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Fight the Job Cuts

Don't Pay for the Bosses' Greed

NEW LABOUR ministers claim to have abolished mass unemployment. The percentage of workers claiming benefit is the lowest for 25 years, though this is largely due to a harsher social security regime.

But a small army of workers in industries up and down the country can see little to crow about. Over the past few years manufacturing firms have shed jobs steadily.

More jobs are now threatened at factories across Britain's industrial areas - including Biwaters in Derbyshire, Sony in South Wales and Vospers in Southampton (see page 11). Thousands of jobs are threatened by the Texaco-Chevron merger.

The jobs replacing those in manufacturing are mainly lower-paid. Labour employment minister Tessa Jowell said recently that 56% more people are working as receptionists and 43% more in childcare (mainly in the private sector) than in 1997.

The unions must struggle to organise these low-paid workers to demand better wages and conditions. They should also organise workers in the so-called new knowledge economy which now employs a million people.

While some people have made obscene fortunes in the dotcom industries, most jobs here are low paid. What's more, the whole e-commerce boom has ended with huge falls on the stock exchanges even before the Middle East crisis hits profits and jobs in the West.

If the bosses' system threatens our jobs and livelihoods, make the bosses pay! Fight to safeguard every job!

A few rich parasites run industry to make themselves a fortune. Then, when profits fall, they try to chuck out the workers who made them rich. Don't let their greed for profits wreck our lives.

Workers at hospitals in Dudley are striking against proposals which could lead to 170 job losses. The unions should fight every job loss.

If companies threaten closures or sackings, let's start by looking at their account books. Where have the huge profits, made from our hard work in the years of boom, gone?

The bosses should be forced to give over their inflated profits to keep the workplace open with no redundancies. If the bosses won't keep the plant open or the profits have disappeared, the unions should fight to get the company taken into public ownership, with the workers managing and controlling production.

 

 

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Rail Safety before Profit

JUST OVER a year after Paddington another privatised train company has seen one of its trains crash with the loss of at least four lives and over 80 injured, when a train carrying 100 people derailed near Hatfield on 17 October.

As The Socialist goes to press it is not clear exactly how the accident occurred.

And although the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said the crash site was a bad stretch of line for vandalism, it stressed there was no evidence that that was a cause of the crash.

The HSE is still investigating an incident in the same area on 9 October, when nine people suffered injuries after a high-speed train derailed just 20 miles from the scene of this incident.

The crash comes just a year after the Paddington rail disaster killed 31 people, putting rail safety at the top of the political agenda. Inevitably most people will point the finger at the privatised railway companies and the Labour government.

Last week Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said £60 billion would be spent on rail safety over the next ten years. But this will be too little, too late for an increasing number of train disaster victims.

The 1989 inquiry into the Clapham rail disaster recommended spending £750 million to install Automatic Train Protection (ATP) but this was rejected by the Tory government who wanted to slash costs immediately prior to privatisation.

After Paddington Prescott said no expense would be spared to ensure rail safety. But only two weeks ago government ministers, including Prescott, opposed ATP being installed on Britain's death-trap railways and favoured Train Protection Warning System (TPWS).

TPWS gives a mere 70% protection and doesn't match European safety standards, but costs £150 million. ATP gives 98% protection and costs five times more. Obviously an expense that Prescott is willing to spare.

A railway worker told The Socialist: "The government backs the less effective TPWS system because it claims it's cheaper. But they continue increasing the subsidies to the Train Operating Companies, despite their poor punctuality and reliability performance. This money will go on paying increased track access charges to Railtrack, boosting their profits, and giving managers and directors inflated, unjustified salaries, while safety suffers."

Railtrack has done precious little to make the track and signal layout outside Paddington any safer.

The bosses of Go-Ahead Trains, who own Thames, recently gave themselves £30,000 bonuses on top of £200,000-a-year salaries. Relatives of Paddington victims could get as little as £7,500 in compensation.

After last year's crash, opinion polls showed that 73% favoured nationalisation of the railways. We call for a publicly owned rail and transport industry under democratic working-class control and management to put the needs of the travelling public and workforce first, not the profits of millionaire managers.

 

 

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 Middle East Crisis

Staring into the Abyss

THE SPIRALING conflict in the Middle East is taking on a distinctly nationalist, religious character, with Imams in the Gaza mosques calling for the defense of Al Aqsa, and for attacks against Jews.

