Socialist Campaign to Stop the Tories and Fascists
SCSTF | 17.02.2010 19:53 | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements
In the absence of a strong socialist challenge in the general election, the Socialist Campaign to Stop the Tories and Fascists attempts to link a Labour vote to a fight for working-class policies against the Labour leaders.
Sign this statement! 
stopthetoriesandfascists@gmail.com
***
The choice of government at the general election will be between Labour and the Tories. The current signs point to a Tory victory.
These are Tories who, in the midst of the worst crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, have promised cuts matching or outstripping the Thatcher cuts of the 1980s. Who already say they will slash public-sector pensions. Who, to push through these cuts, will have to try to break the public sector unions. Tories on whom the liveliest external pressure is, at present, from the fast-growing further right, like UKIP and the BNP.
Cameron presents himself as the new model Tory. It is a scandal that the Labour leaders can allow him to present himself as a champion of the Health Service. In fact he is as determined a class warrior as any previous Tory leader, including Thatcher.
There are now, for the first time in many years, real policy differences between Labour and the Tories. Activists who know their history will not dismiss them with a shrug and a claim that things can’t get worse.
Though the trade unions’ role in Labour Party affairs has weakened, because of the passivity of the union leaders, who keep an iron bureaucratic grip on trade union affairs, the union-Labour link — with a couple of exceptions — has survived the 12 years of New Labour government. The trade union movement will, with varying degrees of reservation and sometimes with gritted teeth, finance and back the Labour Party in the election.
But the New Labour leaders are demoralised and discredited. They won’t and can’t fight the Tories adequately. They can’t combat the widespread inclination to shrug in resignation. And just being anti-Tory is not enough — not least because if Gordon Brown’s Labour does after all win the election, then it too will make cuts. Not least because the BNP will continue to grow unless socialist answers to the capitalist crisis and social decay on which it feeds become visible.
There is mass working-class disillusionment with New Labour — rightly so, on its record of slavishly serving the rich and stifling Labour Party life. But the disillusionment has come with a right-wing and anti-political drift.
The unions have begun in a very small way to reassert themselves in Labour politics. Now we need a “Socialist Campaign to Stop the Tories and Fascists” which will organise rank-and-file trade union activists and organisations to link a Labour vote with a positive campaign for working-class demands.
There is no chance of the outside-Labour left having a sizeable and concentrated presence in the general election, even on the scale of the Socialist Alliance in 2001. To create better choices, we need a campaign across the country to provide a working-class voice within the Labour vote at the general election. That is the best way to start organising for a labour movement fightback against a coming Tory government — or against the cuts and privatisations of another Labour government.
Shaken by the crisis, which has shown that modern society can live not by the market alone but only by social regulation, the Brown government has introduced “socialism”… for the bankers. A £1100 billion handout of guarantees, credit, and cash, tempered only by token taxes on wealth.
We commit ourselves to link a Labour vote with a fight for a workers’ government, a government based on a renewed and reorganised labour movement that serves the working class as the Tories — and then Blair and Brown — have served the bosses and the rich.
• For working-class representation in politics. New Labour has seriously disenfranchised the working class, blocking the political channels which might have enabled working-class organisations to enforce policies.
• Reconstruct and fight for Labour Party democracy and the trade-union voice in the Labour Party.
• For a special effort to elect those left Labour candidates who have represented a working-class opposition voice against New Labour.
• Support for workers and working-class communities fighting back. Struggles like Visteon, Vestas and Tower Hamlets College show that strikes, occupations and mass action are the way to win.
We will fight for:
• Decent jobs for all. Create a million green jobs and slash emissions through a democratically-controlled programme of converting energy industries, transport, and housing. Cut work hours with no loss of pay. Tax the rich and business to expand public services.
• Open the bosses’ books; nationalise companies which axe jobs, under workers’ control.
• Sack the bank bosses — for a single, publicly-owned, democratically-controlled banking, pensions, and mortgage service.
• A crash programme of council house building and repairs.
• Scrap the Tory anti-union laws. For legal rights to organise, to strike, to take solidarity action, and to picket. Full equal rights for part-time, temporary and agency workers.
