Zero hours contracts - a personal view

My grandfather was gassed aged 15 or 16 in the trenches during the First World War. The lifelong ill-health that resulted made finding work hard but he never gave up trying. He'd go from his Kirkdale home to the Liverpool docks every day to try to get a single day's work. He never managed to because he refused to pay the foreman a bribe from the meagre wages that were on offer, partly on the principle that a man shouldn’t have to pay to get a day’s work, and partly because he had a family to keep. He died in his 40s during the Second World War from an illness related to his First World War injuries.

What a way to treat an old soldier who had ruined his health for his country - and what a way to treat a worker. That's the world the Tories want to take us back to with their attacks on employment rights, with "no fault dismissals"; we have them already in the form of redundancy, but they actually want a US-style "hire and fire" regime because that’s a lot cheaper. Zero hours contracts take us precisely to what my grandfather had to face in his struggle to get just a single day’s work. This is even further than Mrs Thatcher dared go.

We can't allow this.

(I first posted this on Facebook eight years ago today)

Hancock: the normalisation of hypocrisy

I was listening to the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 yesterday and, while there were callers demanding that Hancock should resign, others were saying that it is a private matter so leave him alone. They were completely missing the point. If Hancock had been having an affair with someone who had no connection whatsoever with his department, then the worst he would have done is ignore his own distancing guidelines.

But even that is not a simple matter: apart from breaking the rules he helped draw up and which he exhorted us to obey, which is hypocritical enough, last year he said he was “left speechless” after the government adviser Professor Neil Ferguson allowed his lover to visit his home, in breach of social distancing rules at the time, declaring that Ferguson consequently had no option but to resign. The fact that he thought an apology for doing the same thing would be enough to save his ministerial career compounds the hypocrisy of both him and this government with their blatant “one rule for you and none for us” attitudes. It's another Barnard Castle, and Johnson – an utter weakling with no leadership skills – was yet again letting a mate get away with actions for which ordinary people have been punished.

But it goes further than that. Ms Coladangelo was on the DHSC (Department for Health & Social Care) Board, whose job is to oversee the running of the department right to the very top. How intensely would she scrutinise his actions while she was his lover? How far has her input into the board compromised their work? How far has she influenced their deliberations because of her relationship with the boss? The other question remaining is how she, an old friend of Hancock from university, got her DHSC job in the first place? Claims that her recruitment was all above board are looking increasingly threadbare.

As a former trade unionist in the civil service, I know that if people had conducted an affair actually in the workplace, they would probably be spoken to very firmly and if they persisted, would almost certainly face disciplinary action, possibly leading to dismissal. That's not to say you couldn't have relationships with colleagues, but you had to keep your activities off the premises and in your own time – which is perfectly reasonable.

If DHSC employees had behaved in the same way as their boss, they wouldn't have got off so lightly. Yes, he has resigned as a minister, but he is still an MP on £81,932 a year, with an “all you can claim” expenses regime and a pension scheme generous beyond the wildest dreams of most of us. Despite his resignation, he won't be queueing at the Jobcentre.

I'm hoping that this resignation, which Johnson thought he had prevented by firmly announcing that the matter was closed, is the first sign that the British people are getting sick the corruption, cronyism and double standards that are the hallmarks of this thoroughly incompetent and self-serving government.

► Here is a post on the Rhymes & Routes blog which approaches the issue from another angle.

Neville Grundy
ARMS Mersey

Grenfell - a victim of official policies

We'd only previously seen sights like this in disaster movies, not in our capital city 

When I got up on 14th June 2017, I was as usual listening to Radio 4 and heard a mention of a tower block fire in West London. As ordinary fires don't usually make the national news, I thought this must of a different order; switching on the BBC TV News channel, I was shocked to see the unfolding of the Grenfell disaster which claimed the lives of 72 people who could reasonably have expected to be safe in their own homes. It's not an exaggeration to say that I spent most of that day watching the news in horror and disbelief.

In the aftermath, politicians and civic leaders said all the right things and various pledges were made by the Tory government of Theresa May. Sympathy was expressed, promises of a full investigation were made and the standard, but almost meaningless, pledge that lessons would be learnt was trotted out.

