of promoting their self-esteem and real community cohesion. Mother tongue funding is just £719,000 of the council’s annual budget but makes a huge difference to the educational opportunities, the self-confidence and prospects of many young people from the BME communities in Tower Hamlets. Not only does it show the respect for Tower Hamlets diverse communities which has been a central feature of the history of Tower Hamlets council, it promotes literacy and raises educational attainment. The attack on mother tongue funding left the Tories completely isolated on the council and subject to withering attack from all the other parties.

Abjol Miah, who is Respect’s candidate for Bethnal Green and Bow in the general election, continued: “This exposes the rancid under-belly of these Conservatives. They tried to pretend they were interested in the less well off and minorities but this was just a facade. We always knew they would expose themselves, I just didn’t expect it to be so soon. They have shown their hypocrisy at turning up to 21st February International Language Day to try to get cheap popularity then to do this tonight. I am particularly disgusted they were joined by their newest recruit Ahmed Hussain in this insult to the Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets.

“However, we can’t let New Labour off the hook,” continued Councillor Miah. “New Labour are capitulating every day to the Islamophobic press and the fear the Tories will play the race card. They are doing it on immigration, the so-called war on terror and on many other issues. We need to fight this appalling agenda set by the likes of the Sun and stand up for our principles of equality, fairness and justice.”

Ends

Can you see any similarity to the following story on the SWP-REESpect web-site? What an embarassment John Rees is becoming.

Politics of the first Bengali Tory Councillor in Tower Hamlets
28/02/2008

The first Bengali Tory Councillor in Tower Hamlets has “proudly” supported to end funding for language classes for Bengalis in their mother-tongue.

“I am truly sickened by the behaviour of the Tory councillors at tonight’s full council meeting, when they voted to end mother tongue funding,” said a very angry Oliur Rahman, Respect (The Unity Coalition) group leader on Tower Hamlets Council. “What would the Tories know about black and minority ethnic (BME) communities?”

The funding of mother tongue studies for 500 young people in Tower Hamlets is fully justified in terms of promoting their self-esteem and real community cohesion.

Mother tongue funding is just £719,000 of the council’s annual budget but makes a huge difference to the educational opportunities, the self-confidence and the prospects of many young people from BME communities in Tower Hamlets.

Evidence indicates that securing second language skill proficiency enables students to improve their general literacy skills at a faster rate, which is key to all learning.

The attack on mother tongue funding left the Tories completely isolated on the council and subject to withering attack from all the other parties.

Oliur Rahman, who is Respect’s list candidate for the GLA election, continued: “Millions of people paid with their blood and lives for the mother tongue. If the Tories think they will end this service in Tower Hamlets then all I will say is that I will fight them.

“They have shown their hypocrisy by turning up on International Language Day to try and get cheap popularity, then they vote against funding today.

“The Tories are so proud of having Cllr Ahmed Hussain in their group that they want to end mother tongue services. Cllr Hussain should be ashamed of himself, for voting and supporting this outrageous move,” said Cllr Rahman.

Over 50 prominent figures representing a wide section of British society have signed a statement raising concern over legal action taken by oil giant ExxonMobil to prevent the Venezuelan government from exercising its right to control its natural resources. They have urged ExxonMobil to work for “the amicable settlement” of its dispute with the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA through international arbitration.

The statement is published as Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA goes to the High Court to appeal an English court’s decision to freeze its assets in England and Wales.

The statement points out that “The action by ExxonMobil was in response to the policy of the Venezuelan government to take back majority control of their own oil resources. Unlike other international oil companies, where some 30 out of 32 contracts have been successfully renegotiated and amicable agreements and compensation terms reached with the Venezuelan government, ExxonMobil refused the terms offered.”

The statement concludes “We further restate our support for Venezuela’s national sovereignty, including the right to determine its own policy in relation to its oil and natural resources in favour of the people of that country, rather than in the interests of multinational companies.”

Signatories to the letter included writer and film-maker John Pilger, veteran political activist Tony Benn, Bruce Kent, Vice President of CND, Ann Pettifor, founder of Jubilee 2000, Brian Wilson, Chair of the Scottish Venezuela Society, an MEP and many MPs from 5 parties, a number of leading writers, artists and academics and many senior national trade union leaders.

