Once, it was coal, steel and rail. Now, this is the front page story in today's Morning Star:
Prison Officers Association general secretary Brian Caton lent his support to the Police Federation, saying: “We’ve never altered our view that the actions of the government in 1918 were wrong,” in reference to the run-up to the 1919 strike ban.
“We support the right of the police to withdraw their labour, as those in Europe have, but there should never be the need for them to do so,” Mr Caton pointed out. “The Police Federation is absolutely fed up with this government.”
Mr Caton revealed that the POA, Police Federation and Fire Brigades Union would hold tripartite talks in early January to decide a unified response to government attacks on their members’ rights and jobs.
“The government’s so-called modernisation programme is of common interest to the Police Federation, POA and FBU,” he said.
“It is deskilling and cheapening the high standards of public service in this country.
“It says a lot about the new Labour experiment. From the top to the bottom of the Cabinet, they have forgotten the Labour principles of public services.
“If a triple alliance is what is needed, that is what we’ll have.”
And this is the editorial inside:
Trade unionists who have been at the receiving end of police violence on their picket lines may be indifferent or even hostile to Police Federation complaints of poor treatment by the government.
For those such as printworkers or miners who suffered particularly at the hands, horses and clubs of what were dubbed “Thatcher’s bootboys,” such hostility is understandable, but it is still wrong.
Anything that brings the experience of police officers closer to that of the organised labour movement is likely to lead to a mirroring of attitudes also.
And, as has been shown in the letters column of this paper, with contributions from a small number of former police officers, it is wrong to tar all coppers with a right-wing brush.
As with the army, many working-class youngsters sign up to the police for a variety of reasons, including relatively good starting pay, housing assistance and - don’t discount it - the belief that they are contributing to the safety and well-being of society.
Rank-and-file police officers are realising that, as far as Gordon “Labour means business” Brown is concerned, police, prison officers and firefighters are on a par with civil servants, teachers and nurses.
In other words, their salaries come out of the public purse and, therefore, they are prime targets for pay cuts and diminished living standards.
When Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher was leading the neoliberal charge against the public sector and trade unionism, politicising the police force and using it to literally beat down all opposition to her policies, she saw the sense of keeping the police onside by safeguarding pay and conditions.
Mr Brown has no problem with handing over upwards of £25 billion of public money to bale out a bank that’s been brought to its knees by an avaricious and feckless management.
But, when it comes to working people’s pay and pensions - to say nothing of defence of Britain’s manufacturing capacity - his hands are clenched tight.
To condemn essential workers to what is effectively a 1.9 per cent rise - in reality, a pay cut - is either stupid or provocative.
Mr Brown clearly hopes that this government’s denial of effective trade union rights to its own employees is sufficient to win the day.
But police and prison officers can see that, elsewhere in the world, full trade union rights for the forces of law and order is not regarded as something out of the ordinary.
In South Africa, police and prison officers are organised in the same union POPCRU, just as they used to be in this country until 1919 when the government banned trade unionism and militarised the police.
And in France too, all the trade union federations, from the most class-confrontational to most collaborationist, have a police section.
Any development of police trade unionism is a positive return to civilian status and a rejection of militarisation.
The Fire Brigades Union and Prison Officers Association have extended the hand of friendship to the Police Federation.
The rest of the labour movement should do likewise.
The only way to defeat new Labour’s big business agenda is by mobilising all those who suffer under it to unite in support of peace and social justice.
Those who oppose New Labour's big business agenda equally and indivisibly out of moral and social conservatism, out of patriotism, and out of support for peace and for social justice, you know what you have to do.
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
Mind Your Language
Most of Government's latest offering on childhood is too risible for words, and the most notable thing about the whole enterprise is the Political Class's determination to meddle in matters that do not concern it, as such, while insisting that it is no business of the State to run, say, schools, or hospitals, or railways.
But the proposal on the teaching of foreign languages in primary schools stands out. Which languages are they to be? The non-European ones being suggested would constitute a wholesale surrender to permanent economic, and rapidly also cultural, domination by the countries where they are spoken.
Whereas traditional European languages would be an important means of resistance to that domination on the part of the Biblical-Classical synthesis that is Western civilisation, while leaving open the option of later study of other civilisations by those who had already come to understand their own.
So, which is it to be?
But the proposal on the teaching of foreign languages in primary schools stands out. Which languages are they to be? The non-European ones being suggested would constitute a wholesale surrender to permanent economic, and rapidly also cultural, domination by the countries where they are spoken.
Whereas traditional European languages would be an important means of resistance to that domination on the part of the Biblical-Classical synthesis that is Western civilisation, while leaving open the option of later study of other civilisations by those who had already come to understand their own.