Regrettably, once the immediate shock had died down and the attention of the news media had moved onto other issues, the official response slipped into a lower gear and now, more than three and a half years later, hundreds of thousands of people are still living in unsafe homes. Patrols were introduced in buildings with unsafe cladding to give advance warning of fires breaking out, and the government asserts that this has cost leaseholders on average £137 per month, although one woman in Bromley told the BBC they'd cost her more than £300 a month - £11,700 so far over the last three years - which she can't afford to pay much longer.

Another effect on leaseholders has been that their flats have become unsellable, which is a major problem for those who want to move out - unsurprisingly, under the circumstances - and those who need to move, perhaps for employment or family reasons. This must be a major blight on their lives.

However, a vital concern is the continuing danger. The government has announced a new £30 million fund "to fund fire alarms for private and social sector buildings over 18 metres with unsafe cladding and with a Waking Watch", but what they haven't said, but which is nonetheless essential, is that this can only be a stop-gap measure prior to the total removal of all dangerous cladding.

A Labour proposal will, if passed, force the government to establish the extent of the cladding scandal and ensure that those responsible pay for rectifying it, not the leaseholders, and a number of frustrated Tories have declared that they intend to support it.

How did an advanced country with a stable, long-established system of government end up in the situation that contractors could with impunity use materials that some of them have admitted they knew were unsafe?

I blame "the bonfire of the regulations", a particularly telling phrase in this context. I can recall that Tory governments ever since the time of Thatcher were reluctant to introduce any new regulations on the grounds that they - allegedly - stifled business, initiative and innovation. There was a requirement on any minister who introduced a new regulation to find two to abolish.

I believe this created a culture of disdain for regulations in general that empowered some companies and contractors to cut costs by circumventing them. After all, if the government views them as obstacles, why should anyone else take them seriously? Consequently, lip service was paid to them and false claims were made about the safety of construction materials based on rigged tests. This much has become apparent during the course of the Grenfell enquiry.

I'd like to hope that the folly of indiscriminately scrapping regulations and rubbishing those that remain would, after such a horrendous disaster, be consigned to the past as a criminal lapse of judgement. The routine response about learning lessons is nothing less than an insult to those who died, were injured or were rendered homeless having lost all their possessions - unless it is followed by decisive action. So far, what we have seen is far too little, far too late.

If there were a scintilla of real humanity and empathy among those charged with dealing with the aftermath of this tragedy, I'd expect them to be hanging their heads in shame at the complete inadequacy to date of the official response at every level. Contrast the £30 million fund with the billions that have been squandered during the pandemic giving contracts to government cronies for work they have proved wholly incapable of carrying out and you will understand how utterly shameless and pathologically uncaring this shower that we call a government really is.

Neville Grundy
ARMS Mersey

Is it last orders for our environment?

 A personal reflection

When I was a child in the 1960s, I asked my parents what happened to the rubbish after the binmen had collected it. They explained landfill to me, so I then asked what happened when they ran out space. They told me it would never happen, but I do remember that I wasn't entirely convinced by their answer. In my teens, I became concerned about how we were using plastic, especially when I learnt how long it would take to break down. Even then I envisaged landfill sites being filled for centuries to come with a material that had perhaps been used just once.

As a student in the mid-1970s, I remember reading in a science magazine about the how the greenhouse gases we were mass-producing would, if unchecked, lead to a general warming of the atmosphere with severe consequences for all life on Earth, humans, animals and plants alike. My first awareness of the Greenhouse Effect was thus around 45 years ago.

I am not claiming any special gift of prescience. On the contrary, I am simply stating that knowledge of the situation into which we are being inexorably sucked is not new. If a child could surmise that profligate disposal of unrecyclable rubbish was not permanently sustainable, although those were not the terms I used at the time, I can see no sensible reason for the apparent ignorance or indifference of national leaders all over the world. If scientists' warnings about global warming were available to everyone nearly half a century ago, there really is no good reason why the world didn't begin to act decades before now.

