Keep Our NHS public?

A reply to a campaign circular:

Dear Friend,

thank you for your letter dated 1st May regarding your campaign group's pledge against NHS privatisation.

The Socialist Party campaigns solely on the basis of abolishing the market system, whether in its private or state form. The NHS, as it stands, remains part of the market system, paying wages and salaries and buying drugs and equipment from suppliers.

The NHS is part of the social wage, won through class struggle; but so long as society is organised on private or state capitalist lines, it can only be run within the limits of the profitability of capital. We aim to abolish capitalist relations outright, so that the only limit will be that of our collective ability to work.

If elected to public office, until such time as we could carry through such a change, our delegate would be instructed to vote in the interest of the needs of the working class: in this case, ensuring they got the best health outcomes available.

This was a reply to Islington Keep Our NHS Public

Stop the Thing!

People are always asking why we don't campaign for reforms, if only to win more support for our cause.

An illustration of why we don't play that game can be found here:

After many months of campaigning to keep Clapham Fire Station open Lambeth Conservatives welcome the news that the fire station will not close.

Commenting, Lambeth Conservatives Group Leader John Whelan said: “This is fantastic news for the community and the borough as a whole.

"The Lambeth Conservatives have opposed the closure from the start and are delighted that our constructive community lead campaign has been a success.

“This is in sharp contrast to Lambeth Labour who were all talk and no action.

.So, the Tories out reformed Labour by campaigning hard (against the, er, Tory Mayor).

As with our attitude to the Whittington Hospital closure, we want to put the security and well being of working folk first and foremost, and our only concern is not that the "local" service is saved, but that the protection provision remains adequate. But campaigning for that isn't our job *as socialists* our job is to put the case for socialism. Local people are capable of campaigning for their own interests without us (or, indeed, without socialist consciousness).

A vote for us is an act of rebellion, saying that politics as normal can't go on.

Save the Whittington

The big issue in the Junction ward by-election is the campaign to save the Whittington Hospital, and their plans for a major sell off of land and reduction in beds, see here.

On Wednesday 23 January 2013, the Whittington Health Trust Board agreed an estates strategy that will see more services provided in health centres across Haringey and Islington. The strategy responds to the health trends of our local population. More people are receiving healthcare in their homes, health centres and GP surgeries. Technology will increasingly support more care, especially for people with long term conditions. The frail elderly are often best cared for in community settings. Over time, the dependency on hospital wards will decrease, which will see some staff relocate to health centres.

You could expect, if clinical need was the driver of the change, that they would roll out the community service, and then reduce beds and staff accomodation based on proven reduced need. This press release from a local MP suggests this is at least nominally the case:

Following a meeting with Lynne Featherstone MP and Cllr David Winskill, the Whittington Hospital has offered assurances that no services will be lost during their reorganization until equal or better replacement services are in place.

It is more likely, that the below quote from another of their leaflets is the real driver(PDF):

All hospitals are obliged to become Foundation Trusts or risk acquisition by other Foundation Trusts – our investment plans are a major part of our effort to become a Foundation Trust.

This is the reality, and why the hospital is threatened (again), and will be (again) even if the campaign succeeds. Hospitals forced to behave like businesses rather than providing a needs based service must start looking at the value of their estate as a priority. The position of the Socialist Party is clear: we will not campaign for election based on supporting any given set of reforms: but we do support the struggle of workers to defend their living standards and services (indeed, Unite The Union is at the forefront of the Whittington Campaign). We will not seek to take over the campaign like so many other organisations do. It's too easy for a Councillor or an MP to campaign to Save our Hospital/School/Police Station, because they can't lose. If the campaign succeeds it was because of them, if it fails it was despite their valliant efforts. If elected to council, our delegate will vote, as instructed, in the interests of the workers, but we won't kid on that we will be the saviors of them. Our election promise is to fight for the common ownership of the wealth of the world so that our health needs can be met directly without commercial consideration. That is the real issue behind the repeated campaigns to "Save the Whittington", as government funds are squeezed by falling commercial profits (and thus reduced tax take) they seek to cut or commercialise the costs of health care.

Husting in Southwark

Yesterday morning the Socialist candidate ventured into Southwark to speak at a hustings meeting organised by the Southwark Pensioners Action Group at their offices in Camberwell Road. On approaching the office we could see someone handing out leaflets. We were surprised to find that it was someone from the Left List since we hadn't come across them before in the constituency. We were even more surprised on entering to see that their representative was their mayoral candidate herself, Lindsey German.

Also present were the outgoing Assembly member for Lambeth and Southwark (Val Shawcross), Southwark Councillor Caroline Pidgeon (the Liberal candidate), Southwark Councillor Kim Humphries (standing in for the Tory candidate) and Shane Collins for the Greens. Apologies were received from the animal rights candidate, the Eng-dems and the Respect George Galloway party.

