Two further strike days planned by NUJ members at the BBC (15th and 16th November) in defence of their pensions have been suspended, as a result of major breakthroughs in their ongoing battle.

The dispute is far from over, but the impact of united action has put BBC bosses on the back foot.

BBC Director Mark Thompson infamously emailed staff prior to the initial 48-hour strike pompously declaring “there will be no further talks, no further offers”. On the contrary, the impact of the strike action led to Thompson and other BBC bosses offering new talks.

After the first strikes, they had victimised three NUJ members based with BBC World Service – giving two of them final warnings, a third being effectively sacked – for taking part in the strike overseas! The NUJ held a UK-wide meeting of Mothers/Fathers of Chapels (shop stewards) which agreed to suspend the strikes on 15/16th, in favour of negotiations, provided the victimisations were withdrawn – which they subsequently have been.

A couple of real life examples illustrate what has fuelled the burning sense of injustice which has driven BBC workers into strikes and a work-to-rule. Andy, a senior broadcast journalist, stood to get a pension of £14,900 at 60 under the existing scheme; under the BBC bosses’ new proposals he would lose £3,900 a year, a 26% cut. Even if Andy worked on ‘til 65, paying in thousands extra in contributions, he would still have his pension slashed by 13%.

Joe, a TV centre worker, stands to lose £5,000 a year – a 30% reduction. And south west of England broadcast journalist Laura would have her pension slashed from £15,500 to £13,200 a year.

Meantime, in the same BBBC but on a different planet, BBC boss Mark Byford is to get a golden handshake of £1million plus an annual pension of £400,000!

Dave Eyre, NUJ Father of the Chapel at the BBC in Glasgow and Edinburgh told me about the issues behind this trade union struggle, and the impact of workers’ initial action.

The existing BBC pension schemes are a mixture of Final Salary and Career Average. These are to be closed off to new members and the amount of any salary increases that folk who remain in the current schemes are allowed to put towards their pension will be pegged at 1 per cent. So for instance if we got a 3per cent pay rise, only 1 per cent of that would contribute to our pension.

The new offer from the BBC – called CAB 2011 – is a career average scheme that is much worse. Folk will have to pay a lot more to get back much less, losing 20% and more in the value of their pension.

The BBC suddenly seems very concerned about the deficit in the Pension Scheme. They weren’t so concerned when a surplus in the scheme in the 1990s allowed them to take a payment holiday.

There is no doubt there is a deficit. But when the BBC first came forward with their proposed cuts to our pensions they claimed the deficit is about £2bn. Since then they backtracked to claims of £1.5bn – and in figures produced for the BBC which have leaked to the NUJ, the estimates are lower still – possibly down to £1bn.
The NUJ and other BBC unions are not trying to ignore the existence of a deficit in the scheme, and we recognise it may mean people having to pay more in contributions to defend their pension levels. We are prepared to talk and negotiate on this. But we first need to know what the actual figures are. By next April the BBC Trustees will carry out their legally required formal assessment of the figures. We say wait ‘til we get the figures then. And we say the BBC must talk to the unions and the Trustees, who have been totally ignored by BBC senior managers so far. Right now we are being asked to buy a pig in a poke – and we’re not buying!

We have serious questions to put to the BBC. Why act now? Why have they decided to cut pensions in the midst of the wider financial crisis – when reports just out this week suggest Final Salary Pension Schemes are bouncing back, recovering from the earlier levels of deficit alongside the mild economic recovery – challenging the argument that the economic downturn means the death of FSPS?

If the BBC’s only concern is to address the deficit in our pension scheme, why not wait until they find out what it is!? Some NUJ members – and I am one of them – are asking if this is being done for other reasons. Are we being used as the thin end of a wedge to implement widespread pension ‘reform’ across the entire public sector, to the detriment of all who work in the public sector?

Many people look at the salary levels of Jonathan Ross and imagine BBC staff are all multi-millionaires, with gold-plated pensions. Well, we’re not! The average BBC pension is about £12,000. That’s not a poverty pension, but it’s also not a millionaire’s pension. However, that average includes massive pensions of £hundreds of thousands that a select group of senior managers do receive and will receive. A big chunk of people get much less than £12,000.
So we’re not fighting for gold-plated pensions, but for fairness in pensions.

The initial strikes had a huge impact, as anyone who regularly watches the news will have noticed. Flagship programmes like Good Morning Scotland, Newsdrive and major Gaelic service programmes were all off the air – as were Today and Newsnight UK-wide. We had an evening bulletin read by someone who normally does a jazz programme, and radio bulletins read by the Head of News.

In the aftermath of the strike, senior managers met with Mark Thompson, where they told him they got programmes out by the skin of their teeth, and they urged him to sit down and talk with the NUJ.
Today (Thurs 11th), after three previous ‘final’ offers, it now appears Mark Thompson is offering further talks if we postpone the industrial action planned for Mon 15th/Tues 16th November.

We really welcomed the support we got last week from the trade union movement and across the political spectrum. We especially welcomed support from members of other BBC unions who took the decision as a matter of conscience not to cross our pickets.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

SSP Campsie Radio are proud to host Richie Venton who recalls the titanic struggles that took part in the city of Liverpool against the Thatcher Government in the eighties. Richie was part of the Militant Tendency in the Labour Party.

This is a valuable first-hand account of a struggle that can inform today’s battle against an uncaring Tory/ Liberal Democrat coalition.

The election of the Tories – the Twin Tories, with the treacherous Lib Dems joining forces with the Tory Butchers – marks a new threat to education workers, education services and communities. We all face a level of carnage to jobs, conditions and services not experienced since Thatcher at her most rampant.

Cameron and Clegg have lost no time in pronouncing their top priority is to cut public spending.

These upper class butchers want to wield the axe to jobs, pay, pensions, benefits, public services – to enrich their own class even further.

Cameron’s claims that we all face pain for years to come is false to the core.

The bankers who enjoyed a bountiful handout from public funds don’t face ‘pain’ – for instance, 100 of them at the RBS recently awarded themselves a £1m bonus each!

The richest 1,000 fat-cats whose incomes rocketed by 30% last year, to £353billion! – do not face ‘hard choices’ or ‘painful decisions’.

It’s Scotland’s 630,000 public sector workers, alongside workers in the private sector, our families, our communities, who face a massacre – unless a united, determined, militant campaign of resistance is built, starting now!

In resisting the cuts, EIS and other unions need two central guiding principles: unity in action is our best defence – and a convincing set of policies to explode the myth that cuts are unavoidable.

Teachers, civil servants, council and NHS workers have marched and taken strike action against cuts.

It would be fatal if these fights were kept separate and apart, or if any union adopted the notion that cuts are inevitable – but ‘not in our service’. That would weaken the resistance and guarantee cuts to all services.