I do understand that many politicians are either incapable or unwilling to take the long-term view, perhaps for electoral reasons, or because it doesn't fit in with their own agendas, which can be self-aggrandisement as with Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro or Lukashenko, or cost-cutting, even though the costs of tackling pollution and climate change become hugely more expensive the longer you leave it. Unless we get our act together, at some point the question will be whether action on climate change is unaffordable or - perhaps worse - pointless because we're too late and it has become irreversible. It's my opinion that the human race may face that dilemma within the lifetime of our current younger generations.

Another obstacle is the problem that too many people have only a basic understanding of what constitutes a fact. Early in the Trump presidency, when faced with information the administration didn't accept, a government spokesperson responded, “We have alternative facts.” This is a ridiculous statement because, logically, something is either a fact or it isn't, but it seems to me that people increasingly decide what they want to believe in and then seek out anything that seems to corroborate their chosen preconception, a mindset that has been greatly enabled by the internet. This has led to the erroneous conclusion that climate change is a matter of opinion even though the scientific conclusions are undeniable: there is always some populist chancer on the internet who will propound a wholly unsubstantiated alternative view, often plausibly presented but wholly lacking in any real evidential rigour.

Trump's approach to climate change is a dangerous example of such thinking, which is partly determined by a reluctance to commit time, energy and money to actions that would not bear fruit until long after his presidency would have ended, even if he had won a second term, and partly by the fact that he is an unintelligent, vain man who sees himself as a genius and values his own gut reactions and guesses accordingly, such as disinfectant as a treatment for COVID-19.

Anyone who is aged in their 50s upwards will have noticed the effects of global warning. To give just one example: as a child and young adult, I can remember standing by bonfires on 5th November with my front warm as toast and my back freezing. Nowadays, the month of November is never that cold and I rarely have to wrap up in the way I used to.

In the 1980s, I decided to subscribe to Greenpeace, my longest continuous subscription after my trade union and CND, but sometimes it feels no more than a gesture, probably because like a lot of people I find the challenges that we face daunting. It is dispiriting to realise that there has never been anything to stop the human race collectively taking action much sooner: the information has been out there for a long time and arguments of cost fail because they will multiply massively the longer we leave it.

To make a comparison to a house: a few tiles slipping on your roof can be fixed without too much expense, but the longer you leave it, the hole gets bigger, the damage spreads to the beams underneath and then the ceilings until finally the whole roof caves in. The Earth is way past the few tiles stage but we are not at the total collapse stage – not just yet anyway.

Neville Grundy
ARMS Mersey

Veganism

My name is Lynn and I identify myself as an activist and a vegan, who is politically aware and a strong supporter of the trade union movement. What is an activist? Well I believe an activist is someone who actively wants to stimulate a change in the world. We all know that pointing fingers and trying to change others is an endless job. We create the world we live in. If we want to change what we don’t like in the world, we must start by changing what we don’t like about ourselves. 

We are in the midst of a global crisis, most people still don’t realise this, and that we are causing the crisis. Many of us who are aware that we are causing the crisis don’t know what to do about it. I believe we have to strive to live harmoniously with the earth and, with this shift in consciousness we have the potential to save our planet.

In my childhood like so many others I lived at home with my family and ate what was put in front of me. When I became active in my first trade union branch I realised that I couldn’t strive to improve the lot of just humans because other living sentient beings were also being abused.

I loved animals and I was against animal cruelty yet on the other hand I paid to have animals mutilated, tortured and killed. I was told and thought that I needed meat for protein and cow’s milk for calcium. I had even been taken in by the marketing material that animals were treated “humanely” before they became a neatly wrapped package on the supermarket shelf. I wondered what was cruel about eating dairy or eggs.

After reading a lot about the subject and talking to other animal rights activists I went vegetarian, I was 18 and I couldn’t justify killing and eating animals for health reasons. I wondered why we allowed this to happen as a society and when I couldn’t find a better reason than taste, I knew I could never go back to contributing to such unnecessary violence against innocent beings. Then I learned that there was at least as much cruelty in dairy, eggs and other animal products. I knew being vegetarian wasn’t enough and I needed to be vegan. 

You probably think vegans are extreme. Yet when you discover, as I did, that we can be far healthier and are likely to live longer lives without eating animal products you realise it’s not the truth that we need to eat animals and animal products to survive.