So, which is it to be?
EU Split Over Kosovo
With Spain understandably leading the opposition to recognition.
The neocons have done the most to dismember Yugoslavia, and they are still at it. But they have also moved on to Belgium. They have their eye on Russia. They are sowing discontent in Anglophone Canada. And they will turn their attention to Spain, and to the United Kingdom, soon enough.
With regard to Kosovo, all the coverage of potential precedents has referred to places like Scotland and Catalonia. But Kosovo is not in anything like that league. If Kosovo becomes independent, then there will be no reason why any arbitrary administrative unit at all might not declare itself such as soon as it has a Muslim majority.
How about the former Metropolitan County of West Yorkshire, which still exists for ceremonial purposes? And why only a Muslim majority? Why not the southern-most counties of the United States once they have Hispanic majorities, if they don't already have them?
Both a Muslim majority in West Yorkshire and Hispanic majority in, say, Southern California or Southern Florida will be, and might already be, a direct product of the "free" market. So, is anyone still saying that that market is conservative? No, it is not.
The neocons have done the most to dismember Yugoslavia, and they are still at it. But they have also moved on to Belgium. They have their eye on Russia. They are sowing discontent in Anglophone Canada. And they will turn their attention to Spain, and to the United Kingdom, soon enough.
With regard to Kosovo, all the coverage of potential precedents has referred to places like Scotland and Catalonia. But Kosovo is not in anything like that league. If Kosovo becomes independent, then there will be no reason why any arbitrary administrative unit at all might not declare itself such as soon as it has a Muslim majority.
How about the former Metropolitan County of West Yorkshire, which still exists for ceremonial purposes? And why only a Muslim majority? Why not the southern-most counties of the United States once they have Hispanic majorities, if they don't already have them?
Both a Muslim majority in West Yorkshire and Hispanic majority in, say, Southern California or Southern Florida will be, and might already be, a direct product of the "free" market. So, is anyone still saying that that market is conservative? No, it is not.
Monday, 10 December 2007
Baroness Blair
Apparently, to stop her from dishing too much dirt in her forthcoming book, and as part of Brown's attempts at reconciliation with the Blairites.
But who's going to buy this book, anyway? Only academic libraries are even going to buy her husband's. And reconciliation with the Blairites, indeed! Brown might as well try and reconcile with the Jacobites or the Anti-Corn Law League. Why bother? How many of them are even going to contest the next Election?
But who's going to buy this book, anyway? Only academic libraries are even going to buy her husband's. And reconciliation with the Blairites, indeed! Brown might as well try and reconcile with the Jacobites or the Anti-Corn Law League. Why bother? How many of them are even going to contest the next Election?
Chris Patten Is Half Right
Here.
We will not be a sovereign state again at least until we restore the supremacy of British over EU law and require the latter to pass through both Houses of Parliament exactly as if it had originated in one or other of them.
But nor will we be while there are foreign forces on our soil, while we have one-sided extradition arrangements, while that power's legislation is applied here extra-territorially, while our foreign policy is conducted as part of the interagency process in Washington, while it is actually impossible for us to fight a war other than under overall American command, or while we have no independent intelligence capability.
Britain's incorporation into a unified Europe under overall American hegemony makes perfect, horrific sense, and is the stated aim of the neoconservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. It must be resisted without mercy, on both fronts.
We will not be a sovereign state again at least until we restore the supremacy of British over EU law and require the latter to pass through both Houses of Parliament exactly as if it had originated in one or other of them.
But nor will we be while there are foreign forces on our soil, while we have one-sided extradition arrangements, while that power's legislation is applied here extra-territorially, while our foreign policy is conducted as part of the interagency process in Washington, while it is actually impossible for us to fight a war other than under overall American command, or while we have no independent intelligence capability.
Britain's incorporation into a unified Europe under overall American hegemony makes perfect, horrific sense, and is the stated aim of the neoconservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. It must be resisted without mercy, on both fronts.
A Different World
A fortnight on from confessing on television, and have they been charged? Well, then, they are not going to be.
It’s a different world, isn’t it?
It’s a different world, isn’t it?
Problem Solved
David William Donald Cameron, of the Isle of Jura, denounces “narrow English nationalism”, as well he might. But what is he going to do about it? No further legislation is necessary. Instead, the Parliament of the United Kingdom should simply avail itself of its right to legislate in any policy area for any part of the United Kingdom, with that legislation prevailing over any enactment of any devolved body. That is what the devolution legislation says, and anyone who objects to it ought therefore to have opposed devolution. I bet they didn’t.
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