So SSP members in the EIS (and in all other unions) strongly advocate united action – across all public sector unions and alongside community groups, anti-cuts campaigns, Save Our Schools campaigns…

EIS and other unions should build a united public rally on Saturday 26th June, after new levels of carnage are announced in the 22nd June Butchers’ Budget – as a springboard for building a mass march in the autumn, when even more cuts will be announced in the government’s Spending Review.

Such events would help build the fighting morale of tens of thousands who right now are terrified of what the future holds.

Equally important in building a rebellion against cuts from a government that has no mandate in Scotland – with 85% voting against the Tories – is a convincing set of policies that exposes the lie that cuts are necessary and unavoidable – a monstrous lie peddled not only by the Tories and Lib Dems, but also New Labour and the SNP! Otherwise many people will fall for the argument that there’s not enough money to defend jobs and services, that cuts are a necessary evil – and then fall out amongst themselves over where the cuts should occur.

That divide-and-conquer trickery lies behind the Tory plan to consult people over what to cut! There is no need for any cuts! There are oceans of wealth swilling around – but in the hands of the bankers. billionaires and boardrooms of oil companies – not in the hands of the public.

The SSP fights for alternatives that would create jobs, improve services, protect conditions. Commit EIS to action against the cuts – alongside other unions – and argue for socialist policies that would fund the expansion of jobs and services. And join the SSP – for an independent socialist Scotland.

Twenty’s Plenty in a class

The Scottish Socialist Party has an unrivalled track record of standing up for kids, communities and education. We have consistently fought school closures that lead to larger classes, job losses, increased stress for staff, worse education.

We have led several Save Our Schools campaigns, uniting parents, communities and trade unionists – demanding smaller classes and investment in community-based schools within easy, safe reach of children’s homes.

We led the mass opposition to Labour’s school closures in Glasgow last year. During that campaign we popularised the slogan Twenty’s Plenty in any class, and lobbied the SNP government to pass legislation to limit classes to 20 for all age groups.

At the recent STUC Congress, SSP members pushed this policy and won the backing of the conference for a campaign for classes of 20 maximum for all.

In East Dunbartonshire, when the Labour-Tory Coalition announced closure of 8 primaries last week,the SSP called a protest demo and public meeting to set up a Save Our Schools campaign.

150 local people joined the demo, the councillors took fright, and shelved their butchery – for now!

EIS shares the SSP’s policy of 20 max in a class. The time is rotten-ripe for the EIS leadership to lead action in support of this policy – including industrial action.

by Richie Venton – 16th July 2009

It’s a classic case of the greedy rich sacrificing human beings to amass even more profit.

The announcement by the world’s biggest drinks company, Diageo, that they will shut the giant bottling plant in Kilmarnock, plus the distillery and cooperage in Glasgow, have provoked a wave of justified rage.

The whisky firm has been in Kilmarnock since 1820, the Glasgow cooperage since 1810. After two centuries of workers’ skills, hard graft and sacrifice helping the owners stack up billions in profits, these ruthless exploiters have declared war on whole communities.

They want the ‘Striding Man’ to walk away from Ayrshire. It would mean the direct loss of 700 jobs in Kilmarnock (making it one of the worst unemployment blackspots in the whole of Scotland) and another 140 in Glasgow. And that’s not taking any account of the knock-on effects, with shops, haulage firms and others facing devastation from the decisions of remote boardroom bosses who put profit first, second and always.

And they can’t even trot out the lame excuse that “it’s the recession”! It is not due to plummeting sales. This is the world’s biggest drinks firm. In just the last 6 months of 2008 – yes, half the year – Diageo piled up £1.63billion in profit!

But their top bosses have blurted out the real reason for the threatened closures: We want to protect future profit levels.

Nor can they claim they are cutting back on all expenditure to save the company. They have just forked out to get the Johnnie Walker logo on Lewis Hamilton’s helmet at Grand Prix races. This is part of a £90 million leap in advertising expenditure – from £643m in the first half of 2008 to £732m in the second half.

The top dogs in Diageo will certainly not suffer. Chief Executive Paul Walsh last year ‘earned’ £2.3million! A million of that was his ‘basic’ salary; £1.19m a ‘performance bonus’; £39,000 in other benefits. And that takes no account of his 720,000 shares in Diageo, worth about £6m – or his pension pot of £8.26m, which makes the much maligned Sir Fred Goodwin look like a pensioner pauper!

These criminals have the cheek to make speeches about the social responsibility of corporations, and then announce annihilation for whole communities. Paul Walsh is European chairman of an outfit called the International Business Leaders’ Forum, which tries to promote big business as a way to build sustainable and equitable societies!

That’s a sick joke for starters: big business exists to make profits, not to help people, and builds a gaping chasm of inequality into society.

But if you think the idea of money-grabbing capitalists being the source of sustainable and equitable societies is monstrous, it gets worse. Paul Walsh told the International Business Leaders Forum conference

Above all, I want Diageo to become a byword for integrity, social responsibility and commitment to the communities in which it operates. I want business with soul!

The people of Kilmarnock and Glasgow are up in arms at this betrayal for profit. Window posters, petitions, summits with councils and government ministers, and a rally in Kilmarnock are all part of the resistance.

To add insult to injury, Diageo bosses try to say there is an option for the workers facing devastation: there are 400 jobs being created at a bottling plant in Leven, Fife!

Who the hell do they think is going to commute from Ayrshire or Glasgow to Fife to work? And why should families be uprooted for the sake of protecting future profit levels?

Big business is out for one thing only: profit. The only way to resist their butchery is through decisive action, people uniting in their unions and communities, marching, protesting, looking at industrial action to hit the profiteers where it hurts – their wallets.

The governments of Westminster and Edinburgh should not offer to subsidise these corporate gangsters’ profits from public funds; they should demand Diageo drop all redundancy and closure plans, and if they refuse to bow to public outrage, step in and take over their assets, to sustain the jobs.

As one Kilmarnock man put it: “What would the farm born grocer [Johnnie Walker] say? Shame on you Diageo, 189 years of tradition sacrificed for some fat cat’s wallet!”

The SSP will fight all the way alongside workers and their communities, united to fight the closures, putting people before profit – a real version of social responsibility.

The Scottish Socialist Party is in full support of the thousands of postal workers who are staging strike action and other protests on Friday 17th July, in anger at arbitrary cuts to staffing levels and service levels to the public.

These cuts are being imposed by Royal Mail bosses in flagrant breach of the 2007 Pay and Modernisation Agreement, signed after strike action that year.

Delivery Ofices and Mail Centres in Edinburgh and East/Central Scotland will walk out, as will Irvine posties the next day. This is part of a growing groundswell of strikes across the UK , with 400 other offices requesting ballots for strike action.

High-and-mighty Royal Mail bosses are imposing cuts to staff and services; managers are using bully-boy tactics to impose the cuts, and ever-increasing workloads are being heaped on the shoulders of a shrinking workforce. Pressure and stress is at breaking point for postal workers, who are hitting back with escalating strike action.