Billions of animals are killed every year for human consumption after living confined in horrible conditions on farms and factory farms and enduring untold extremes of suffering. This fact alone is good reason for any compassionate person to become a vegan. Meanwhile , from the individual health perspective, a vegan diet has been proven to prevent serious illnesses. Also the terrible toll that eating meat, fish and dairy takes on our planet’s air, water, soil and whole ecosystem is another very good reason to be vegan.

I now look at an animal and see a person, a non-human person, who has their own life, desires, thoughts and feelings, just like I do. It has enriched my view of life on this world.

I also feel much healthier, and have more energy than I did before. I have perfect blood test results, and haven't even had as much as a sore throat in four years. I feel better every day knowing I am walking a far more peaceful path than the one I was on before. But I wanted to do more than just change my own life – I wanted to raise awareness of animal rights and lead others towards their own vegan journey. I have learned a lot during my vegan life, firstly that animals aren’t voiceless. They scream and cry, but most people don’t listen. We live in a world that has conditioned us to only care about a few species, while ignoring, or even worse, justifying and contributing to the suffering of others.

Animals are not ours to use for food, clothing, laboratory experimentation, entertainment, or any other exploitative purpose. Some may say a vegan diet is difficult to follow. What does difficult mean?

How difficult is it to suffer and die from heart disease caused by a diet of high unsaturated fats and cholesterol? Still, many people would choose to go through invasive bypass surgery or have a breast, colon, or rectum removed and take powerful pharmaceutical drugs for the rest of their lives rather than change their diets because they think veganism is drastic and extreme.

How difficult is it for the beings who suffer degrading confinement and cruel slaughter, dying for our dining convenience? How difficult is it for all of us to be confronted with the effects of global warming, deforestation, species extinction, water, soil, and air pollution that are a direct result of raising confined animals for food.

How difficult is it for us to endure being hurt and abused, being lied to, worrying about money and security, experiencing mental and physical illnesses and not knowing what is in store for us next?

We are disconnected from war, destruction of the environment, extinction of species, global warming, and even domestic violence. You can only abuse and exploit others if you feel disconnected from them and have no idea about the potency inherent in your own actions. If you feel connected, you know that it’s you, as well as other living things, who will suffer from the suffering you inflict.

The choices we make about what to eat are political and economic decisions that affect our mental and physical health. It is an indisputable fact that a vegan diet causes less harm to ourselves, to animals, to plants, and to the earth. To say that what you choose to eat is nobody else’s business is to belittle yourself and deny the impact that your actions have upon the lives of others.

The biggest consumer of fresh water is the meat and dairy industry. It is also responsible for most of the water pollution. The livestock industry is the single biggest contributor to global warming, as it creates far more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined. There are more cows, most hidden from our view, in the United States than there are human beings. By enslaving these animals and abusing them through lifelong torture and degradation, we deprive them of their freedom and happiness.

How can we ourselves hope to be free or happy when our own lives are rooted in depriving others of the very thing we value most in life - the freedom to pursue happiness? If you want to bring more peace and happiness into your own life, the way to do so is to stop causing violence and unhappiness in the lives of others. All life is scared, all life is connected, how we behave towards others and our environment reveals more than anything else our inner state of mind.

Would you say you harbour destructive emotions like hate, anger or the desire to do violence - no - so do you cultivate the opposite state of mind? In that case you will want to stop the abuse and as you now realise the truth and the reality of the choices you make. I hope you feel compassion and the willingness to change for all our sakes.

I end with a quote which I love:

The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. Humans have it within their means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter. Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out of conscience, thus helping to bring the collective consciousness to life.

Norman Cousins, journalist and peace activist.

Lynn Killoran
ARMS Mersey

The British Trump prepares for office

So the results are in. We've endured TV hustings for a vote in which the vast majority of us had no role to play. The contest for the Tory Party leadership has been treated like a general election, but it was no more democratic than an internal leadership battle in the old USSR.

Johnson beat Hunt by 92,153 votes to 46,656. As the total number of registered UK voters in December 2018 was 45,775,800 (source: ONS), this means Johnson will become PM with the support of 0.2% of the electorate. To put it another way, 99.8% of the electorate did not vote for him, and 99.65% had no vote at all.

The Daily Mirror has an article "37 lies, gaffes and scandals that make Boris Johnson unfit to be Prime Minister" which you can read here.