• Stop and reverse cuts and privatisations. Restore the NHS. Nationalise the drug industry. No to Academies, a good local secular comprehensive school for every child. Free education from nursery to university. Living student grants.
• Attack inequality. No to wage cuts, for wages that rise at least in line with inflation. A minimum wage of two-thirds median male earnings without exceptions. Shift the tax burden from workers to the rich and business, abolish tax for the least well off. Benefits should be enough to live on and rise in line with earnings or prices, whichever is higher. Oppose New Labour’s attacks on the unemployed, disabled and long-term sick.
• For the right to retire at maximum 60 on a decent pension; level up private sector schemes. Restore the link between state pensions and earnings immediately.
• Women’s rights: extend social provision instead of making cuts which put social burdens back on “caring” women. Trade union and political action for equal pay. Defend and extend abortion rights and provisions. For abortion on demand.
• Fight homophobia and transphobia. For 100% legal equality for LGBT people.
• Against fascism, racism and communalism. Unite workers – black and white; Muslim, Christian, all religions and none; migrant and British-born; “legal” and “illegal” – to fight for jobs, housing and services for all. Fight for asylum and immigration rights – no one is illegal!
• On the evidence, sending troops to Afghanistan does more harm than good; they should be withdrawn. Cut arms spending; scrap the Trident replacement.
• Unite with workers across Europe; fight to level up wages, conditions, services and rights, including: nursery provision, pensions, rights to consultation over job cuts and relocations.
• Put MPs on a worker’s wage, with properly-vetted expenses.
We pledge ourselves to fight for these policies, and to revive and rebuild the labour movement at every level. Keep out the Tories! Vote Labour and prepare to fight Brown and the New Labour neo-Thatcherites whose rule has brought working-class politics to its lowest point in many decades!
For a Workers’ Government!
Initial signatories — all in a personal capacity
Susan Press, Labour Representation Committee Vice-Chair and Hebden Bridge town councillor
Maria Exall, CWU National Executive
Pete Keenlyside, CWU Postal Executive
Ken Howard, Bow (E3) CWU postal branch Assistant Organiser
Pat Murphy, NUT National Executive Committee member for West Yorkshire
Liam Conway, Notts NUT Joint Secretary
Ruah Carlyle, NUT school rep, east London
Pat Markey, Northampton Teachers’ Association Secretary
Tom Unterrainer, Nottingham City NUT Vice-President
David Williams, former deputy leader of Birmingham City Council, Solihull Unison Assistant Treasurer and workplace rep
Dan Nichols, LFEPA Unison Labour Link Officer
Jean Lane, Tower Hamlets Local Government Unison Secretary
Mike Fenwick, Airedale Health Unison
Ed Whitby, Newcastle City Unison stop steward
Kate Ahrens, Leicestershire Health Unison steward
Ruth Cashman and Dan Jeffery, Lambeth Unison Joint Assistant Secretaries
Anna Longman, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Unison member, Feminist Fightback activist
Camila Bassi, Sheffield Hallam University UCU Chair
Tony Byrne, RMT East Midlands Region Political Officer
Becky Crocker, RMT London Transport Region Young Members’ Officer
Susan Carlyle, former Labour councillor in Tower Hamlets
Dave Kirk, RWE Npower Unite rep
Elaine Jones, Wirral TUC Vice-President, Unite 6/522 branch activist
Jim Denham, Unite 5/445 Assistant Secretary
Maggie Bremner, Unite North Newbury branch Secretary
Karen Johnson, Communities and Local Government/Department for Transport PCS
Ed McWilliams
Paul Coles, London Borough of Barnet Mill Hill Depot GMB Convenor
Alan Fraser, Southern Region GMB Regional Education Officer
Ed Maltby, National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts co-convenor
Tali Janner-Klausner, London School Students’ Union
Daniel Randall, NUS Trustee Board
Chris Marks, Hull University Union Vice-President (Education)
Alice Marshall, Hull University Union Vice-President (Welfare)
Charlotte Binstead, Sidney Sussex College JCR/SU President
Vicki Morris, Barnet TUC publicity officer, NUJ London freelance member
Adele Winston, BECTU member
To add your or your organisation’s name email stopthetoriesandfascists@gmail.com
If you have suggestions, comments or disagreements, please get in touch!
stopthetoriesandfascists@gmail.com ***
The choice of government at the general election will be between Labour and the Tories. The current signs point to a Tory victory.