John Brown, Scottish Regional Secretary of the Communications Workers’ Union (CWU) told me what lies behind the rolling anger and action by posties.

Royal Mail is trying to impose cuts way beyond levels acceptable to either staff or the public who rely on the service we deliver. They are totally intransigent, refusing to negotiate and abide by the 2007 Pay and Modernisation Agreement, which stated that the union would be fully involved at all levels at all stages of modernization.

They want 10 per cent savings across the board and insist that this must mean 10 per cuts to duties. There are not compulsory job losses as such, but they are sneaking through job losses. For instance, Royal Mail are forcing people to leave the industry; alongside their ‘savings’, a redundancy package is on offer, so when people who are fed up and want to get out of the job leave, they are not being replaced.

The press is trying to play up the idea this strike action is about pay. Well, in reducing the numbers in Delivery Offices, Royal Mail is offering full-time workers part-time jobs – which obviously involve big pay cuts.

But this is primarily strike action against the attack on the public service provided through arbitrary reductions in staffing levels.

And these are not cuts due to the introduction of new machinery. The national Agreement means any new technology can only be introduced with the full agreement of the union and its members. So far only 4 or 5 pilot offices have had the new machinery tried out, and as we expected, they have not led to the savings Royal Mail predicted.

But the cuts members are striking against are before the job cuts that new machinery will involve. By striking, members are effectively saying we cannot provide the level of service to the public expected of us because of the arbitrary cuts being imposed through executive action by the employers.

There have been little or no local negotiations. Senior management of Royal Mail has failed to even turn up to the previous talks with the national union. Today (15th July), they are supposed to meet the union in London . Maybe the strike action in London will have concentrated the minds of the Neanderthal men in senior management and force them to make concessions!

With the Royal Mail making £900,000 a day in profits, there is even less excuse for these cuts to jobs and services.

The New Labour government has been dealt a bloody nose on their plans to part-privatise Royal Mail. Now is the time for this wounded beast to be pursued through united, national strike action against their cuts.

These attacks are partly motivated by a desire for revenge for the defeat of privatisation on the part of Royal Mail bosses and Lord Mandelson, the Prince of Darkness and Dirty Deeds, who has announced his desire to accustom workers to a full decade of austerity, so as to enrich his friends in industry and the banks.

The growing revolt, through spreading strikes, could now be escalated into national strikes – accompanied by withdrawal of funding of New Labour by the CWU – which is an increasingly abusive relationship, akin to voluntary payouts to an arsonist to buy the fuel to torch your home!

The SSP stands unashamedly on the side of workers striking to preserve a vital public service.

From Richie Venton, Glasgow Save our Schools Campaign organiser

Please take 2 minutes to sign the e-petition for the Scottish Parliament; help fight for smaller class sizes and greater democracy in decision-making.

Dear friends and fighters,

We have been fighting the Glasgow Labour council’s closure of 25 primaries and nurseries since January. We have built a mass movement, using every conceivable method of struggle.

Now we have taken the battle to the Scottish parliament and the Scottish government, demanding they take a clear stance in opposition to the closures and their consequences – especially the regressive increase in class sizes.

Our massive efforts saved 3 of the 25, but the rest are now closed, with horrendous consequences for kids, families and communities.

The Labour Council cynically calculated that since there will be no Council elections until 2012, they would ride the storm, hope people forget, and save themselves £3.7m a year at terrible cost to communities in working class areas of the city. We are determined to make them pay for these crimes – and in the process, stop the threat of 34 further potential closures!

If you want more background information, just go to the Glasgow Save Our Schools website

At the heart of our battle now is that for smaller class sizes. Our Campaign has persistently demanded cuts to class sizes of 20 maximum for all ages. That would improve education and protect and create teachers’ jobs.

That is also the official policy of the teachers’ unions. And the Scottish government claims to aim at 18 maximum in Primary 1-3.

As one important strand of our ongoing campaign, we have lodged this petition in the Scottish parliament Public Petitions system.

In case you are not aware, the Scottish parliament allows the public to submit petitions to a committee of MSPs to consider, with the option of inviting representatives to address this Public Petitions Committee to justify the case, and the power to then lodge the issue as a matter for debate in the full parliament and its sub-committees.

So we need vast numbers to add their names to this petition online, to add pressure to the MSPs in favour of inviting us to address them when they meet again in September. We have a limited few weeks to maximise the numbers signing the petition online.

It is straightforward – just click here to sign the e-petition for the Scottish Parliament.

And you have the option of adding a comment on the discussion board to help add weight to the debate; but at least please add your name to the list of signatures today.

And when you’ve done that, get others in your family to do it; and others in your trade union or community group. Then forward this email to everyone on your list of email addresses, to encourage them to sign up as well.

Thanks for your help – sign up and spread the word!

Yours in struggle and unity,

Richie Venton

Parents have occupied Wyndford primary school in Maryhill since Friday 26th June, as the doors were slammed shut by Glasgow Labour council at the end of the school year.

This audacious action has thrown the arrogant council leader, Steven Purcell, who expected all to go quiet over the summer holidays, hoping that by the time of the next council elections in 2012, everyone would have forgotten about their dirty deeds against kids and communities across the city.

The council has made no pretence of negotiations with the sit-in. They have just fired out statements that the sit-in is pointless, the school is shut, end of story.

Yet despite all their arrogant strutting, the same council has thrown sops towards the local community in the form of proposals for a new Family and Recreation Centre, based in the neighbouring school (also shut), St Gregory’s.

This is a crude attempt to buy off the anger in the community, generated by their brutal closures, which leaves the Wyndford estate a desert in terms of facilities. None of this would have happened without the ferocious battle mounted by local people, through the Save Our Schools Campaign. And it is too little, too late.

I spoke to several of the parents staging the occupation, inside the school, about their aims and feelings.

I would appeal to everyone reading their comments below to:

• (a) contact them with messages of support on 0778 350 8740
• (b) try to visit the sit-in at Glenfinan Drive , near Tescos in Maryhill Rd – if possible with supplies of food and water
• (c) build attendance of adults and kids at the sit-in’s Water Festival, Thursday 2nd July at 1pm – in response to the council’s dirty tricks department – who today (Tuesday) cut off drinking water supplies under the disguise of checking an imaginary gas leak.

Bring the kids, bring water pistols, bring supplies.

Tell the Council that the school occupation won’t get dirty like the Glasgow Labour Council!!

What the occupiers say:

We want a school in the community. We have nothing. We are waiting for a Judicial Review on the issue of nursery parents not being consulted on the closure of the primary.

We don’t want a school – we need a school in this community!

The other schools offered by the council are too far away, along dangerous routes.

On 23rd June the council put a proposal to make St Gregory’s primary into a Family Centre, and to turn the existing Recreation Centre into a power station for the Wyndford estate.