I have a comparison which will ring particular bells with former reps in the civil service.

A long time ago when I was a union rep in the DSS/DWP, I represented a member who was facing dismissal having been accused of deliberately misspending public money, a sum of around £200. I managed to save his job only at the second and final level of appeal when it was eventually accepted that it was a genuine error. The first two decision makers had rejected that argument and had recommended dismissal.

Johnson, on the other hand, misspent £53 million of public money for a bridge that was never even begun. He also misspent more than £300,000 on illegal water cannons which were eventually scrapped at a huge loss. Now he stands to be rewarded with the keys to Number 10. I cannot understand why he has not faced prosecution for massive misuse of public funds. If not prosecuted, than at least barred from holding public office.

His 'election' was little more than a coup d'état and his misspending of huge amounts of public money has been shrugged off. He has a privileged immunity that has exempted his incompetence and arrogant profligacy from any kind of scrutiny or disciplinary investigation, and has denied the people any say in who leads the country. This last point is especially galling because Johnson denounced Gordon Brown for succeeding Tony Blair as PM without immediately calling a general election.

He is our next prime minister - finger crossed, not for too long.

Neville Grundy
ARMS Mersey

MPA condemns charging over-75s for TV licence + details of demo

Attendees at the ARMS National Forum in Liverpool on 19 June protest against the
scrapping of the over-75 free TV licence. The posters read: "Don't switch us off".

The Merseyside Pensioners Association condemns the decision by the BBC to charge over 75s the TV licence fee. During the last ten years in excess of £50 billion has been transferred from the working class into the pockets of the Tories' already very rich friends. The neediest in society have suffered while the top 10% have seen their wealth grow year on year as shown by the Times Rich List. They should pay, not the pensioners.

This government has cynically turned over responsibility to the BBC for their own funding knowing that that organisation would claw back any expenditure they could, even it meant attacking the most vulnerable to satisfy their political masters. Of course, the BBC’s ‘star’ performers would still receive their mega-salaries.

The same generation that has survived the invasion of Normandy will be amongst those attacked. We will call for all pensioners to refuse to pay this further imposition and join us in a campaign similar to the great Militant-inspired campaign against the Poll Tax when 18 million refused to pay. That campaign ultimately led to the removal of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister.

We aim to seek the same fate for the present government, to be replaced by a Corbyn-led socialist government committed to ending all austerity.

Tony Mulhearn

MPA Media Officer

(letter to the Liverpool Echo)

Additional comment by Marie of the MPA:

Here are the final arrangements for our demo/protest tomorrow (Friday 21 June):

• Meet 11.00 am at the bombed out church (St Luke's) at the top of Bold Street.
• March down to Radio Merseyside in Hanover Street to assemble there at 12.00 pm.

Bring rattles, whistles anything you can make a racket with. Leaflets will be available for distribution, petitions, clipboards, pens, etc will be available. We will have placards as well and chants. We need a full turnout of members for this event so I am appealing to all MPA members to support this .

Cheers, Marie.

Time to confront the vultures

Tom Watson (left) and Alastair Campbell

As we anticipated, in the wake of the Euro disaster, the vultures are moving with renewed vigour to crush Corbyn and the socialism he espouses. Jeremy must know he will never mollify the Blairite wing nor the capitalist media. He’s got to go on the offensive. The rest of the anti-socialist brigade should join arch-Blairite Campbell. Watson, and now Campbell, are blatantly working to implement 'Operation Anaconda', their instrument designed to Crush Corbyn.

There should be no more retreats or apologies. Implement trigger ballots now to rid the movement of the fifth column, or they will destroy the Corbyn project. It's time for Jeremy to organise up and down the country to mobilise the massive support that exists for his anti-austerity alternative. Those who organise JC's activities should be bombarded with demands for a mass campaign which can change the whole landscape of British politics. Secret demos should be replaced by a confident call for JC's millions of supporters to get on the streets to demand a general election now.

Tony Mulhearn
ARMS Mersey

Equality through shared deprivation

The triple lock - deeply begrudged
by the wealthy

The Merseyside Pensioners Association has condemned the proposals of the Lords Committee on Intergenerational Fairness and Provision, a title borrowed straight form the George Orwell library of double-speak.