Mandy Rabin, Maavak Sozialisti, (CWI, Israel)

Within Israel, hundreds of Jewish demonstrators have been shouting "death to the Arabs," and vandalizing mosques. Yet despite this, the key issue of the conflict is not control over the Al Aqsa mosque, or Temple Mount, but the poverty and despair amongst both Arabs and Jews, and the national oppression that Palestinians still suffer, after seven years of peace negotiations.

Because of their double oppression as Arabs within the Jewish state, and in the absence of a socialist movement in the Arab communities, these attacks are sometimes directed against Jewish workers.

These actions have provoked a nationalist, religious response from some of the most downtrodden sections of the Jewish working class. Whipped up by the government and by reactionaries.

In reaction to attacks upon them by Jews, Palestinians within Israel are organising themselves for self-defense, within towns and villages. Palestinians living in the Galilee have begun to raise the issue of the need for autonomy.

Not only does the conflict have its roots in the class nature of society but the current conflict is taking its toll, not on the capitalists and their representatives in government on both sides, but on ordinary Palestinians and Israelis.

So far, the victims have all been working class. On the Palestinian side, it is not the decision-makers, such as millionaire businessman Nabil Sha'ath, who have been throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, and getting killed and maimed, but the youth from the refugee camps. Of the 100 or more Palestinians killed so far in this conflict, at least 27 are under-18.

On the Israeli side, it is not the sons of the politicians and millionaire businessmen who have been killed or kidnapped, but soldiers from the most downtrodden sections of the working class - from ethnic minorities such as the Druze, Bedouin, or the Ethiopian Jews and from the development towns.

The 12 soldiers serving at Joseph's tomb, which the army eventually concluded was indefensible after one soldier bled to death, were all Druze.

Of the three soldiers kidnapped on the border with Lebanon, one was a Bedouin, one was an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, and the third was from a working-class development town. It is ironic that the person in charge of negotiating their release is the managing director of a major cellular phone company.

While it is the ruling class who are directing the negotiations (and on the Israeli side, the conflict), it is the working class who are forced to pay the price of their peace and of their war, when 'peace' breaks down.

A real prospect of war

THE SHARM al Sheikh summit was a desperate, last-ditch attempt by the international ruling class to salvage the peace process and avoid war. US imperialism and international big business are terrified that a war in the region would threaten oil supplies and topple the already shaky world economy over into a world recession.

Israeli capitalists have watched with horror as Israeli technology stocks plummeted in recent weeks. They are worried a new war will lead to a flight of investment, the collapse of the Israeli hi-tech industry, and with it their profits.

The Arab leaders are worried that the mass, pro-Palestinian demonstrations seen throughout the Arab world, could threaten the stability of their own regimes. Later, these movements could threaten to overthrow the dictatorial Arab leaders themselves. Therefore, the Arab leaders did their utmost to force Arafat to attend the summit.

The Palestinian masses have concluded that peace talks among capitalist leaders will bring them nothing but further suffering and humiliation. For them, the only way to achieve independence, dignity and an end to poverty is through mass struggle.

The Palestinian masses have lost faith in capitalist peace talks, and in taking the path of mass struggle, have tasted the fruits of their own power. They will not abandon this path in a hurry, as a result of any paper agreements at the top.

But while it is theoretically possible that a mass struggle could achieve, at immense cost, a Palestinian state, under capitalism, such a state would be impoverished and would not be independent. It would be dominated economically by the Israeli and Jordanian states and remain a cauldron of discontent.

Only a mass struggle to overthrow the capitalist and semi-feudal regimes of the region, and to replace them with socialist, workers' governments, could bring genuine independence to the Palestinian masses, peace and security to the Israeli working class, and an end to poverty, unemployment and discrimination for all.

 Crisis on the Left

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WITH THE Middle East on the brink of a new war, the Israeli 'Peace Camp' is silent and in crisis.

The main 'left' parties, including the Communist Party, and peace movements such as Peace Now, all supported the Oslo peace process uncritically. They gave their full support for peace negotiations conducted by Barak and Arafat who represent capitalism's interests. They campaigned to get Ehud Barak elected prime minister, who has subsequently launched vicious attacks on Israeli workers.

They turned a blind eye to Arafat's corrupt, dictatorial, oppressive regime, and somehow failed to notice that as the peace process progressed, the lives of Palestinians got worse.