So if St Gregory’s is good enough for a Family Centre, it’s good enough for a school. All we are asking for is one school in the estate, we’re not even being greedy, asking to keep both St Gregory’s and Wyndford primary.

Family Centres can be built anywhere, so why compromise a school for it? And the Glasgow council are only offering this because right throughout the campaign we shouted that we have nothing, no facilities, from one end of Maryhill to the other.

Our fear is that the council want to demolish the school building – possibly to use the ground for a part of the Family and Recreation Centre. CMI, a demolition firm, has already been in twice to inspect the building, for asbestos before demolition. That’s another reason we’re holding the sit-in, to stop demolition.

Since we occupied the school last Friday afternoon we’ve not seen the Council. No talks or negotiations. Then today (Tuesday) they sent along a council worker pretending to be looking for a gas leak, cutting off the water to the school. And it seems it’s just the drinking water they’ve cut off. Well that won’t shift us either.

In reply we are organising a Water Festival on Thursday (2nd July) at 1pm – a bit of fun for the kids, with paddling pools and water pistols. Our message is ‘join us – don’t let the school occupiers become as dirty as Glasgow city council!’

The community is still united. St Gregory’s parents have been in to help us occupy Wyndford, and they have helped stage the barricades on the gates to stop the Council getting equipment out of the building.

On Saturday they sent in 30 vans. They loaded up with school furniture and equipment. But because parents, kids and supporters refused to budge on the gates, we forced them to unload again and have the vans inspected by us before they went away!

On Monday they sent two vans to pick up the safe and photocopiers, but pickets on the gates appealed to them, sat down on the road, and the drivers turned away empty-handed.

We’re appealing for support and supplies – including food and water – from the local community and people from other areas and schools. We’ve had parents and grandparents from as far away as Barmulloch, St Gilbert’s and St Agnes schools here supporting us.

As Barmulloch parents we think it is great what Wyndford are doing. We are happy to help in any way we can.

We’re not moving until they give us a school; they can turn off whatever they want. Our message to the council is ‘you’ve shut our schools, but we’re still here, we’re still in your face’.

Hardly a day passes without new announcements of devastating job losses, sometimes outright company closures, at levels not seen since at least the 1980 recession.

Workers’ lives are being made misery after years of being told by those in charge of the boardrooms and the Labour Cabinet that all was for the best in the best of all possible systems.
Household names like Woolworths has shut up shop with 27,000 redundancies – on bare minimum state redundancy packages of a few hundred pounds.

MFI, Adams, Arran Aromatics, Findus Foods … the food and retail sector is in meltdown, with forecasts of one in ten shops being empty by the end of the year.

That spells disaster for tens of thousands eking out a living on wages mere pennies above the minimum wage.

Bankers – and bank workers

The finance sector has been bludgeoned by the chaos caused by irresponsible, profit-crazed bankers, who made incomprehensible fortunes by gambling on the capitalist markets. The government’s bailout of the bankers has prevented complete collapse, but has not eased up credit nor boosted the spending power of the working and middle classes.

So now taxpayers’ money is to be raided further for a second, even bigger bailout. But this does little to protect finance workers’ jobs; 47,000 have already been lost, with another 10,000 redundancies expected in the next three months.

A familiar scene over the years when companies go into administration or liquidation is the intervention of financial services giant KPMG. Now this outfit is ‘offering’ its 11,000 staff the glorious ‘choice’ of three months ‘sabbatical’ on 30 per cent pay, or a 4-day week, with accompanying pay cuts.

As the bottom falls out of the housing market, construction workers face mass layoffs. We have the obscene contradiction of a Scottish building worker joining the ranks of the homeless on the eve of Christmas because he lost his job and couldn’t keep up the mortgage!

Car industry crisis

Another major sector facing the worst crisis in at least 30 years is the car industry. With a slump in sales and production, car workers are made to pay the price through a cocktail of pay cuts and job losses.

Honda has just extended its two-month shutdown by a further two months: the Swindon plant won’t re-open for production until June! The 4,200 workers in the factory are to survive on 50 per cent wages for those four months.

In Sunderland, Nissan is chopping 1,200 of its 5,000 workforce. The same outfit recently got £6.2m of government funding for production of a new model; they have shifted production of the Micra to slave-labour India.

Manufacturing industry is in freefall. Factory output collapsed at an annual rate of 22 per cent in November. And there is little prospect of rapid recovery. For instance, the collapse over 2008 in the value of the pound against the Euro (down 30%) and the US$ (down 27%) will not on this occasion lead to an export-led recovery in the UK, because recession is blighting the USA, Japan and the whole of Europe.

Public sector slaughter

Right now the private sector is in the front line of job losses. But on top of the tens of thousands of jobs already lost in the public sector in recent years, a devastating new round of Thatcher-like cuts confront the NHS, local authorities and civil service in the next year or so. As the Scotland on Sunday recently reported:

UK Ministers have already warned that the tax cuts and fiscal stimulus plans being put into place to offset the worst of the downturn will have to be paid for – and soon. The pain will begin, say many, at the end of the next financial year, in April 2010.

SNP Ministers fear that as the Treasury starts to rein in spending, its budget will drop by £500m a year. Scotland’s NHS and councils are heading for a repeat of the 1980s cuts enforced by Thatcher.

Leadership needed

In the face of these devastating blows to entire communities, cities and regions, one of the most disappointing features is the lack of decisive, coordinated calls for action from the leadership of the trade union movement – through the likes of the TUC and STUC.

It is hardly surprising that many of the workers facing the scrap heap are initially shocked and stunned, rather than confident of taking action to save their jobs and livelihoods. But to change that and turn shock into anger and action requires leadership.

Too many of the union leaders are like rabbits mesmerised by the headlights of a lorry bearing down on them. Too often they merely echo the employers’ fatalistic words about the global crisis, without offering any radical alternative that would save and create jobs. In the case of a regional official of UNITE who organises the Nissan car workers facing 1,200 job losses, he stated “One firm can’t ask for a bailout; every firm would want one”!

Instead of portraying themselves as powerless in the teeth of the capitalist crisis, union leaders need to rally their members with events and arguments that give individual groups of workers some confidence that they are not on their own, that there is a point in fighting back.

Union rallies

In 1980, within months of Maggie Thatcher’s axe-wielding government being elected, the unions and Labour Party mobilised some of the biggest demos in the UK’s modern history, against unemployment. Hundreds of thousands marched, and this gave a boost to the fighting spirits of individual workforces facing mass redundancies.

As a minimum first step, the STUC, TUC and national unions should call national demos and rallies against unemployment; in defence of jobs; for a 35 hour week without loss of pay to create jobs; and for an increased minimum wage.

The combination of big united rallies, and fighting policies that point to a different alternative, would begin to turn the tide against the working class being made to pay for the capitalists’ crisis.

It would give courage to workers to use every means possible to save their jobs for future generations of workers – including workplace occupations to combat asset-stripping by bosses who often shift production to slave labour economies abroad – after getting £millions in grants off the government to set up shop in the first place.