This body of unelected, well-heeled Lords calls for an end to the ‘triple lock’, which guarantees the state pension rises by the highest of inflation, wage growth or 2.5 per cent; an end of free television licences, and bus passes and winter fuel payments to be scrapped or scaled back; and for a national insurance surcharge.

Their Lordships justify these cuts with the phoney argument to ‘tilt the balance between the generations back towards younger groups’ because, they argue, the spending power of retired people has now overtaken many workers in their 20s and 30s, and that help should be stepped up for younger people in the jobs and housing markets.

There is no mention of the massive tax cuts for the rich, the wrecking of local council’s ability to build houses for rent, the low-wage zero hours jobs young people are faced with, and all the other inequalities in a society based on capitalism.

Far from OAPs being ‘privileged’, UK state pensions are the lowest in Western Europe, and thousands of OAPs die from hypothermia each year. We agree with John McDonnell’s description of the proposed national insurance surcharge as a ‘a tax on getting old’. This is a further cynical attempt to divide the generations while they figure out how to enrich their already fabulously rich friends and it gives further urgency to the election of a Corbyn-led government committed to the implementation of socialist policies.

Tony Mulhearn,
MPA Media Officer &
ARMS activist

TUC should speak for rank & file

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady calls for the Labour Party to look outward and deal with the Tories but she doesn’t identify the guilty party. Not a word of criticism of the Blairites who caused the divisions and chaos. She should declare that the rank and file Party members campaigning for socialist change are lions led by the Blairite donkeys of the PLP who are turning their fire on the leadership instead of organising to defeat the Tories. You can't be neutral in this situation; as the spokesperson for six million organised workers she should be demanding full support for Jeremy Corbyn whose policy is totally in accord with the TUC's policy of opposition to all austerity.

Tony Mulhearn ARMS Mersey

Zero hours contracts - a personal view

My grandfather was gassed aged 15 or 16 in the trenches during the First World War. The lifelong ill health that resulted made finding work hard but he never gave up trying. He'd go from his Kirkdale home to the Liverpool docks every day to try to get a single day's work. He never managed to because he refused to pay the foreman a bribe from the meagre wages that were on offer, partly on the principle that a man shouldn’t have to pay to get a day’s work, and partly because he had a family to keep. He died in his 40s during the Second World War from an illness related to his First World War injuries. 

What a way to treat an old soldier who had ruined his health for his country - and what a way to treat a worker. That's the world the Tories want to take us back to with their attacks on employment rights, with "no fault dismissals"; we have them already in the form of redundancy, but they actually want a US-style "hire and fire" regime because that’s a lot cheaper. Zero hours contracts take us precisely to what my grandfather had to face in his struggle to get just a single day’s work. 

This is even further than Mrs Thatcher dared go. We must not allow it.

Neville Grundy

Organiser
ARMS Mersey

John McDonnell’s plea to JC’s would be assassins

John's history underpins his loyalty to the working class and the ideas of socialism, but I was puzzled by his comments on BBC Radio's Today programme. He described the right wing MPs as nice people who should get behind Jeremy. John should know that they are behind him alright with daggers poised to plunge into his back. When asked was he in favour of re-selection he completely rejected the suggestion instead arguing that they could be persuaded to support a Corbyn-led party.

The right wing are desperate to preserve their influence, income and privileges which they see threatened by a rank and file who are supporting a radical leader and are rightly calling for control over their elected representatives, and that includes reselection. It’s called democratic accountability, a concept now described as 'bullying' by those hostile to JC.

John should be familiar with the truism: 'no ruling group has left the scene of history without a fight, and that means a fight with no holds barred.' When JC is re-elected as the leader, the truth of that axiom will be confirmed in spades.

Tony Mulhearn

ARMS  Mersey

Corbyn providing an inspiration

To paraphrase a well-known old class fighter: ‘Let the ruling class and their Labour shadows in parliament tremble at the developing movement which will recreate a new mass party of the working class. We have nothing to lose but a fossilised right wing bureaucracy which has stripped working people of political representation for the last thirty years. All forces on the left are uniting to ensure the success of Jeremy Corbyn.’