Colin Burgon MP, Chair of Labour Friends of Venezuela group of parliamentarians said: “Millions of Venezuelans are now benefiting from free healthcare and education thanks to the Chavez government’s greater control over that country’s oil resources. Government’s must have the right to be able to put the interest of people ahead of company’s profits”.

UNISON Deputy General Secretary Keith Sonnet, added that, “This sends a clear message internationally, including to the Bush administration, that Venezuela’s right to self-determination must be respected, rather than the wishes of multinational companies to make profits.”

Gordon Hutchison, Secretary of the Venezuela Information Centre, said “There are many voices in Britain who strongly oppose ExxonMobil’s attempts to undermine the right of Venezuela’s democratically elected government to control its own resources.”

The full text of the statement and full list of signatures is as follows:

STATEMENT RE EXONNMOBIL AND PDVSA

We note with deep concern that on 7 February an English court granted an injunction to US multinational oil company ExxonMobil freezing the assets of the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA in England and Wales. The order covered assets to the value of US$12 billion.

The Venezuelan Government was given no notice of the case and was not afforded any opportunity to be represented at the hearing.

This week PDVSA will appeal the decision in the High Court and seek to revoke the injunction.

The action by ExxonMobil was in response to the policy of the Venezuelan government to take back majority control of their own oil resources. Unlike other international oil companies, where some 30 out of 32 contracts have been successfully renegotiated and amicable agreements and compensation terms reached with the Venezuelan government, ExxonMobil refused the terms offered.

We believe that the action by ExxonMobil, and the ruling by the court, contravenes the right of the democratically elected government of Venezuela to exercise sovereignty over its natural resources. The nationalisation of Venezuela’s state oil company, holder of some of the world’s largest oil reserves, under the government of President Hugo Chavez has allowed Venezuela to tackle a range of social inequalities, by taking back the oil wealth and redistributing it to benefit the Venezuelan people.

We urge the amicable settlement of this dispute through arbitration under the auspices of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, a body of the World Bank, as sought by the Venezuelan government in compliance with the terms of the contract signed between PDVSA and ExxonMobil in 1995.

We further restate our support for Venezuela’s national sovereignty, including the right to determine its own policy in relation to its oil and natural resources in favour of the people of that country, rather than in the interests of multinational companies.

SIGNATURES

Diane Abbott M.P (Labour)

Tony Benn

John Pilger

Bruce Kent

Prunella Scales

Caroline Lucas MEP

Gordon Hutchison, Secretary, Venezuela Information Centre (VIC)

Brian Wilson, Chair, Scottish Venezuela Society

Ann Pettifor, Fellow, New Economics Foundation

Neal Lawson, Compass

Graeme Smith, General Secretary. STUC

Keith Sonnet, Deputy General Secretary, UNISON

Ken Loach

Colin Burgon M.P (Chair, Labour Friends of Venezuela)

Jon Cruddas M.P (Treasurer, Labour Friends of Venezuela)

Mike Hancock M.P (Liberal Democrat)

Adam Price M.P. (Plaid Cymru)

Angus MacNeil M.P. (Scottish National Party)

Richard Harvey

David Hillman

Jon Trickett M.P (Secretary, Labour Friends of Venezuela)

Jeremy Corbyn M.P

Victoria Brittain

Graham Goddard, Deputy General Secretary, UNITE

Billy Hayes, General Secretary CWU

Owen Tudor, Head of European Union and International Relations, TUC

Rodney Bickerstaffe

Sue Branford, Chair, War on Want

Richard Gott

Doug Nicholls, National Secretary CYWU/UNITE

Derek Wall, Green Party

Cllr. Salma Yaqoob

Hazel Marsh, University of East Anglia

Andy Bain, President TSSA

Maggie Bowden, General Secretary, Liberation

Ruqayyah Collector, Black Students Officer, NUS

Marie Daley, UCU National Executive Committee

Michael Derham, Northumbria University

Bill Greenshields, Vice-President NUT

Chris Kitchen, General Secretary NUM

Matt Wrack, General Secretary FBU

Dr Mandy Turner, University of Bradford

Dr Kaveh Moussavi, University of Oxford

Paul Laverty

Gerry Doherty, General Secretary TSSA

Baljeet Ghale, President NUT (personal capacity)

Joe Marino, General Secretary, BFAWU

Dr. Francisco Dominguez, University of Middlesex

Doreen Massey, Open University

Martin McIvor, Editor, Renewal

Gerry Morrissey, General Secreary, BECTU

Linda Newman, President UCU

Diana Raby, University of Liverpool

Mick Shaw, President, FBU

Respect MP George Galloway will be appearing on the BBC’s “Question Time” programme TONIGHT, 28 February at 10.35pm on BBC1. Do tune in.