Socialist alternatives

Socialist measures are not a luxury for May Day speeches; they are an indispensable weapon that should be wielded by the unions to mobilise their millions of members and their communities, and to answer people’s widespread fear that there is no alternative to mass redundancies.

For example, there is a drastic need for public sector house-building and renovation – and for universal home insulation to cut fuel bills and help combat climate chaos. Tens of thousands of jobs could thus be created, if the governments of Westminster or Holyrood had the political will. To carry out such a plan of public sector housing, the unions should argue for public ownership and democratic control of the construction industry.

If there is a glut in the car market that causes shutdowns and lay-offs, the unions need to fight for socially useful alternative production. For example, the developing world needs agricultural machinery that car plants could build. Closer to home, a vastly expanded free public transport system would create tens of thousands of transport workers’ jobs and cut poverty in the communities, as well as helping the environment. But it would also require building fleets of buses, trams, ferries and trains – a source of jobs for many facing a shaky future right now.

The bankers have been bailed out to save their skins – and those of their pals in the wider system. So the unions rightly call for investment to shore up the car industry. But why not call for public ownership and democratic control, instead of for subsidies to the bosses’ profits and debts?

The unions need to call public rallies that rouse the confidence of workers to fight back, but equally they need to expound measures that go beyond the straitjacket of capitalist production for profit. Public ownership of the banks, big retailers, energy, oil, transport, construction and manufacturing would be a means to plan the production of goods and services for public need.

Struggle – or starve!

Scotland faces an exponential growth of unemployment, with the Centre for Economic and Business Research predicting an 88 per cent rise in the numbers unemployed this year – from 121,000 to 227,000.

The Scottish economy is plunging towards its worst contraction since 1931. The rich elite who rule and ruin our lives are determined to make the working class pay for the crisis, driving us back to the 1930s if needs be.

The time is rotten-ripe for the unions and socialists to champion a different future, where work is shared out under a shorter working week, but without loss of pay; where the assets of companies that have been built up through generations of workers’ labour and taxpayers’ subsidies are taken into public ownership – but with democratic control.

A future where real jobs and training are restored, with new environmentally-friendly manufacturing a part of the answer. A socialist future where democratic needs and wishes are paramount, instead of millions being tossed in the dustbin for the protection of profits.

Over the past few weeks, working people are as likely to have been wringing their hands in anxiety at job losses as listening to the ringing of jingle bells.

Daily news reports and pundits’ commentaries harshly confirm two central truths: capitalism doesn’t work, and the working class are being pounded with the devastating consequences, to make us pay for the crisis created by the capitalist elite.

For years we were told – by New Labour politicians in particular – that the days of boom and bust were over; that the government’s fiscal ingenuity, extended credit and the inherent glories of the market system would guarantee a rosy future.

Now economists are competing for who can come up with the gloomiest forecasts for 2009 and beyond.

Typical headlines and predictions are: 600,000 jobs to go in 2009 – 1,600 a day; 100,000 Scots to lose their jobs; Worst level of redundancies in 30 years; Employers hold back on redundancies until after Xmas…

The Scottish Council for Development and Industry has just predicted the first year of ‘negative economic growth’ in Scotland since 1980.

Closures

Recent weeks have seen closure of the iconic Woolies stores on every High St, with 27,000 workers thrown on the scrapheap after a century of trading.

Other household names in retail, the finance sector and the car industry have seen equivalent levels of job decimation and threats to workers’ futures.

The merger of HBoS with Lloyds threatens up to 40,000 finance workers’ jobs.

The retail sector is poised on the brink of a slaughter: Experian forecast 1,600 retailers will be driven out of business this year, leaving one in ten shops empty.

Yet that was precisely one of the areas that mopped up previous mass unemployment, replacing it with mass low pay for hundreds of thousands of retail workers struggling to survive on pay just pennies above the pathetic minimum wage. Now it’s back to mass unemployment.

In the car industry, workers suffer mass lay-offs, job cuts and enforced down time. Toyota, Honda and Nissan have shut down production for two months. Vauxhalls have ‘offered’ their 2,200 Ellesmere Port workers a 9-month ‘sabbatical’ – on 30 per cent pay!

Pay Cuts

The other favoured trick of employers being deployed is pay cuts. In JCB, for example, they told the workforce in November that unless they took a 10 per cent pay cut there would be further redundancies – on top of the 600 since August 2008. The GMB union lay down and accepted this demand, which cut pay by £50 a week through reduced hours… and then JCB bosses proceeded to impose another fresh bout of 400 redundancies, plus announcements of zero pay rise for 2009, and removal of the profit-related Xmas bonus (which was £1,000 in 2007). A classic proof that weakness invites aggression, as the bosses pile the crisis of their own creation onto the backs of workers.

Public Sector

The private sector may be first in line for the wave of closures and job losses, but the public sector faces the same future. Behind all the hype around the government’s November pre-Budget, they kept hidden their plans to cut public expenditure by £5billion a year from 2011. That spells a devastating assault on public sector jobs and the services they provide – and will be even more deep-cutting given that public spending on unemployment benefits is set to rocket meantime.

The trade unions and socialists face their biggest challenges for decades, in the face of the destruction of communities, workers’ lives and living standards through capitalist crisis. In fighting mass redundancies and closures, there are never any cast-iron guarantees of victory. But one thing is certain: weak-kneed acceptance of the bosses’ demands guarantees terrible defeats for workers and their families. Talk in some union circles about a Social Contract between unions, employers and the government is a cruel road to ruin, which has been travelled before, particularly in the 1970s.

Class divide

Instead of pretending that workers and their bosses have a common interest that should be turned into some kind of ‘Spirit of Dunkirk’, we need to expose the gulf dividing the interests of these two classes. For example, the top seven directors in Fords last year had salaries and pensions totalling £100million – whilst they refused to invest that same amount in their Southampton plant to build the new Transit van.

Low-paid workers would spend the extra money gained if the minimum wage was boosted to two-thirds male median earnings – that would be a minimum of between £8.50 and £9 an hour currently – whereas the same bosses who echo Gordon Brown’s talk of setting aside ‘prudence’ and spending our way out of the recession are also calling for a freeze on the derisory £5.80 minimum wage.

Pay cuts at JCB did nothing to stop further redundancies – but boosted the employers’ profit margins.

Instead of covering up the truth behind the recession, the mighty potential power of the organised working class in the unions should be mobilised around a massive campaign to halt mass redundancies. They need to fashion an armoury of fighting demands that could rally workers in united action for an alternative to job losses and pay cuts.

35 hour week – without loss of earnings

Instead of pay cuts through lay-offs, they should demand the work be shared out without loss of earnings.