St George’s plateau the scene of magnificent demos in 1911, 1926, 1983-87, last night witnessed the re-emergence of the spirit of workers who, given leadership, displayed magnificent energy in their quest for a just socialist society and see Corbyn as the leader that can achieve that objective. The ban on CLPs meeting should be lifted and the re-selection procedures be started immediately.

Tony Mulhearn

ARMS Mersey committee

Business Writer In Aspic

Tony McDonough writes what appears to be a 1980s composite editorial straight from the pages of the Murdoch Press, the Daily Mail, the Express and the then Liverpool Echo. He asserts Eagle can take Labour back to the fabled 'middle ground'; he doesn’t mention she and her allies lost Labour the last two elections and during the Blair years attracted the lowest ever turnout in a general election and bequeathed in Iraq the most toxic legacy since Ramsey MacDonald joined the Tories in 1931.

Aping the worst features of political analysis he dismisses Corbyn as being 'grumpy' and more of a comedian than a leader.

He then regurgitates the old false calumnies that Labour in the 1980s destroyed Liverpool's economic credibility. Is he not aware that under a Liberal/Tory coalition locally and Thatcher nationally 65% of Liverpool's economy had collapsed? These were the dark days the socialist council inherited. We refused to impose further suffering on the city. We cancelled redundancies, built houses, created jobs, opened nursery classes, etc.

Tony claims he mistakenly supported the left in the 80s. Is he suggesting that we should have implemented the draconic cuts demanded by Thatcher and worsened the plight of thousands of Liverpool’s citizens.

I look forward to his reply.

Tony Mulhearn.

Call a conference now to mobilise support for Jeremy Corbyn

A media release from the Liverpool & District Socialist Party:

The Liverpool & District Socialist Party is calling on Jeremy Corbyn to call for mass conferences of his supporters in all major locations of the country, including Merseyside, involving all those who support Corbyn inside and outside the Labour Party. We also call for a national conference to co-ordinate the activities nationally.We are launching a petition to support this call now.

Tony Mulhearn for Liverpool & District Socialist Party said:

"The anti-Tory, anti-austerity movement stands aghast at the grotesque spectacle of right wing MPs who, instead of attacking a Tory government which is split from top to bottom, are turning their fire on the democratically elected Labour Party leader.

"Expressing the popular support for Jeremy Corbyn 4000 people marched through Liverpool last Saturday to defend him. We need to bring together the thousands in every city and town who support his anti-austerity message and oppose his would-be assassins in the Parliamentary Labour Party who have led Labour to its worst defeats in the post-war period. That is why we have launched a petition for an urgent conference to be convened now involving all those who support Corbyn: the trade unions, Labour Party branches and including all left and socialist organisations inside and outside the Labour Party.

"Jeremy Corbyn was elected to leadership by a popular uprising against austerity. The right wing action reveals their contempt for the will of rank and file. We support Jeremy’s firm stance in rejecting the hysterical demands of the PLP and their allies in the rabid media to quit. Now the labour movement, together with all those who are opposed to austerity, needs to mobilise to support Jeremy against the Blairite onslaught.

"We are urging all supporters of Jeremy Corbyn including the unions, Momentum and Labour party organisations to endorse this petition."

• Find the petition here.  
• Local progress with the petition will be reported on Facebook - here. 
• The Socialist Party on-line is here. 

For further information contact Hugh Caffrey 07769611320 or Tony Mulhearn on 07939098455.

Witch hunting by our 'free' press

The spectacle of a media pack in full blood-thirsty pursuit of Jeremy Corbyn has provoked the question, particularly from younger observers of the current events, why does the media behave in this crazed, irrational, fashion?

Against Corbyn are Rupert Murdoch (The Scum), Paul Dacre (Daily Mail), Daily Express, The Telegraph, The Times, The Observer, even the so-called Labour paper the Mirror, with Kevin Maguire the ‘radical’ journalist joining the chorus against JC. All of these papers, like Corbyn’s would be assassins, have belched out the lying narrative since day one of the crisis that 'austerity is necessary'. That is austerity for the poor, and increasing wealth for the financial spivs who created the crisis. ITV, Sky news and BBC’s 'Flagship' programmes like Newsnight, and their number one Torquemada Laura Kuenssberg attempt to give some 'intellectual' heft to the hysteria. The component parts of this congealed instrument of hatred far from being irrational are bent on destroying JC politically and socially because he represents a challenge to their wealth and privilege. Jeremy must trust the massive support he enjoys, make no more concessions to the closet Tories and stand firm for a socialist future.

