The Socialist Issue 207

LABOUR'S GLOSSY new manifesto says they want to contract state-run services out to private-sector firms. Behind the gloss lies a grubby plan. Workers are furious at Blair's "big idea". New Labour wants to put our public services at the tender mercies of big business.

Blair claims he won't run down the public sector and points to recent spending increases. But New Labour - and the Tories before them - have neglected public-sector spending for decades.

Even the recent increases only came after three years of very tight control by Labour. The capital investment budget of the Department of the Environment, for instance which covers transport, social housing and regional development, is still nearly 40% lower in real terms than in 1993 and 1994.

Now New Labour wants to fill in the gaps with money from profit-grasping pirates. Their experience with new hospitals built under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) shows the dangers.

Dudley Hospitals NHS Trust recently signed a PFI deal which gives companies such as McAlpines a chance to make profits out of local health services. The deal's estimated cost has already risen from £60 million to £137 million. No wonder Dudley hospital workers have held a series of strikes against PFI.

PFI means fewer beds. In Bedford and Durham hospitals there has been a 40% drop in beds. NHS workers suffer too. Union activists fear that they will earn poverty pay in newly privatised companies. That's hardly an incentive to keep staff in essential services.

Privatisation is massively unpopular. Just look at the chaos on the railways seven months after the Hatfield crash. That's what happens when private profit-makers, helped by huge subsidies from public money, run our basic services. Would you trust any of Railtrack's bosses to run your NHS?

New Labour are well advanced on this project to please the profit-crazed businessmen who are Blair's cronies.

We say keep the private vultures out! In fact all services privatised under Labour and the Tories should be renationalised.

We demand full public funding for our public services. Vote for Socialist candidates and fight for a society where working-class people run our services.

No To Low Pay

Break The Chains Of Poverty

LAST WEEK I met an 18-year-old girl who was on the same training course as me. Before she was 18 she worked in a sandwich bar opposite a Birmingham factory and was paid £2 an hour.

She had to buy her apron out of her wages. This cost £25. Her take home pay was £30 a week, and out of this £9 was taken up getting to and from work.

When she got a job in the canteen at a large office, she worked six days a week and was over the moon to earn £130 a week. There is no minimum wage for under-18s and for under-21s it is £3.70 an hour.

The effect of this is to lower the expectations of young people about what they will earn.

This is a deliberate tactic to hold down the wages for ordinary workers. An ICM poll in last Sunday's Observer newspaper shows that 52% of high earners support Blair and only 17% Hague and the Tories.

This shows who New Labour are interested in. None of the main parties have anything to offer low-paid workers.

Only a minimum wage of over £7 an hour, which the European commission says is necessary to guarentee the basic requirements of life in Britain, can lift low-paid workers out of poverty.

LAST SATURDAY Leicester Socialist Party members and members of the Leicester Radical Alliance took to the streets campaigning for Socialist Party member Steve Score, Leicester West Socialist Alliance election candidate.

Campaigning on the issue of low pay, they made a big impact with plenty of placards and people wearing manacles and chains etc in front of a huge display with the slogan: "No to low pay: Break the chains of poverty".

The Socialist - What we think

Labour's union links crack at seams

LAST WEEK'S decision of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) to loosen its financial links to the Labour Party is major step forward. Rejecting the recommendation of the union's executive, delegates to the annual conference voted by 27,000 to 23,000 to allow financial support to candidates opposing the Labour Party.

Coming as it did just days after Labour's Manifesto launch promising an ever-greater 'involvement' of private companies in public services, this was a timely response. It followed the early news coming from Wyre Forest that New Labour could well lose the seat to a Kidderminster hospital campaigner, such is the anger at the local attack there on the NHS.

With New Labour now so clearly another capitalist party, albeit of a more 'liberal' character than Hague's Tories, workers, public service users, and young people, need a new mass alternative, a new workers' party, to represent their interests.