The unions should resist the calls from Brown and Cameron to allow the UK continued opt-out from the European Working Time Directives, which is only a mild-mannered protection from being compelled to work more than an average 48-hour week (workers can still waive this right and work it ‘voluntarily’ under the opt-out clause). And instead put on a ‘drive for 35’ – a united union fight for a maximum 35 hour working week, which would create vast numbers of jobs … but critically demand this be without any pay cuts.

This would raise the whole issue: where have all the profits gone… and where have all the state subsidies gone? Companies have been bailed out with taxpayers’ money, development grants etc, but now want to protect their profit margins at workers’ expense (as NCR did in Dundee last year).

The unions should demand open, public scrutiny of the accounts of any company threatening job losses – to expose the fact many of them have enjoyed an orgy of profiteering for years, dividends to the big shareholders and obscene bonuses to the top bosses – whilst leaving thousands who created that wealth without a source of income.

Seize company assets

The unions should also demand that the government seize the assets of companies threatening closures, to stop corporate asset strippers, many of whom shift their production to slave-wage economies abroad. By taking over their assets the government could then employ the skills of workers to produce for social need.

Production for social need

Back in the 1970s many fighting union leaderships – particularly at shopfloor level – devised alternative schemes of useful production for their workplaces. In the 21st century this becomes even more vital as one of the fighting weapons against mass unemployment: the skills and machinery are often there, available for adaptation to socially useful and environmentally sustainable production.

For example, rather than rely on the bubble of crazy credit and artificially created consumer spending – both of which are now in freefall – the unions could advance a programme of useful public works and green production around public transport, social housing, universal insulation of homes, alternative sources of energy, etc.

Public ownership – not bailouts of profit

The government has bailed out the bankers. Demands are growing for government investment in the ailing car industry. But instead of subsidising the profits of the capitalist gangsters who have ruined people’s lives, the unions should campaign for public ownership of the machinery, buildings, production and distribution, under democratic control.

Such a socialist alternative, combined with militant forms of struggle, would encourage workers that there is something can be done in the face of the capitalist recession.

There is no one-size-fits-all method of struggle, but workplace occupations may arise again as a viable way of halting closures, provided union leaderships encourage a fight rather than whip up surrender. Otherwise the danger is that many will be overwhelmed, feeling that they are being devoured by a Juggernaut that cannot be halted as it closes down workplaces and smashes jobs.

The recession throws down the challenges: socialists in workplaces and unions need to encourage a vision of ways of halting the slaughter of livelihoods and shaping a socialist future in the process.

On Wednesday 28th January 2009 workers for Shaw’s construction contractors at Lindsey Oil Refinery in North Lincolnshire were told by their shop stewards that the new contractor, IREM, an Italian company that a part of the contract on LOR‘s HDS3 plant had been awarded to, was refusing to employ UK labour.

IREM planned to house hundreds of Italian and Portuguese workers in accommodation barges in Grimsby harbour, bussing them to and from the plant every day. They were explicit in their policy of not hiring any UK workers as contractors.

This was particularly offensive to local skilled workers against the background of Shaw’s having issued 90-day redundancy notices in mid-November, meaning that they would become redundant mid-February, whilst IREM was herding Italian workers like cattle on a boat (rumoured to be a prison ship), keeping them well away from trade-unionised UK workers.

The entire LOR workforce, from all subcontracting companies, met and voted unanimously to take immediate strike action.

The following day over a thousand construction workers from LOR, Conoco and Easington sites descended outside Lindsey Oil Refinery’s gate to picket and protest.

Thus began one of the most remarkable episodes of industrial action in the UK since the uprising in the North Sea in the late 1990′s.

Workers the length of the UK began a series of unofficial and therefore illegal actions from Grangemouth oil refinery and Longannet power station in Scotland, Sellafield and Heysham nuclear plants, Fiddlers Ferry in Widnes to the Drax power station in Yorkshire.

In just 3 or 4 days the UK‘s anti-trade union laws, some of the most oppressive in Europe, were swept aside by workers in key industrial facilities; power generation and oil refining.

Workers ignored and defied anti-union laws on balloting procedures, solidarity strikes and mass picketing, exploding the myth – perpetrated by far too many union leaders for decades – that the anti-union laws invented by the Tories and retained by New Labour are insurmountable.

The industrial action was not taking place in isolation. Across Europe workers have started to take action against the impact of the economic recession that threatens their jobs and wages and conditions.

For the left the strikes brought complications in the form of the slogan British Jobs For British Workers which although was never raised officially by the Lindsey workers became prominent from the beginning of the dispute.

Socialists have absolutely no truck with such slogans which promote division and can and have been used by the far right to promote their racist poison.

When Gordon Brown first used this phrase in November 2007 the SSP was unequivocal in condemning him for playing into the hands of the BNP and fuelling racism and xenophobia.

When the strikers used this slogan initially there is no doubt that there was a large element of throwing the slogan back in Gordon Brown’s face. Here was a situation in which UK workers were specifically being excluded from UK jobs.

But the slogan very quickly backfired; it was a gift to the BNP who had in fact been using it for a number of years and it allowed the media to deliberately and dishonestly portray the strike as overtly xenophobic and racist.

An interview conducted by Paul Mason which was used on Newsnight showed a striker making the point that “we can’t work beside them, they are coming in full companies”, referring to the segregated accommodation of the new contractors.

The BBC‘s 10 o’clock news carried a story about the strike in which Government ministers accuse the strikers of xenophobia, the Newsnight clip is cut to the striker saying we can’t work beside them.

But the strikers themselves agreed demands at their mass meetings which never gained the oxygen of media coverage, but which cut across entirely the vicious distortions of their portrayal in the press. They demanded union rights for all workers, including immigrant labour; for union facilities for the Italian workers to make them an integral part of the trade union movement here; and for the implementation of the national construction and engineering industry agreement on the rate for the job, hours of work, breaks and conditions for all working in the UK – including the Italians.

Numerous first-hand accounts showed pickets giving short shrift to the unwelcome attentions of the fascist BNP – who after all sided with the Tories against the miners’ strike, and didn’t even think fire-fighters should have the right to strike.

Strikers demonstrated a core internationalism and solidarity with fellow-workers that bodes well for the future of this movement.

Union spokespersons repeatedly stated that this strike was not about race or nationality, not against Italian or Portugese workers, but against the Italian company that was excluding local, skilled workers from even getting an interview for jobs.

Strikers rightly saw this as an attempt by EU companies to exploit EU directives and court rulings on ‘posted workers’ to undermine and break hard-won national agreements and trade union organization.

Far from being instinctively against migrant workers from Italy or Portugal, many of the strikers are themselves ‘migrants’ – forced to uproot themselves to find work in other regions of the UK or even across the EU. So they will have felt particularly bitter towards Labour’s Lord Mandelson who in effect told them to get on their bikes and trek across Europe for work – because after all the EU regulations are for the workers’ benefit!!

Seumas Milne in The Guardian called it exactly right when he described the strike as a fight for jobs in the middle of a deepening recession and a backlash against the deregulated, race-to-the-bottom neo-liberal model backed by Brown for more than a decade which produced it.