The Socialist candidate, because he was sitting at one end, spoke first. Danny explained that the problems discussed at these and other elections were caused by the existing system of the private ownership of the means of production by rich people and their use to produce things for profit. There was no use tinkering about with this system as, despite the promises and pledges of the politicians, it could never work, or be made to work, in the interest of the vast majority of people, who depended on having to work for a wage or salary to live. The alternative was socialism, a system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production where things would no longer be produced for profit but directly to satisfy people's needs and where the principle "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" would apply. Danny's 2 minutes were up while he was in the middle of explaining the waste capitalism's need for a money system involved.

Assemblywoman Shawcross spoke next. She outlined what the GLA under Ken had done. She also appeared to say that CCTV cameras on buses allowed bus drivers who behaved badly to be disciplined. Maybe this was a slip of the tongue but it's the sort of thing Labour politicians say these days.

Councillor Pidgeon said that one of the advantages of extending the tram system into Southwark and across the Thames would be that there would be public toilets at the stations.

Councillor Humphries was surprisingly honest. He was against having a quota of "affordable housing" in all new housing developments as this could sabotage such schemes. In other words, would reduce the profits of the developers who would take their money and invest it somewhere else where they could make a bigger profit.

SWP Central Committee member German was pathetic. She talked just like the other three, tacitly accepting the present system and proposing minor changes to it.

Green candidate Shane Collins introduced the big picture again saying that with global warming the site of the 2012 Olympics would be flooded (not then but a decade or so later). He was not afraid to offer unpopular reforms such as a 20 mph speed limit on side roads and the legalisation of heroin. (He is a legalise cannabis campaigner and was once caught with 19 plants in his house. It turned out that Danny and him had in fact met each other a few years back at Glastonbury.)

Question time proved interesting. We noticed that Councillor Pidgeon (Liberal) and Councillor Humphries (Tory) refrained from criticising each other and in fact put on a double act when Southwark Council was criticised. This struck us as strange but then the penny dropped. As in Bill's Camden Southwark Council is run by a Liberal-Tory coalition. The shape of things to come perhaps after the next election? Though the Liberals would also be prepared to do a deal with Labour if they get a better offer. Not that it would make a difference either way.

You wouldn't know that Lindsey German is a leading theoretician of the SWP, the author of articles and pamphlets on feminism, war, etc including one entitled Why We Need a Revolutionary Party. There was nothing revolutionary about what she said. Even on reforms she came across as less radical than the Green candidate. The one thing she got really passionate about was bendy buses. They should be taken out of service and replaced by new Routemaster buses (the ones you can fall off) with a conductor; that, she said, would stop the fare-dodging that now goes on on the overcrowded bendy buses. The Tory representative immediately jumped up to say "yes, that's what Boris wants too". That about sums it up.

Actually, the clue to her behaviour is to be found in that pamphlet of hers. It's pure Leninism. The workers are so thick that they can't understand the case for socialism if put to them directly (as we do and as Danny was doing at the meeting). They are only capable of developing a trade union consciousness:

"That is why building a principled revolutionary party is important today. It is also why the Socialist Workers Party takes so much of its theory of the party from the experience of Lenin and the Bolsheviks".
"That is why all those who want fundamental change in society have to be part of a Leninist organisation".
"Socialism in the 1990s means rebuilding the real Leninist tradition".

So it's all a front. She's only pretending that reforms of capitalism are possible, offering them as bait to get workers to follow her and the rest of the vanguard in the SWP. She doesn't really believe that bendy buses should be replaced by Routemasters. That's just a ploy to get a working class following. Or is it? We got the impression that opposition to bendy buses was really what got her going. In any event, it was the only thing she spoke about with passion at the meeting.

Sorry about this digression. Back to the surprisingly honest Tory representative. He made it clear that the problem for local councillors was money. What they were doing was allocating a finite amount of money which was never enough to allow them to do what they'd like to. Danny jumped in to explain why: under capitalism the priority is profit and any money given to local councillors to spend on the public services for which they have responsibilty (most comes from the central government which also regulates how much they can raise through the rates) has to come in the end from profits. There's no way out. That's the way the system works and must work and why the politicians can never deliver on their promises. Profits must come first and always will as long as capitalism lasts.

Danny's exposition of the case for socialism brought him two direct questions from the 20 or so assembled pensioners. "Why do you want to go back to barter?" and "What about human nature?" And the basement of the Southwark Pensioners Action Group was transformed for a few minutes into Hyde Park Speakers Corner.

In closing the meeting the chairman said that he too was a socialist but felt that something could be done now. He was probably an old CPer.

We had planned to leaflet the surrounding area in Southwark after the meeting but the place was full of high-rise flats you can't get into. So we got a 35 (non bendy) bus back to Clapham. On the way who should we pass going the other way down Brixton Road but George Galloway atop his campaign bus. It was festooned with red and green balloons -- green for Islam not the environment. We couldn't hear what he was saying through his loadspeaker but it sounded like "Vote for Me".