The successful motion at the FBU conference, from the union's London region, reflected the experience of FBU members there. Having voted overwhelmingly last year to back Ken Livingstone for London mayor they had been compelled by the then FBU general secretary, Ken Cameron, to withdraw financial support for his independent candidacy.

Another telling argument was when the mover of the motion, a Socialist Party member, explained that under the previous policy the union would not be able to support the Socialist Alliance candidate in St Helens South, long-standing Labour Party member and FBU activist Neil Thompson, who has resigned from the Labour Party to stand against the millionaire ex-Tory MP, Shaun Woodward.

Significant though the FBU vote is, however, the experience even within that union shows that the process of building a new working class party will not be a straightforward one. The London region that moved the resolution to loosen the links, for example, also calls for Ken Livingstone to be re-admitted to the Labour Party.

Reflecting a lingering ambivalence amongst some sections that perhaps the Labour Party could be 'reclaimed', there is also a lack of confidence that a viable alternative to New Labour can be built. Significantly, a motion from Bedfordshire FBU, which explicitly argued for disaffiliation from the Labour Party and support for the Socialist Alliance, was withdrawn when early soundings showed that it would be defeated.

The Kidderminster candidate, Dr Richard Taylor, also sees the electoral successes of the hospital campaign as starting "a revolt against the major party political system" (Guardian, 26 March). But at this stage it is seen as an 'independent revolt', not linked to a national alternative.

A good showing by Socialist Party, Socialist Alliance and Scottish Socialist Party candidates in the general election will increase the weight of The Socialist's arguments that a new workers party is necessary. Clarity within the Socialist Alliance, on the need for a federal structure that can accommodate workers moving onto the political plane at different speeds, and even on the need for a new workers' party, will also be important.

But it will be mainly events, of workers responding to the deepening crisis that a second-term Labour government will face, that will fill out the processes signposted by the FBU decision and the Kidderminster campaign into the basis for a new mass workers' party.

Asylum - Labour and Tories up the stakes

THE SECOND week of the general election has seen the parties descend into further Americanisation of political campaigning. Despite the spat between the parties over tax and spend, voters are in reality unable to put a Rizla paper between them in their enthusiastic support for big business.

Desperate to make headway in the election, Hague's Tories have tried to put clear blue water between them and Labour over social issues like law and order and asylum.

Like in the US, where politicians compete to see how many people in death row they can execute, Tories and Labour have been competing in a Dutch auction to see who has the most repressive policies in both asylum and crime.

Rather than address the real complexity of both issues, Hague and Widdecombe say they will lock up all asylum seekers, regardless of the individual's circumstances, in specially built, barbaric detention centres. Straw says he will impose an arbitrary quota which will see tens of thousands of refugees forcefully ejected without any right to appeal.

Waiting in the wings is David Blunkett, rumoured as being lined up to be Home Secretary after the general election. Newspaper leaks say he has been specifically instructed to get tough with asylum seekers.

All of these approaches, which have been sharply condemned across the board, will not resolve the issues surrounding asylum seekers, nor will they address the growing anxieties that these politicians have whipped up. Recent opinion polls have shown contradictory findings about asylum seekers' plight. But the continual playing of the race card by the Tories, which Labour pander to and union leaders leave unchallenged, has given increasing succour to those raising racist ideas about asylum seekers.

None of the Westminster parties will address the real issues of job security, housing, social conditions and the state of local and national public services that lead to working-class people's anxieties and possible prejudices. It is only the socialist candidates who will argue and fight for a massive increase in public spending to improve working-class people's lives and undercut any growing prejudices.

And it is through advancing a socialist programme to end the inequalities fostered by capitalism, that refugees and asylum seekers will be provided with a humane and secure solution to the problems they face.

(There will be a feature in next week's Socialist about asylum seekers and the election)

Fat Cat at Wakefield Mayor's Ball

"AT LAST, I've got someone I can vote for!" exclaimed the traffic warden as he looked over to the Socialist Party stall being set up outside Wakefield Town Hall.

It was the placard saying: "Mick Griffiths vows only to accept a worker's wage", which caught the eye of this former Labour voting ex-miner who had decided never to vote Labour again.