In the Glasgow Herald Professor Gregor Gall described the strike as essentially being about the underlying issues of the race to the bottom under capitalism, the drive to neo-liberalism and the European Union’s deregulatory preference.

The specific European Union legislation and court rulings that were inevitably going to ignite labour disputes at some point is the EU Posted Workers Directive and the judgements by the European Court in cases including Viking, Laval and Ruffert.

The judgements have had the effect of undermining union negotiated collective agreements which are not recognised as `universally applicable’ in the UK.

For trade unionists this strike was waiting to happen and the response of workers across the UK has been inspirational.

Linda Somerville, formerly a member of the Unite National Executive, says that there were three things that stood out;

Firstly that the strike took place in the first place she says.

We have been told repeatedly that workers in the UK are no longer interested in militant trade union action. That clearly is not the case.

Secondly, the strength and depth of the secondary, solidarity, action was immense.

Workers in key industrial locations across the UK held mass meetings and took action.

Thirdly, the strikes were all against UK trade union law which is amongst the most oppressive in Europe. The legal tools were there for employers to launch a major assault on trade unions involved in the action but the sheer size of the strikes, protests and walk outs rendered the laws impotent.

Workers at Grangemouth refinery who were very quick to come out in support of the strike have been emboldened by recently winning their pension dispute with INEOS which saw them take strike action in April 2008.

For socialists and trade unionists this dispute has been an important test, with many more to come.

The SSP has repeatedly said that the economic recession and world wide crisis of capitalism will inevitably mean that workers will be pushed into struggle.

But these struggles will be complex and contradictory with the enemies of the working class seeking to muddy the waters and cause confusion.

For that reason it is vital that we take a sober and detailed analysis of the situation and in particular understand that in Europe it is the rabidly neo liberal and pro big business measures of the European Union that seeks to drive down wages and terms and conditions across the board that organized workers are now resisting.

We need to see the essence of the issues, even when accidental slogans cloud the image. Instead of ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ the SSP from the outset of this strike wave supported the strikers in demanding the right to work, the right to an equal chance of being employed, and for defence of the wages, conditions and union rights won by hard struggle in this harsh, dangerous industry.

The SSP from day one of this strike movement called on unions in the UK to urgently seek active links with unions in Italy, Portugal and the EU, to unite in action against attempts to divide and conquer, against the use of cheaper labour and worse conditions in the bosses’ race to the bottom.

We also need to raise demands such as trade union registers of unemployed workers in the industry as the pool for employment when jobs are on offer – at least a small step forward to the days when unions had elements of control over hiring and firing in a few of the better-organised industries, such as printing. That would help counter the conscious ‘race to the bottom’ of conditions by companies at home and abroad, by use of cheap, disorganized workers to undermine the rights won by unionised workforces.

This dispute highlights the broader issue of ownership of the power and energy industry, where multi-nationals seize advantage of the de-regulated, cheap-labour EU market – championed by Blair and Brown – to maximize profits – and the SSP’s counter-proposal of public ownership and democratic control of the industry, where workers’ elected representatives would have a direct input to all aspects of employment, production and planning.

The wave of tremendously courageous strike action seems, at time of writing, to have won a major climb-down from IREM, with UK workers to get 50 per cent of the jobs, but with no lay-offs for the Italian workers, and for all to get the nationally agreed wages, hours and conditions.

This example of militant trade unionism, in defiance of the laws, will inspire others to similar defences of their jobs and right to work – starting with others in the same industry.
The job of socialists and good trade unionists is to match the courage of these strikers and seek to influence the slogans and demands of their movement in a fashion that reduces confusion, limits the opportunities for the media and reactionaries to distort workers’ aims, and to consolidate the powerful elements of workers’ unity and internationalism already on show in this current powerful movement.

They have resorted to indefinite strike action since 6 January after months of fighting the council’s review of their jobs, which proposes increased hours of work, vastly increased responsibilities, but a pay cut of over £1,000 for many of them!

These workers deal with offenders in groups of five, carrying out community services as an alternative to prison. After the first week of their strike, the Labour council – which refuses to even speak to them let alone protect their pay through proper grading – has been forced to shut down the service to offenders for at least two weeks.

The strikers have toured round major council buildings, picketing them, winning warm moral and financial support from fellow-UNISON members, and they have lobbied the Labour councillors’ meetings. They have been boosted by support from other UNISON branches in Scotland, as well as the PCS civil service union national leadership.

Donald McNaughton, Community Service Superviser, told me the background and the strikers’ modest demands:

It goes back to the Council’s Pay & Benefits Review, where they promised that anyone losing out financially would get training and be promoted, that there’d be a Review and nobody would lose money.

UNISON and Community Service Workers fully participated in this Review, only to be told before Xmas that we would have an increased working week, with compulsory Sundays, and increased duties and responsibilities.

Up to now we worked four days over seven, a 32 hour week; got enhancements for working Saturdays and Sundays; and got £1,400 for driving council vehicles.

Now they want us to drive as part of our normal duties (without the payment), work compulsory Sundays, find placements for offenders, train them, assess their employability – all on top of our normal duties. For that we are to go on Grade PCS4, which still leaves us in detriment on pay.

For months we protested by sticking to our job roles, refusing to drive council vehicles or train offenders. The council hired black hackneys to ship the boys round the city, and simply refused to negotiate with us. So we had no alternative but to withdraw our labour.

We’re disgusted at the council, and its leader Stephen Purcell, for breaking their promises, and refusing to talk to us, when there are only 21 of us.

We work with squads of offenders. The separate workers who deal with individual placements of offenders have been upgraded to PCS5. That’s all we are asking for, the same grade 5 to prevent pay cuts.

We demand that the Council recognise we do a decent job, to respect us and talk to us. It’s not asking much for them to come and explain why they have broken their written promises to the unions in 2007.

An un-named council spokesman has said we are getting paid for what we do. That’s an insult.

They’re finding all this money for the Commonwealth Games. They are asking us to help clean up the city to make it attractive to tourists, yet they won’t pay us a fair rate or even negotiate.

We’re getting great support from colleagues in UNISON and other unions, moral and financial, and want to thank them for their support.

Some SSP activists during election

What a phenomenal result on two parallel levels: the earth-shattering defeat of Labour in Red Clydesider John Wheatley’s seat, Labour’s 3rd safest seat in Scotland, held by them since 1922; and the tremendous achievement for the SSP in winning 5th place, the highest position for any of the smaller parties, despite all the apparently insurmountable obstacles we faced.

If we compare the votes with those of the 2005 Westminster election in the identical Glasgow East seat, Labour has gone into free-fall from 18,775 to 10,912; the SNP rocketed from 5,268 to 11,277 – in a turnout down from 48.2% in 2005 to 42.1% this time.