These are Tories who, in the midst of the worst crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, have promised cuts matching or outstripping the Thatcher cuts of the 1980s. Who already say they will slash public-sector pensions. Who, to push through these cuts, will have to try to break the public sector unions. Tories on whom the liveliest external pressure is, at present, from the fast-growing further right, like UKIP and the BNP.
Cameron presents himself as the new model Tory. It is a scandal that the Labour leaders can allow him to present himself as a champion of the Health Service. In fact he is as determined a class warrior as any previous Tory leader, including Thatcher.
There are now, for the first time in many years, real policy differences between Labour and the Tories. Activists who know their history will not dismiss them with a shrug and a claim that things can’t get worse.
Though the trade unions’ role in Labour Party affairs has weakened, because of the passivity of the union leaders, who keep an iron bureaucratic grip on trade union affairs, the union-Labour link — with a couple of exceptions — has survived the 12 years of New Labour government. The trade union movement will, with varying degrees of reservation and sometimes with gritted teeth, finance and back the Labour Party in the election.
But the New Labour leaders are demoralised and discredited. They won’t and can’t fight the Tories adequately. They can’t combat the widespread inclination to shrug in resignation. And just being anti-Tory is not enough — not least because if Gordon Brown’s Labour does after all win the election, then it too will make cuts. Not least because the BNP will continue to grow unless socialist answers to the capitalist crisis and social decay on which it feeds become visible.
There is mass working-class disillusionment with New Labour — rightly so, on its record of slavishly serving the rich and stifling Labour Party life. But the disillusionment has come with a right-wing and anti-political drift.
The unions have begun in a very small way to reassert themselves in Labour politics. Now we need a “Socialist Campaign to Stop the Tories and Fascists” which will organise rank-and-file trade union activists and organisations to link a Labour vote with a positive campaign for working-class demands.
There is no chance of the outside-Labour left having a sizeable and concentrated presence in the general election, even on the scale of the Socialist Alliance in 2001. To create better choices, we need a campaign across the country to provide a working-class voice within the Labour vote at the general election. That is the best way to start organising for a labour movement fightback against a coming Tory government — or against the cuts and privatisations of another Labour government.
Shaken by the crisis, which has shown that modern society can live not by the market alone but only by social regulation, the Brown government has introduced “socialism”… for the bankers. A £1100 billion handout of guarantees, credit, and cash, tempered only by token taxes on wealth.
We commit ourselves to link a Labour vote with a fight for a workers’ government, a government based on a renewed and reorganised labour movement that serves the working class as the Tories — and then Blair and Brown — have served the bosses and the rich.
• For working-class representation in politics. New Labour has seriously disenfranchised the working class, blocking the political channels which might have enabled working-class organisations to enforce policies.
• Reconstruct and fight for Labour Party democracy and the trade-union voice in the Labour Party.
• For a special effort to elect those left Labour candidates who have represented a working-class opposition voice against New Labour.
• Support for workers and working-class communities fighting back. Struggles like Visteon, Vestas and Tower Hamlets College show that strikes, occupations and mass action are the way to win.
We will fight for:
• Decent jobs for all. Create a million green jobs and slash emissions through a democratically-controlled programme of converting energy industries, transport, and housing. Cut work hours with no loss of pay. Tax the rich and business to expand public services.
• Open the bosses’ books; nationalise companies which axe jobs, under workers’ control.
• Sack the bank bosses — for a single, publicly-owned, democratically-controlled banking, pensions, and mortgage service.
• A crash programme of council house building and repairs.
• Scrap the Tory anti-union laws. For legal rights to organise, to strike, to take solidarity action, and to picket. Full equal rights for part-time, temporary and agency workers.
• Stop and reverse cuts and privatisations. Restore the NHS. Nationalise the drug industry. No to Academies, a good local secular comprehensive school for every child. Free education from nursery to university. Living student grants.