Our Socialist Alliance manifesto launch didn't get any press coverage but it did cause a stir at the Town Hall.

Our stunt coincided with the 'Mayor-making' ceremony at the town hall, so very nervous council staff called security and the police to have us moved on.

As this was only the day after the 'Prescott-egg', I think they were all a bit worried that our Fat Cat was going to invite himself to the Mayor's ball.

Socialist Alliance hits the airwaves

THE SOCIALIST Alliance election broadcasts went out on Tuesday 22 May and generated a huge response from people interested in socialism.

Socialist Party councillor Dave Nellist was the presenter of the radio election broadcast which went out on BBC and commercial radio.

And film director Ken Loach's party election broadcast appeared on BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5.

Actress Julie Hesmondhalgh, who plays Haley in Coronation Street has decided to switch her support from Labour to the Socialist Alliance.

She says that she finds Tony Blair "pseudo-presidential, egomaniacal and quite flippin' scary".

Julie commented: "Politicians clamour to be associated with Coronation Street. It's the common touch thing - let's make out we're just like ordinary folk because we watch Corrie, too.

"And it's also a nice distraction method: it's like, get everybody fired up about freeing Deidre, then they'll all be more interested in what's going on in Weatherfield than what's going on in Westminster and Iraq."

Students and Socialist councillors fight fees' threats

A LIVELY demonstration of around 40 people gathered on Wednesday 16 May to protest against Coventry university's punitive actions against students unable to pay their fees.

Socialist Councillor Rob Windsor, who is the Socialist Alliance parliamentary candidate in Coventry South, handed in a letter of protest from the Socialist Party group on Coventry city council to Dr Mike Goldstein, Vice-Chancellor of the university.

Speakers at the protest made it clear that the real problem lies with the New Labour government who imposed fees and scrapped maintenance grants for students at university. Since 1998, when fees were introduced, university funding has gone down by 7%.

According to university press statements there are still 625 non-payers who have been sent exclusion notices. These students have been "blocked" from access to university facilities such as the library and computers since early April, just at the time students needed access to the facilities most.

Notices have been posted around the university telling excluded students: "You are not entitled to take any of your examinations".

The university is allowing them to take them "on a provisional basis" but says they will refuse to mark the papers until they receive the full fees.

All kinds of students have been excluded and the university's actions will force a number of non-payers to just drop out of university. Already one in three undergraduates fails to finish their degree; financial problems is the biggest single reason. But even the non-payers who somehow manage to borrow the money to stay and finish their courses will get lower grades than they are capable of.

Particularly for the universities with more students from poorer backgrounds, fees are becoming unworkable. The levels of non-payment are hard for them to sustain.

But the only solution to this problem is for universities to campaign publicly for the abolition of fees. Attacking students' rights will not help the situation.

While we continue the campaign to defend non-payers against the university's strategy of exclusions, the Socialist Party and Socialist Students are taking the issue to Labour candidates in Coventry. The campaign to reinstate free university education for all is growing.

Green Party - A serious Left alternative?

THE PROSPECT of voting for one of the three main pro-capitalist parties in this election makes many working-class people cringe.

Amrita Huggins

New Labour has alienated vast layers of the population, in particular working-class and young people who may have supported them in the last election. Liberal Democrats offer no alternative to Blair's cuts and privatisation while the wretched Tories could, deservedly, face their worst result since 1832 according to opinion polls.

The turnout on 7 June is likely to be far lower than 1997 but many people will want to vote for an alternative party.

Issues of food safety and farming practices have come to the fore recently. The outbreak of foot and mouth disease has raised deep concerns about corporate disregard for the environment. Some voters may be drawn to the ideas of the Green Party, seeing it as a Left alternative to Labour, particularly where there is no socialist alternative to vote for.

The Green Party's policies and manifestos focus mainly on "environmental sustainability" and the establishment of a 'green' society, but they also make some important points on the nature of the present global economy and the suffering and inequality that inevitably result from capitalism.