Thousands of Labour voters simply stayed at home in disgust with their record on food and fuel prices; failure to tackle poverty and inequality; assaults on the sick and disabled, and their wholesale neglect of the working class. Others did a straight swap to the SNP, as punishment for New Labour in an area they have treated with decades of contempt, stepping on people’s heads en route to grossly overpaid political careers.

The disgust at Labour politicians, and indeed politicians in the mainstream parties in general, was palpable on the streets, people spitting out angry words about them, responding warmly to the SSP’s policy of A workers’ MP on a worker’s wage.

Class differentials

There seems to have been a significant class differential in the turnout, with higher voting in the more affluent parts, such as Garrowhill, parts of Baillieston, Mt Vernon – which would be to the SNP’s advantage, because John Mason has been councillor for Garrowhill/Baillieston since 1998. The most deprived districts had generally far lower turnouts, to Labour’s further disadvantage.

The squeeze between the two political Juggernauts that we predicted, whilst agreeing we should stand an SSP candidate, took place with a vice-like vengeance. For example, 85% of those who voted went to either the SNP or Labour. In 2005 the equivalent figure was 77%.

My first impression of the voting figures is that the SNP upsurge was also substantially boosted by defection to them from both the Lib Dems (who plummeted from 3,665 votes three years ago to 915) and even some Tories (who fell from 2,135 to 1,639). In both cases, defecting voters judged that the best way to boot Brown and New Labour was to vote SNP.

This is an unqualified catastrophe for Labour and Gordon Brown. Labour activists were devastated, with talk of the need for a lurch to the left amongst a couple of the most unlikely Labour hacks I spoke to at the count.

The national question

There was not widespread, overt, explicit talk on the streets of this being a vote on independence. But it clearly is a clash of contrasting opinions on the Westminster Labour government compared to the Holyrood SNP government – and is a massive impetus towards independence … which will be exponentially added to when Labour’s thrashing in Glasgow East adds to the Labour crisis and therefore increases the likelihood of a Cameron government in Westminster.

All of which positions the Scottish Socialist Party well over the next couple of years, with our pro-independence but unashamedly socialist vision for Scotland, in contrast to the pro-big business agenda of the SNP.

The SNP are riding high in the opinion polls right now, and will be an even more rampant force in the aftermath of Glasgow East, but the contradictions in their all-things-to-all-classes approach are beginning to be revealed to more far-sighted sections of the working class. They face strikes by civil servants against their imposition of a 2% pay ceiling; anger from council workers facing cuts where the SNP are in control or coalition, and growing questions over why they dumped their previous commitment to bus re-regulation in the wake of SNP party funding by multi-millionaire bus tycoon Brian Souter.

SSP: the biggest small party

Given the monumental squeeze on all the smaller parties – and even the Lib Dems – the Scottish Socialist Party scored a fantastic achievement, winning 5th place with 555 votes – ahead of the Solidarity vote of 512, and with a crushing lead over the Greens (despite them having 2 MSPs) who could only muster 232 votes.

Of course we need a sense of proportion. Our 555 compares to 1,096 in the 2005 general election, before the split in the SSP. But what is quite remarkable is that the combined left vote held up so well (1,067 – almost literally identical to that of 2005). And in fact the combined share of the vote rose from 3.5% in 2005 to a combined 4.1% this time!

Given the far tighter squeeze in the focussed intensity of this by-election, the prevailing objective conditions that nurtured that dog-fight between SNP and Labour, and the serious, deep damage done to the credibility of the left through the split, it is remarkable that this was achieved, that the left vote held up so well.

This also serves to underline the destructive, reckless consequences for the socialist left caused by the small minority, led by Tommy Sheridan, who split off from the SSP two years ago. If they had instead accepted the decisions of the majority of members in the SSP and kept a united party intact, the combined vote of 1,067 would have put us in 4th place, above the Lib Dems – and that is taking no account of the huge additional vote a single, united SSP would have won.

In the tragic circumstances of a divided left, which the SSP was founded precisely to overcome in 1998, there is a profound significance in the relative votes of the SSP and Solidarity. Obviously we can’t compare figures with 2005 on this as we had one party then. The nearest comparator is the 2007 Scottish election results for Baillieston (which makes up roughly two-thirds of Glasgow east) and Shettleston (the other third).

A mere 12 months ago Solidarity got 5 times and over 4 times the SSP vote in these two seats respectively. In Glasgow East, the SSP got 53% of the total left vote!

Solidarity boasted about their 5:1 vote advantage in the by-election campaign, including at press conferences. Tommy Sheridan contacted journalists declaring the SSP was as dead as a Dodo, repeating the 5:1 differential of last year to try and convince people there was only one party of the left – his.

Solidarity will have got a very substantial family and friends vote for their candidate, and some votes from the family and friends of the child killed by an air gun in Easterhouse.

On top of that they crudely attempted to confuse people into thinking Tommy Sheridan was the candidate, with their one and only leaflet taking the format of a message from him, and the party name on the ballot forms being Solidarity – Tommy Sheridan … not even the softer option of co-convener Tommy Sheridan which they could have legally used.

Given all this, it is a signpost to the future when the SSP not only closed down the 5:1 differential but actually won the biggest vote for a left party in horrendously difficult circumstances.

For the broad mass the headline is Labour’s slaughter, the SNP’s victory. But for an astute and observant minority the SSP/Solidarity result helps explode Solidarity’s false claims to be Scotland’s foremost socialist party.

A conscious socialist vote

Considering the weight of the aforementioned squeeze on us, every vote for the SSP was an extremely conscious vote for socialism, for the rich traditions of Glasgow’s east end, in the full knowledge we were not going to win, but that our undiluted socialist message deserved support. A very courageous, conscious, socialist vote.

Some parties and journalists are trotting out claims that the good SSP vote was due to confusion over the two Currans – Frances for the SSP, Margaret for Labour. That is arrogant, patronising nonsense. Labour put out tens of thousands of leaflets explaining which Curran to vote for. So did we, with the theme that there’s only one socialist Curran in this election – Frances Curran. We spelt out the two opposing worlds these two candidates represented.

The visibility, colour, dynamism and élan of the SSP’s campaign on the streets left nobody in any doubt about what or who they were voting for. We never held back on our socialist message, in leaflets, a newspaper delivered to 45,000 homes, giant banners, through street meetings, and in media appearances. The quality of our campaign – which started out with literally no money or material exactly three weeks before polling day at the meeting of members where we selected Frances Curran as our candidate – was praised by the Greens, SNP, Lib Dems and letter writers to the Herald.

SSP pivotal to the future of socialism

We shouldn’t exaggerate what this result for the SSP signifies, given the very modest votes involved at this stage. But we have to feel vastly proud and confident that the SSP is pivotal to the medium-term unification and growth of a united socialist party in Scotland. It is a time to be proud of the principled socialism the SSP stands for; a time to join us and give renewed impetus to the rehabilitation of the socialist traditions of Red Clydeside in one of its historic strongholds.