The other end of the High Street...

This week's Private Eye (no. 1208) has an interesting peice on Ken Livingstone's associations with a different bunch of leftists - the Workers Revolutionary Party - one of the 57 flavours of Trotskyism, with a hint of added violence.

Sometimes referred to as a cult for their attempts to control members' private lives, and because of their slavish subordination to their leader Gerry Healy whom the Eye quotes Livingstone's biographer Andrew Hosken describing as: "a serial rapist and abuser of vulnerable young women, a violent drunken oaf, a celebrity-obsessed sycophant, a sectarian demagogyue, a vindictive bully, a political joke, a blatant anti-Semite...a possible accessory to torture and murder, a professional liar and a fraud as well as a stooge for sinister Middle East regimes."

If you think this is biased slandering, the prestigious Oxford Dictionary of National Biography actually gives Healy space, and says: "As the Workers' Revolutionary Party's financial position deteriorated in the early 1980s, Healy obtained funds from Libya, Iraq, the Gulf states, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, responding with political support. Opposition developed as the defeat of the 1984–5 miners' strike demoralized his organization. On 19 October 1985 Healy was expelled from the Workers' Revolutionary Party after revelations that he had sexually abused at least twenty-six women members."

Of course, to this day, Geoprge Galloway has demonstrated that money is still available from the Middle East, and Ken is capable of cosying up to despotic elements from that region to shore up his position today.

Of course, Socialists aren't interested in gossip or smearing opponents with a tarry brush and guilt by association, all that this proves is that all politicians have to swim with Sharks if they want to get ahead, and Ken has schmoozed with some particularly violent and nasty species.

Cuddly Ken is a smart player of the ruthless game of power politics, who draws support and personnel from authoritarian groups like the WRP and Socialist Action. The ultimate in entryism, and all to introduce some slightly lower bus fares. This is milk and water reformism, only without the milk.

(A prize to anyone who can guess the link between the article and its title in the comments.)

The Revolutionary Programme for Surbiton

Today's Surrey Comet has some interesting stuff on two of our opponents' parties. (Before you ask what Surrey has to do with Lambeth & Streatham don't forget which cricket club plays at the Oval.) It interviews the ten candidates standing for the Assembly in South West London constituency (comprising Kingston, Surbiton, Richmond, Twickenham, Hounslow, Brentford, Chiswick, etc).
The English Democrats candidate's programme is described as follows:
"The party wants to see an English Parliament with a Bill of Rights for citizens. He said: 'We are a non-racist English nationalist party. We feel Ken Livingstone represents minorities quite well. As soon as you mention white English, people immediately think you are racist".
We wonder why.
The SWP "Left List" candidate, Tansy Hoskins, gets this write-up:
"Ms Hoskins wants to see one price for all train fares across London paid for by taxing the air fuel of aviation companies. She said: 'If you are living in zone 6, a travel card costs £160 a month. We are campaigning for a flat rate so people who live in the outskirts of the city aren't penalised for living there compared with those who live in the centre'."
It seems she is trying to steal the programmne of the local lib-dems who have put out a leaflet with a picture of DI Paddick, Councillor Knight, their candidate, and the local Liberal MP, the three of them holding a placard saying "Re-Zone Surbiton to Zone 5".
Maybe she can persuade Tom and Barbara Good to vote for her, but she'll have to be much less radical to persuade Jerry and Margot Ledbetter to.
The SWP as a revolutionary socialist party? You must be joking.

Cheese and chalk

Following up on the mistake by the journalist on the Streatham Guardian saying we were not the same as the Socialist Party (whereas we are, of course) a look at the Militant Tendency's website (http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/ -- we forgot to register that one) is revealing. Nobody is really likely to confuse them with us. They think that nationalisation is socialism and as would-be Leninist professional revolutionaries offer themselves as a vanguard to lead various trade union and reformist campaigns. They also want to put the clock back a hundred years and start up a new trade-union based Labour Party so as to have a "mass party of the working class" for them to "enter" and bore from within again as the Militant Tendency. At the moment they are clearly feeling like parasites without a host.

On the London elections, they say that workers should vote for the SWP candidate for mayor (standing under the disguise of "Left List"), though they are not at all happy that the SWP has put up a candidate against theirs in Greenwich and Lewisham. They also say that the workers should give their second preference vote for Mayor to Livingstone while "holding their noses" (variation on "without illusions") as if Livingstone cares whether they hold their noses or not as long as they vote for him, especially as he might need all the second preference votes he can rake in.