But we'd challenge their conclusions on such international 'free trade' agreements and institutions as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Union etc. These institutions are used to undermine workers' rights and further the interests of international capital.

The Greens call for "an urgent programme of reform and innovation based on existing bodies" and for replacement of the WTO with "a more accountable, decentralised body". They imagine that we can somehow tame these organisations and use them to advance our interests.

But how can we reform an institution that's controlled by - and exists only for the benefit of - multinationals and major capitalist economies?

The IMF and World Bank for example, say that countries seeking loans should accept Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). These programmes insist that all rules about how firms operate are torn up in "deregulation" and they insist on their opening up their economies to the multinationals.

Anti-capitalist?

THOUSANDS OF young people who joined recent anti-capitalist demonstrations in Prague, Nice, Quebec etc, support our call to overthrow capitalist institutions.

These bodies merely carry out the demands of the ruling class. Merely calling for their reform ignores the role they play in the capitalist system.

The main weakness in the Greens' programme is its lack of proposals as to how society can be changed. Alternatives posed by the Greens to the present globalised market include local economic management and planning and decentralisation of power to local communities.

But what do these phrases actually mean? Socialists see the need for a planned economy to replace the madness of the market system, but this can only be achieved by taking the means of production and industry under democratic working-class control.

This is why we call for the public ownership, or renationalisation, of the top 150 companies in Britain including the transport system, that is constantly under threat of privatisation.

Globalisation is the inevitable product of the development of productive forces. We can't reverse this process merely by promoting small, local businesses and economies. We need real change in the way society is run.

Putting pressure on companies that endanger the environment and local people's health is important. But measures such as pollution restrictions and eco-taxes have a seriously limited impact when implemented in a system that puts profit before all else.

Polluting companies will use any loopholes in the law or, if their profits are seriously threatened, flaunt the restrictions altogether as we've seen the US government do with the Kyoto agreement.

Environmental issues will become increasingly important in years to come. The Socialist Party has led and won working-class struggles against environmentally damaging corporations, for example, in 1999 the campaign to shut down SARP, the toxic waste plant in Killamarsh near Sheffield.

The Greens play some role in exposing the hypocrisy of the pro-capitalist parties and raising the profile of the environmental movement.

No doubt they will make gains in the coming elections as people turn in disgust from New Labour.

But many working-class people are searching for a party that will fight for their interests even if it has to take on the capitalist system, one that will fight outside of the electoral field.

The Socialist Party is proud of its history of campaigning alongside working-class people as well as gaining six seats on local councils.

We call for a vote for Socialist Alternative and Socialist Alliance candidates to be elected to parliament as socialist MPs on a worker's wage.

Plaid Cymru - good old fashioned socialism?

IN ITS manifesto, Plaid Cymru/The Party of Wales (the Welsh nationalist party), aims to appeal to disenchanted Labour voters, a programme described by President Ieuan Wyn Jones as "good old fashioned socialism". But is it? GEOFF JONES of Socialist Party Wales examines this claim.

ONE FEAR haunting the Welsh Labour Party is the fear of massive gains by Plaid Cymru. Between 1997 and the 1999 Assembly elections, Plaid's vote nearly doubled, making them Wales' second largest party with 28% of the vote to Labour's 38%. And their gains were in working-class South Wales, Labour heartland for nearly a century, traditionally hostile to nationalism.

Wales is poor relative to the rest of the UK and has got poorer over the years of the Labour government (GDP per head dropped from 82% of the UK average to 79% between 1996 and 1998). But Plaid says nothing about the reasons for this poverty, ie a capitalist market economy.

They avoid the fact that the Welsh economy still depends primarily on manufacturing - on multinational firms who close a factory at a day's notice with no comeback. Wales is going to be hit far worse than the rest of Britain by the economic downturn (over the last three months, unemployment in the rest of the UK has gone down by 1.2%, in Wales it has actually risen by 1.2%!).

Plaid only mention in passing the destruction of the Welsh steel industry by CORUS and make no demands for the renationalisation of steel.