JON CRUDDAS MP writes a very interesting article in Today’s Morning Star about the serious threat to the labour movement by legal rulings in the European Court of Justice.

THE Lisbon Treaty has continued its controversial passage through Parliament over the last couple of weeks.

Many of the arguments have been on familiar lines, with a focus on questions such as the referendum. But there is another debate to be had, which is critical to the future of the left, as some of us have tried to address.

That debate is over the direction of Europe itself, because we are at a critical juncture in the evolution of the EU.

That point is illustrated by two landmark rulings of the European Court of Justice, in the Laval and Viking Line cases. They have profound implications for European labour law and especially for this country, with its history of minimal direct legal intervention in industrial relations.

Let’s take the case of Finnish ferry company Viking Line. It decided in 2003 to reflag a vessel and reregister it in Estonia, employing an Estonian crew on Estonian pay and conditions, cutting its wage costs by 60 per cent.

The Finnish shipping union appealed to the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) in London, which sent a circular to all affiliates telling them not to enter negotiations with Viking. The Finnish shipping union called for Viking to maintain existing pay and conditions and threatened to strike.

But, once Estonia joined the EU in 2004, Viking sued ITF in the British High Court for restricting its freedom of establishment. The case was referred to the European Court of Justice, which ruled that in future any strike action affecting this freedom would have to meet stringent legal tests that the court itself would assess.

Such a ruling is unprecedented in British industrial relations - no longer does the legitimacy of collective action rest upon the democratic mandate of the union derived from its members and regulated through laws determined by the national Parliament. Now, it will also need to meet the criteria imposed and assessed by European judges. That is a deeply unwelcome landmark in industrial law.

That is not just a point of principle, because, in practice, it means that multinational companies will be able to threaten unions with long and expensive court cases in order to discourage workers taking collective action against outsourcing or other ways in which they seek to drive down their costs by worsening the conditions of their workforce.

The Laval case has even more serious ramifications. Laval is a Latvian company, which, in 2004, posted workers from Latvia to work on building sites in Sweden, including a construction project building a school in Vaxholm.

The Swedish construction union asked the company to agree to the existing collective agreement within the building sector. The company refused, operating instead under the Latvian agreement, including a lower pay scale that undercut the Swedish workers’ wages.

The Swedish unions went on strike, picketing the site, and, as a consequence, Laval’s Swedish subsidiary was eventually bankrupted. Laval sued the union for its losses. Under Swedish labour law, it did not have a case.

However, as Latvia had now joined the EU, the company referred to the European right to provide services and the Swedish courts had to refer the case to the European Court of Justice.

Subsequently, the ECJ ruled that a company’s freedom to provide services in any member state should not be restricted by compliance with non-statutory collective bargaining agreements in one member state. Again, that has huge implications, especially for an industrial relations system that is built on legal abstention and free collective bargaining, as in Britain.

Critically, the court argued that, because the EU-posted workers directive set out minimum rights, it was unreasonable to force the company to comply with further non-statutory agreements at local or national level. So, instead of EU legislation setting a legal minimum and driving standards up, which has been the argument since Jacques Delors’s 1988 TUC address, we now face the threat of it becoming a maximum, thus pushing conditions down.

The bad news may well get even worse. The ECJ is shortly to rule on a third similar case. That concerns German construction company Objekt und Bauregien GmbH & Co. It won a public contract in Niedersachsen in Germany, which it subcontracted to a Polish firm. The terms of the contract included a stipulation that the Polish workers had to be paid according to the collective agreement already in force on the building site, which was part of the local authority’s procurement policy.

The German firm later discovered that the Polish company was employing posted workers who were actually being paid less than half of the applicable minimum wage. It therefore sacked the Polish subcontractor and the local authority demanded compensation for breach of contract. The company then took legal action which, a couple of years later, reached the ECJ and is about to be ruled upon.

The judgement will determine whether it is acceptable in public tendering to insist on higher wages than the statutory minimum, when that affects other EU companies and workers.