As far as the party list vote is concerned, they give workers a free hand to choose between the Left List, George Galloway's Respect (apparently he wants to draw a second salary as a councillor as well as his one as an MP) and the "Communist" Party (wheeled out of the museum of antiquities and disguised as "Unity for Peace & Socialism", ie for the old state-capitalist USSR). Incidentally, that's a stupid policy as, if the "left of Labour" votes are dispersed among three lists, none of them may reach the threshold to get a councillor; it would make more sense to plump for the one most likely to do best (probably Galloway's list) but then we're not Leninist tacticians and don't aspire to be.

Outside Greenwich and Lewisham they say vote for "anti-cuts, anti-privatisation candidates", ie mainly their SWP rivals, we imagine.

According to the Electoral Commision's site, they are registered as "Socialist Alternative", with the following variations:

Socialist Alternative
Socialist Alternative (Ian Page Team)
Socialist Alternative (Nellist)
Socialist Alternative - Defend Our Health Service
Socialist Alternative - Save Local Health Services
Socialist Alternative - Save Our Baby Unit
Socialist Alternative - Save Our Health Service
Socialist Alternative - Save Our Schools
Socialist Alternative - Save Our Services
Socialist Alternative - Save Our Special Schools
Socialist Alternative Candidate [The]

So, they've got their slogans all prepared even before the campaigns have started! That shows they're a real party of professional . . . reformists.

Good luck, mate

Our candidate, Danny Lambert, has received the following email from the London Regional Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union. Our replies to the questions are in bold.


Dear Danny,

Your views on public services

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) is asking candidates standing in the London Assembly elections about their views on public services. PCS is the union for more than 55000 London-based civil servants and those working in non departmental public bodies,related areas and the private sector. Responses will then be distributed locally to members and posted on the PCS prior to the election on 1 May to help them make up their minds when they cast their votes.

This is a unique opportunity for you to comment on the current state of civil and public services and will give you an opportunity to get your message across to all our members in the run up to the election.

We would be delighted if you could respond on behalf of your party to the following three questions:

1. PCS is campaigning for fair pay for its members, meaning that their pay should increase in line with inflation and be negotiated nationally instead of 200 separate sets of negotiations. Do you support PCS’s campaign for fair pay for public servants?

The Socialist Party is all in favour of wage and salary workers organising to fight employers to defend and try to improve their pay and conditions. So, good luck to you. This is necessary under capitalism but it's like running up a downward moving escalator. It's never-ending. We would urge your members to look beyond this, and consider the case for a genuinely socialist society (which has never yet been tried) based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, where there'd be no employers and no working for wages but the application of the principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". As Karl Marx urged trade unionists years ago: "Instead of the conservative motto: 'A fair day's pay for a fair day's work' they ought to inscribe on their banners the revolutionary watchwords: 'Abolition of the wages system'".

2. The government has proposed to cut over 100,000 civil and public service jobs disproportionately affecting London & the South East due to the Lyons review . They claim these cuts will not impact service delivery to the public, however every day our members are seeing how less staff means a poorer service to the public. Where do you stand on cutting civil and public service jobs?

The government is doing this to save money and reduce the tax burden on businesses so these can be competitive on world markets. That's the name of the game under global capitalism and all governments are forced to play it. Obviously less staff means more work for those left and, as you put it , "poorer services to the public". But capitalism is not about providing services for people. It's about making profits. These have to come first. Any government, and not just this Labour one, has to do this. This is why we would advise you to be wary of rival politicians who promise they won't. If elected, they will. This is a trade union issue and all we can do is, once again, wish your members luck in protecting their working conditions.

3. PCS is concerned that privatisation of the civil service has continued since 1997. We believe this is costly and unnecessary and jeopardises services being delivered to the public, often the most vulnerable in society. Where do you stand on privatising public services?

It was natural that a Tory government should privatise some government departments as they've always been the party of business, and privatisation opens up another area where their business friends can make a profit. Some might be surprised that this policy should be continued by a Labour government but privatisation is another aspect of cost-cutting to save taxes on profits, the idea being, as of course you know, to do this by undermining previously-established working conditions. (And of course Labour now has its own business friends who profit from privatisation and donate money to them.) Once again, don't expect help from any politician on this. That's why our members in your union don't pay the political levy and think the PCS should not be affiliated to the Labour Party. Only sound trade union action has any chance of maintaining previous conditions whether the employer is the government or a private firm.

We request that you keep your answer to each question to less than 150 words and send us your responses by 4th April. Please send them to me at myvcgla@pcs.org.ukor send to the above address. If you have any queries regarding this request please call me on 020 7801 2764.

Government job cuts are ripping the heart out of our public services we all rely on.

PCS members are campaigning for:No compulsory redundancies
An end to privatisation without agreement
An end to unfair pay
Adequate resources and decent working conditions
No cuts to the civil service compensation scheme

I look forward to receiving your response.

Dean Rogers
Regional Secretary
PCS London & South East