Tony Mulhearn

ARMS Mersey 

committee member

Fight austerity, not Corbyn

Corbyn: under siege from his own side

The Blairites are enticed out of the woodwork by what they believe is the scent of Jeremy Corbyn's blood. Instead of mobilising to defeat the Tories the same old Progress members, 4.5 per centres, and closet Tories are ignoring the successes in elections under Corbyn's leadership and instead are creating a smokescreen behind which they can politically assassinate him. 

Let us welcome Benn's sacking and the resignation of the rest and develop an irresistible force in support of JC and the policies of anti-austerity and socialism. If members of the PLP have no stomach for the fight they can resign and fight an election on their right wing, pro-austerity, pro-EU programme under which ever banner they can find to back them.

Tony Mulhearn

ARMS Merseyside

Committee Member

EU vote: what next?

Merseyside ARMS committee member Tony Mulhearn proposes the Labour Movement's response to the referendum result.

The result shows a clear majority rejecting a system which has seen inequality reaching the highest levels in modern history. Endless austerity and attacks on workers' rights has been rejected. The Tories have been given their marching orders and are in complete disarray. Jeremy Corbyn and the TU leaders should demand a general election now.

Farage’s temporary triumphalism, which can only flourish in times of shortage, can be crushed by a confident Labour Movement mobilising all anti-austerity forces to finish the job off by throwing the Tories into the dustbin of history and returning a Corbyn-led Labour government committed to rolling back the cuts and bringing our utilities and the NHS back into public ownership. We can reach out to the European Labour and anti-austerity movement to join us in this objective.

EU Ballot - D-Day Minus One

By Tony Mulhearn, ARMS Merseyside committee member.

When you cast your vote remember this:

1. The institutions of the EU are controlled by unelected people with extremely dodgy political connections. EU President Junker, for instance, presided over Luxembourg which was a haven for every tax-dodging fat cat on the planet.
2. He was the bloke who patted Tsipras and Varoufakis on the head, ignored their pleas for a more caring capitalism, and chased them back to Greece to inflict the most appalling cuts in working class living standards in Greece’s history while that country’s fat cats who caused the crisis continue to live in opulent splendour and plunder state-owned institutions.
3. The EU blocked Portugal from implementing a no-cuts budget
4. It was the EU that ordered an increase in women’s retirement age from 60 to 65.
5. EU treaties protect freedoms for Business to move labour from member state to another and to ensure there is ‘no distortion of competition’. That means freedom for unscrupulous employers to pay the lowest rate of any EU country.
6. A condition of receiving EU ‘bale-outs’ is also that the recipient countries degrade the ability of trade unions to defend their members. National wage bargaining in Greece has all but disappeared.
7. Remaining will ensure that a more confident EU will act as an obstacle to a future Labour government from bringing back into public ownership the NHS, Rail, and the other public utilities that have been flogged off with the poisoned brew of TTIP as an additional weapon in their hands.
8. Unity of the international working class will not be achieved via this reactionary institution but via the struggle against austerity organised on a European basis. 

90th Anniversary of the General Strike

Ninety years ago today, millions of workers were taking part in the General Strike to defend the miners from a brutal Tory government. PCS National Vice-President John McInally celebrates the 1926 General Strike and declares that leadership now as then is critical. In 1926, the Daily Mail accurately described the general strike as a "revolutionary move" but with the purpose of frightening the Labour Party and union leaders, which it did.

Jeremy Hunt’s imposition of unacceptable contracts on junior doctors is a key stage in privatising our National Health Service. The PCS along with the Fire Brigades Union called on the TUC general council to call a day of action in support of the junior doctors. The TUC must, as a matter of priority, reconsider their decision not to support this call.

"The real lesson of the general strike," John concluded, "is not that we can’t win but with determined leadership, workers can secure priceless victories."

Tony Mulhearn