• Attack inequality. No to wage cuts, for wages that rise at least in line with inflation. A minimum wage of two-thirds median male earnings without exceptions. Shift the tax burden from workers to the rich and business, abolish tax for the least well off. Benefits should be enough to live on and rise in line with earnings or prices, whichever is higher. Oppose New Labour’s attacks on the unemployed, disabled and long-term sick.
• For the right to retire at maximum 60 on a decent pension; level up private sector schemes. Restore the link between state pensions and earnings immediately.
• Women’s rights: extend social provision instead of making cuts which put social burdens back on “caring” women. Trade union and political action for equal pay. Defend and extend abortion rights and provisions. For abortion on demand.
• Fight homophobia and transphobia. For 100% legal equality for LGBT people.
• Against fascism, racism and communalism. Unite workers – black and white; Muslim, Christian, all religions and none; migrant and British-born; “legal” and “illegal” – to fight for jobs, housing and services for all. Fight for asylum and immigration rights – no one is illegal!
• On the evidence, sending troops to Afghanistan does more harm than good; they should be withdrawn. Cut arms spending; scrap the Trident replacement.
• Unite with workers across Europe; fight to level up wages, conditions, services and rights, including: nursery provision, pensions, rights to consultation over job cuts and relocations.
• Put MPs on a worker’s wage, with properly-vetted expenses.
We pledge ourselves to fight for these policies, and to revive and rebuild the labour movement at every level. Keep out the Tories! Vote Labour and prepare to fight Brown and the New Labour neo-Thatcherites whose rule has brought working-class politics to its lowest point in many decades!
For a Workers’ Government!
Initial signatories — all in a personal capacity
Susan Press, Labour Representation Committee Vice-Chair and Hebden Bridge town councillor
Maria Exall, CWU National Executive
Pete Keenlyside, CWU Postal Executive
Ken Howard, Bow (E3) CWU postal branch Assistant Organiser
Pat Murphy, NUT National Executive Committee member for West Yorkshire
Liam Conway, Notts NUT Joint Secretary
Ruah Carlyle, NUT school rep, east London
Pat Markey, Northampton Teachers’ Association Secretary
Tom Unterrainer, Nottingham City NUT Vice-President
David Williams, former deputy leader of Birmingham City Council, Solihull Unison Assistant Treasurer and workplace rep
Dan Nichols, LFEPA Unison Labour Link Officer
Jean Lane, Tower Hamlets Local Government Unison Secretary
Mike Fenwick, Airedale Health Unison
Ed Whitby, Newcastle City Unison stop steward
Kate Ahrens, Leicestershire Health Unison steward
Ruth Cashman and Dan Jeffery, Lambeth Unison Joint Assistant Secretaries
Anna Longman, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Unison member, Feminist Fightback activist
Camila Bassi, Sheffield Hallam University UCU Chair
Tony Byrne, RMT East Midlands Region Political Officer
Becky Crocker, RMT London Transport Region Young Members’ Officer
Susan Carlyle, former Labour councillor in Tower Hamlets
Dave Kirk, RWE Npower Unite rep
Elaine Jones, Wirral TUC Vice-President, Unite 6/522 branch activist
Jim Denham, Unite 5/445 Assistant Secretary
Maggie Bremner, Unite North Newbury branch Secretary
Karen Johnson, Communities and Local Government/Department for Transport PCS
Ed McWilliams
Paul Coles, London Borough of Barnet Mill Hill Depot GMB Convenor
Alan Fraser, Southern Region GMB Regional Education Officer
Ed Maltby, National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts co-convenor
Tali Janner-Klausner, London School Students’ Union
Daniel Randall, NUS Trustee Board
Chris Marks, Hull University Union Vice-President (Education)
Alice Marshall, Hull University Union Vice-President (Welfare)
Charlotte Binstead, Sidney Sussex College JCR/SU President
Vicki Morris, Barnet TUC publicity officer, NUJ London freelance member
Adele Winston, BECTU member
To add your or your organisation’s name email
stopthetoriesandfascists@gmail.com If you have suggestions, comments or disagreements, please get in touch!
SCSTF
e-mail:
stopthetoriesandfascists@gmail.com
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