Now that the Oslo peace process has been shattered, they have no answers. Some blame Yasser Arafat, saying that he, or the Palestinian masses, are not yet ready for peace.

Maavak Sozialisti was the only organisation in Israel which explained that the Oslo peace process will not bring stable peace, because capitalism is incapable of solving the fundamental problems that fuel national unrest.

 

 

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The Reality of being Black and British

RAPH PARKINSON is a Socialist Party member and a Black member of the national executive of UNISON, the public-sector union. He is also chair of the North-West Black Members’ Committee. Raph is speaking at Socialism 2000 on "Is Britain becoming a more racist society?" He spoke to The Socialist about the recent controversy over ‘Britishness’.

"MOST BLACKS, Asians and other ethnic minority groups don’t see this debate about Britishness as relevant to their day-to-day experience or as their first priority. Most black people face a day-to-day struggle just to survive.

"The current government’s actions over asylum and the level of racism in the police don’t give confidence to the Black community, who feel let down by a Labour government and don’t identify with the Union Jack concept of ‘Britishness’. Ordinary Black working-class people don’t see the flag as being relevant to them, especially not when it’s being used by fascist groups like the BNP and NF and it reflects the oppression of Black people that has taken place throughout the British empire’s oppression in the former colonies.

"Due to the role racism still plays in society, most Black people are unemployed or in low-paid jobs.Those who have got jobs, often find discrimination in the workplace through low pay or being denied the opportunity of training or experience and getting qualifications to climb up the ladder.

"But racism in the workplace is now often more subtle than overt. Obviously, it’s important that trade unions combat racism. One of the keys to this is to have more black trade union reps.

"If you compare Britain now to what it was two or three decades ago, I would say we are a more multicultural society. But at a more extreme level there has been racial murders and the State has carried out gross miscarriages of justice and we also see a rise in Black deaths in custody. Also there is the racism stirred up around asylum seekers.

"The majority of Black and Asian people live in poor housing conditions. A good example of what could be done to combat this was shown in Liverpool in the mid-1980s where the Militant-led city council built houses with front and back gardens in areas like Toxteth.

"In education there’s a need for more teaching about Black issues, that will allow Black people to be confident in their own history. There are far too many exclusions and suspensions of Black children in schools. That has a long-term effect and makes it more difficult for them to gain employment in the future.

"I don’t think most Black people would find being described as British as insulting because many were born in this country and put it down as their place of birth. But at the same time they have a dual approach or identity.

"Black people who are born in this country also see the fact that their roots are in Africa, the Caribbean or Asia, depending on where their parents or grandparents were born.

"In my workplace the Runnymede Report hasn’t provoked much discussion. But there has been a lot more discussion of issues following on from the Macpherson Report.

"UNISON have produced a number of action plans and recommendations, to tackle racism in the workplace and give more support to Black members, encouraging them to get more active in the union. Sadly, it’s taken the death of a Black teenager to bring forward these recommendations.

"Peter Hain, a government minister has said the reason Black people in Britain are alienated is because there’s no Black middle class, my reaction to that is quite simple. In America following the 1960s’ revolts there has been attempts to create a Black middle class but there is still a high level of racism. In South Africa, since the fall of Apartheid, there has also been an attempt to create a Black and Asian middle class but you still have shanty towns.

"So I don’t believe that simply by creating another layer of middle-class Blacks that you are going to halt racism in society."

 

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WHILE THE media circus follows the fortunes of big business-backed presidential hopefuls - Democrat Al Gore and Republican George Bush - they ignore the mass rallies organised in support of independent Left candidate, Ralph Nader. LYNN WALSH explains how Nader's campaign has tapped a growing anti-capitalist sentiment in the US.

Rallying against corporate capitalism

ONLY ONE candidate can attract thousands of enthusiastic, mainly young supporters to vibrant election rallies. While Gore and Bush perform at lavishly financed, carefully staged gatherings, Ralph Nader, standing on the Green Party ticket, has been filling $10-a-seat stadiums to capacity.

Nader reflects the radical mood of a layer of young people, especially students, crystallised by the anti-WTO protests in Seattle last December and continued through a sequence of protest actions. The mood is anti-corporate, against the plundering of underdeveloped countries, against sweat-shop labour at home and abroad, against the chasm of inequality, against the destruction of the environment.