If the unions lose that case, it will be a catastrophic setback, because it could be used to seriously undermine policies such as the London Living Wage being pioneered by London Mayor Ken Livingstone.

Companies that are tendering for public procurement where local authorities or government departments have equality provisions in their procurement policies will be able to evade those requirements by subcontracting to firms based elsewhere in the EU who can use posted workers on a lower wage.

We should be acutely aware of the implications for further labour market deregulation.

These cases, among others, suggest that recent EU law is driving a race to the bottom in terms of labour market standards. Indeed, it could be argued that the very notion of a social Europe is under threat.

Given the centrality of that concept in the labour movement’s approach to Europe over the past 20 years, this is an issue that deserves profound discussion on the left and, beyond that, action to remedy it. That battle is just beginning.

Jon Cruddas is Labour MP for Dagenham. He writes a monthly column for the Morning Star.

One of the best left blogs from the USA is Bob Morris’s Politics in the Zeros.

Bob observes that Ralph Nader’s entry into the Presidential context is pointless and damaging. “Nader got 0.3% of the vote in 2004, just three-tenths of one percent.He will almost certainly do even more dismally this year.”

And as another former Nader supporter has written “Nader’s critique of corporate power and its corrosive effect on American democracy is spot-on. But if the point of these third-party runs is to inject that critique into mainstream discourse — well, we’re way past the point of diminishing returns, and actually deep into some sort of anti-matter universe, in which information is literally sucked out of people’s brains at the first mention of his name. … The only debate another Nader candidacy is going to inspire is a debate about Nader himself, and I just don’t see the point”

Given the odd nature of the US Presidential system, Nader’s third party is on the ballot in just 24 states, and if he performs worse than last time (which he may well) then that ballot spot will be lost for 2012. And in between elections Nader does nothing to build a third party. For al their many faults, the Green Party does seem to be the only viable progressive project in the USA, and Cynthia McKinney is the best shot as a progressive presidential candidate who can rally activists around her.

By the way, Bob has recently been expelled from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which is a split from the Workers World Party.

He has started writing about his experiences on his blog, first with an announcement of his expulsion (I’ve been purged!) , and the first in a series of articles discussing where the far left go wrong (Marxist groups, organizing, and clowning!), seemingly drawing on the ideas of Peter Camejo. I am looking forward to Bob’s insights and it will be well worth following the discussion.

Thanks to the blog Tameside Eye for pointing out this excellent initiative by the GMB union. They have produced a double sided window poster for use in the constituency of James Purnell, the minister responsible for the proposed closure the Remploy factories.

As the author of the Tameside Eye blog observes:

“Certainly a powerful message from the GMB. It is strange that the GMB Union are stepping on James Purnell’s toes very close to home and I would like to make a point that there are NO Remploy factories in Tameside. This press release could of easily have been done on a national level, but by them stepping into Purnell’s constituency of Stalybridge and Hyde, makes this a completely different ball game for two reasons. One, they are asking people to put this poster in their windows, secondly they mention the fact that many Remploy workers also vote Labour.

“In my own opinion, the GMB are deffinately biting the hand that feeds them. With the “morals” of the current Labour cabinet, I would say the future for Remploy is unfortunately bleak. It is obvious that the message to Purnell is “Give us what we want, or we will hit you where it hurts”. And the GMB Union want to strike Purnell by taking a slice of his votes away”

The other side of the leaflet reads.

“James Purnell MP Friend or Enemy of Disabled Workers??

“This man has the power to reverse one of the most dispicable decisions made by any political party, let alone a party founded on the principles

of defending working people’s rights as the Labour Party is, within living memory and that is the decision to close 28 Remploy factories that his predecessor Peter Hain endoresed on the 29th November 2008.

“Remploy workers call on James Purnell, the new pensions Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to halt the Remploy closure programme, hold a propper review of the company, not from the bottom up as is the case now but from the top down.

“Remploy workers whether disabled or non disabled are being made to pay the ultimate price, with their jobs, for the innefficiencies within the company. This is a diabolical situation for both the workers in the Remploy factories, many of whom are Labour voters and the disabled people who need to come off benefit and could have the benefit of being in a Remploy factory, for short, medium or long term, learning skills and getting back to work.

“Mr. Purnell, as a Labour minister we beseech you to do the right thing for Remploy workers. It is never to late to tackle an injustice and there is no bigger injustice than that Remploy workers face now!!

“Stop the Remploy Closures.”