A great variety of activists are involved, with many strands of ideas: environmentalists, anarchists, socialists, and many only just becoming politicised. From within this diverse movement, however, a clear anti-capitalist consciousness is emerging.

Massive audiences

AN ENTHUSIASTIC audience of 16,000 packed Madison Square Gardens in New York on 13 October. 12,000 filled the huge Boston's FleetCenter on 1 October. Before that, 10,000 attended Nader's rally in Portland (Oregon), 12,000 in Minneapolis, and 10,000 in Seattle.

On 3 October, there were over 9,000 outside the first Gore/Bush debate in Boston, protesting against Nader's exclusion from the three big debates. There was fury among the protesters when Nader, despite his invitation ticket, was not even allowed to sit in the audience.

Sponsored by big corporations, these 'debates' symbolise the determination of the Democrats and the Republicans to maintain their duopoly. They are really two rival factions of one big-business party. There is no real debate. Gore and Bush share 90% of the same agenda. They differ only on details - and on the best way to sell their packages.

The turnout at Nader's rallies is overwhelmingly of young people, mostly college students, but with many high-school students as well. There are also young workers and older people, though not many people of colour. They are overwhelmingly fresh faces, people not previously involved in politics in any way.

This is above all a spontaneous movement of the younger generation who cannot accept that the Democrats are in any way a progressive party. For them, the Clinton/Gore presidency has accelerated globalisation, strengthening the stranglehold of the banks and multinational corporations over the semi-developed and poor countries. They have continued high arms spending and launched military interventions against Iraq, Serbia, and other 'targets'.

At home, Clinton/Gore have slashed social spending, refused to restore workers' rights, encouraged the intensified exploitation of minorities and undocumented immigrants, and promoted capital punishment.

For this radicalised layer, Nader represents an alternative to the multi-billion dollar corruption of big-business politics. He offers the only independent alternative to the pro-corporation consensus of the Democrats and Republicans.

Nader himself is a veteran consumer rights campaigner. He came to prominence through his redoubtable campaigning against the big car-makers over safety issues. He launched Public Citizen and an array of non-profit advocacy groups, taking up consumer rights, health and safety and environmental issues, legal rights, and many other problems. In 1996 Nader fought a token campaign on the Green Party ticket.

Seattle, however, had a radicalising effect on Nader too. "The political system, under the corporate domination," he concluded, "is closing out the civil society. Citizens' groups can't get anything done any more."

It was time for people to "turn onto politics", to engage in political action. Pointing to the fact that most workers earn less today in inflation-adjusted dollars than they did 25 years ago, Nader says: "We live now in an apartheid economy. It's an economy of such staggering inequalities that mere words and statistics can hardly do it justice."

Radical populist

NADER CALLS for a liveable minimum wage of $10 an hour, for the repeal of oppressive labour laws, for a universal healthcare system, and for the abolition of capital punishment. In the course of the campaign, he has begun to put more emphasis on trade union and minority rights, undocumented immigrants, rights for women and lesbians and gays.

While relentlessly attacking the power and political influence of the big corporations, however, Nader is not a socialist. He advocates a radical extension of democracy to "tame the giant corporations" rather than taking the economy out of the hands of the corporations, which is really the only way it could be run democratically to meet the needs of the majority.

While campaigning on workers' conditions and rights, and appealing to unionised workers, Nader sees change coming through "building new political power, new economic power, new media power, new civic power for all Americans...", rather than through a mass movement of the working class. In other words, he is a radical populist rather than a socialist.

The key significance of Nader's campaign is not his platform but the role the Nader for President campaign is playing in mobilising and amplifying the wave of radicalisation triggered by the Seattle events. A radicalised layer is on the move, mainly students at the moment, but reflecting a mood developing amongst much wider sections of society.

Another sign of change has been the rising trend in strikes, with notable victories, for instance, by the janitors in Los Angeles and the Verizon telecomms workers in the north-east.

The radicalisation has continuously strengthened through Seattle, the anti-IMF/World Bank protests in Washington DC, and the protests at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia and the Democrats' Convention in Los Angeles. Following these actions, Nader's rallies have involved an extraordinary number of fresh people.

Bosses' Party

NADER'S MOST important contribution is that he decisively rejects the claim of the Democratic Party to be a 'progressive' or a 'left' party. "The only distinction between Bush and Gore," says Nader, "is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when their big corporations knock on the door."

Unfortunately, most of the trade union leaders and many of the 'old left' are still peddling the 'lesser-evil' line. However 'disappointing' the Democrats may be in office, they argue, the Republicans would be worse. They highlight the radical language Gore (undoubtedly worried by Nader) has been using during the campaign, attacking 'corporate power' and promising to help 'working families'.

But why did Gore select Lieberman as his vice-presidential candidate? Lieberman is on the extreme conservative wing of the Democratic Party, and played a prominent part in pushing the New Democrats to the right, stealing most of the Republicans' policies.

Any possible 'lesser-evil' benefit from a Democratic presidency is far outweighed by the advantages for the working class of taking long-overdue steps towards a decisive break with the capitalist Democratic Party. The US working class desperately needs a new party which will provide an independent political voice.

Unfortunately, the leaders of the fledgling Labor Party, which was launched in 1996 with the support of several unions, is still caught up in the pro-Democrat trap. A Labor Party is nothing unless it begins to fight in the political arena. Its failure to run any candidates in 2000 means that it has been completely marginalised during the campaign.

The potential support for candidates standing on a socialist platform, however, has been shown by the activity of Socialist Alternative, the Socialist Party's sister CWI party in the United States.

Immediately recognising the significance of Nader's campaign, Socialist Alternative (SA) helped initiate the Nader for President campaign (which is much broader than the Green Party) in several areas. Calling for a Nader vote, SA has given prominence to demands for papers for all undocumented immigrants, an end to police brutality, and the abolition of the death penalty.

In rallies and discussions SA has put forward the case for socialism and the need to build an independent workers' party. They are calling for Nader, after the 7 November election, to call a conference of the trade unions, the Labor Party, community campaigns and all those supporting his campaign, to discuss the launching of a new party. SA activists have had a tremendous response, selling record numbers of their paper, Justice, and of socialist literature, and bringing new members into their ranks.

'Molotov cocktail'

OPINION POLLS currently give Nader between 3% and 8% of the vote. One poll gives Nader 17% amongst people describing themselves as 'independents' and 18% amongst 'progressives'. Another poll gives Nader 10% amongst young people. The fact that Nader is offering an alternative, moreover, has probably helped reduce support to the ultra-rightwing, former Republican, Buchanan, now standing on the Reform Party ticket, to around only 1%.

It is possible, though not certain, that Nader will achieve over 5%, enough to give the Green Party federal election funds in the next election. That would indeed be "a political Molotov cocktail thrown into the voting booth," as Michael Moore, the radical documentary film-maker, recently said at a Nader rally.

In fact, whatever the percentage, Nader's campaign marks an important step forward in US politics. It has given independent expression to the radicalisation of a small layer that foreshadows the radicalisation of much wider layers of workers and the middle class. Already, it has delivered a blow to the two-party stranglehold.

Whatever the percentage achieved, Nader's campaign is helping to create the conditions for the development of an independent party of the working class.

  

 

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Can Brown's "cunning plan" buy off fuel protests?

THE PROSPECT of pickets resuming protests outside fuel depots may have receded following a secret meeting between the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, and the Road Haulage Association. It looks likely that Brown will make concessions to hauliers and people in rural areas to avert another crisis.

Dave Reid and Mariam Kamish

The protests were only called off in September to allow a 60-day period for the government to lower tax on fuel. That 60-day period ends on 13 November and if the government do not make concessions the protests could resume.

Some government ministers are reported to want to stick it out and use emergency measures against protests if they develop.

In the event of a new crisis the labour movement needs to be prepared to intervene immediately all over the country. During the last protests the government played a dirty tricks campaign to stop fuel getting through to vital services in order to discredit the pickets – in many areas this even extended to sanctioning the diversion of fuel that had been let out for the use of vital services. This was a very dangerous tactic that could have led to loss of life.

Some of the farmers’ leaders and the Tories behind them have their own agenda, based on discrediting not only the New Labour government but also the Labour and trade union movement. There's a power vacuum in the fuel protest movement that these forces are trying to fill and the labour movement must counteract that.

September’s pickets were a spontaneous movement with no centralised organisation. Since September some figures have stepped forward to claim the campaign’s leadership and to attempt to direct operations.

One such character is David Hanley, from Farmers For Action and the Countryside Alliance, whose contribution to the last protest was to tour around picket lines and eventually call a number of them off.

During his tours he was trying to get the lorry drivers and taxi drivers to accept the farmers’ leadership. He told them that the farmers had access to the best PR in the country through the Tories and the Liberals and that they would put these resources at their disposal if they would work with them.

He also kept promising them that the farmers could provide huge numbers on the picket lines "when the time was right", but politically it was best for them "to stay in the background at present".

If people like Hanley succeed in gaining the leadership then the movement could move to the right and become a ‘safe’ auxiliary to the Countryside Alliance. This would make it more difficult for the labour movement to win the support of a potentially very powerful section of the workforce.

HOWEVER, THE diverse nature of the movement and the urgency of the situation facing many truck drivers make that scenario unlikely at this stage. If the protests develop then it would provide another opportunity for the labour movement to draw this powerful industry back into its orbit.

The 1979 lorry drivers’ strike was organised by the TGWU and other unions and showed the power that organised workers can have in the industry. Employers came to TGWU picket lines to get dispensation to move essential goods during the dispute. Now the situation has become more complicated as more truck drivers are self-employed and fewer drivers are covered by national agreements.

But the fuel protests revealed the enormous power wielded by truck drivers, especially the largely unionised tanker drivers.

Within the labour movement there is an understandable scepticism, even hostility, towards independent truck drivers. Many workers have bitter memories of lorries crossing picket lines, none more so than in South Wales where the police escorted convoys of trucks across the region to supply the steelworks with coal during the 1984-85 miners’ strike.

However, trade union militants can also remember courageous action by truck drivers who refused to cross picket lines even when threatened with the sack. This is also a less homogenous section of the workforce than most other group of workers.

In September some truck drivers crossed the truck drivers’ picket lines. In the next few years many workers will face truck drivers on the picket lines. Will they be friends or foe?

The question for trade union militants is how best can truck drivers’ be drawn into the labour movement rather than shady right-wing organisations like the Countryside Alliance.

The TUC leadership is not concerned in the least about the success of trade union pickets, because they will do their utmost to prevent strikes in the first place.

Bill Morris, general secretary of the TGWU, recently revealed his real attitude towards strike action by his own members. He commented that it is best for all the tanker drivers to be drawn into the trade unions, not to strengthen the unions, but to bring the drivers under the discipline of the Tory anti-union laws that act as a strait-jacket on trade unionists in struggle.

The attacks of Morris and John Monks, general secretary of the TUC, on the truck drivers was not motivated by bitterness against drivers who crossed picket lines, but drew on this scepticism amongst trade union activists to divide them from the truck drivers and bolster support for Blair’s government.

At fuel depots across the country rank-and-file trade unionists supported the ‘blockades’. The majority of tanker drivers who refused to cross the picket lines were members of the TGWU, Morris’s union.

In Cardiff branch officials from the FBU and ambulance workers joined the picket lines to demonstrate their support and contradict the government propaganda. According to opinion polls the trade unionists supported the protests three to one.

Trade union militants should: Prepare to intervene in the November protests if they take place. Links should be built immediately between trade unionists in the emergency services and truck drivers. Liaison committees should be established to ensure that the fuel that the pickets allow through the lines does reach essential services and that the government and management is not allowed to create an artificial shortage in essential supplies.

 ACCORDING TO newspaper reports Chancellor, Gordon Brown is thought likely to make concessions to hauliers and people in rural areas to avert another fuel crisis, following secret meetings between Brown and the Road Haulage Association and farmers’ leaders.

What Brown is thought to be proposing is that he will make certain concessions on diesel prices and dramatically cut road tax in rural areas; primarily because people are more dependant on cars in rural areas where public transport is poor or non-existent.

The latter proposal has all the potential to cause as much difficulty for Labour as the poll tax did for the Tories. Even now, everyone will be phoning up relatives in rural areas to see if they can register their cars at a rural address. The days of the five car family in rural areas are fast approaching.

More importantly, how will an area be defined a rural and why should the rich in rural areas get away without coughing up for road tax? These and other questions will be aggravating Labour for a long time to come if they go ahead with this half-baked idea.

It is another New Labour attempt to buy off a revolt by making concessions to a small layer in society while ignoring the genuine anger and concerns of the mass of the people who are affected by high fuel and road taxes.

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