Their only reference to nationalisation, or any democratic workers' control over the economy is the nationalisation of Railtrack - not the rail companies - with the government buying up Railtrack's shares!

Manifesto

PLAID POINT to welfare cuts, disguised by New Labour spin, and that because poverty is higher in Wales, facilities are even more stretched than in other parts of the UK.

At the moment, public money is allocated to Wales on the basis of population relative to the population of Britain as a whole (the 'Barnett Formula'). Plaid points out rightly that Wales is poorer and so requires relatively more spending on health and social services. They demand money from the Treasury is allocated on the basis of need rather than a head count.

Plaid's manifesto although well to the left of New Labour is very far short of socialism.

Its policies offer no more than the old warmed-over policies of previous Wilson/Callaghan Labour governments - governments that in the face of capitalist opposition massively cut public spending on welfare and allowed unemployment to rocket upwards. Labour Chancellor Denis Healey in 1974 famously boasted of "squeezing the rich till the pips squeak" - only to abandon higher taxes on big business and the wealthy under pressure from a 'strike' of finance capital.

Social reforms without measures of socialist nationalistion carried through by a mass working-class movement will inevitably be neutered by opposition from the capitalist class.

Indeed, Plaid's record in local councils such as Rhondda/Cynon/Taff has shown that they will not even fight against implementing cuts in jobs and services imposed by central government.

Plaid has to walk a careful path, attracting new working-class support without alienating their traditional supporters in the countryside. They don't say if they are for or against hunting. Similarly, while supporting reform of the Common Agricultural Policy they do not criticise the stranglehold of rich farmers and supermarkets over agricultural production.

Many Welsh workers may vote Plaid Cymru where they have no genuine socialist alternative. But more and more are realising that the programme put forward by Socialist Party Wales and its parliamentary candidates standing under the banner of the Welsh Socialist Alliance represents the only way forward.

SNP: Standing up for big business

THE SCOTTISH National Party's (SNP) election slogan is "Standing up for Scotland". A more appropriate slogan would be 'standing up for big business'.

The SNP used to be widely perceived as a radical, left-wing alternative to New Labour. But the SNP's rapid shift to the right has seen them drop like a hot brick their previous policy commitment to public ownership.

After the chaos on the rail network, and despite the overwhelming support for the renationalisation of the railways in Scotland and throughout Britain, the SNP have refused to back renationalisation.

In the 1970s the SNP stood under the slogan of "it's Scotland's oil". Today, the SNP leadership argue for a portion of oil revenues to be invested in international bonds and equities so as to produce a long-term oil fund for future investment in public services. This is at a time when the international stock markets are in a tailspin and the downturn in the USA threatens a full-blown world recession.

The illusions of the SNP leadership in the markets to provide for a "prosperous" Scotland are almost laughable.

Kenny McKaskill the SNP's employment spokesman demands the "promotion of an entrepreneurial culture" in Scotland and that "Scotland needs to be a player tuned to the global economy". In other words, the needs of multinational corporations like Motorola which is closing its Bathgate plant with 3,200 job losses.

The SNP policy is for major cuts in corporation tax for big business to assist with inward investment. When the idea of a windfall tax on the oil companies' profits was raised following the fuel crisis, and the announcement of record profits for Shell, BP and others, SNP convenor John Swinney condemned the proposal as it would "act as a disincentive to investment".

Despite the unpopularity of New Labour the SNP have failed to make a big impact in recent by-elections and opinion polls. The SNP have responded by introducing a series of policies that are aimed at convincing the working class that they are a Left alternative to Labour.

The nationalists have promised to increase the minimum wage to £5 an hour within two years and scrap the lower rate for 18- to 21-year-olds.

They have opposed the reliance on PFI privatisation schemes and have put forward a Scottish Public Investment Trust that would offer a cheaper alternative to the PFI/PPP schemes.

They are also committed to free education at some time in the future. Under the impact of a growing anti-capitalist mood the SNP could be forced to the Left.

In the general election the SNP may make some modest gains in terms of seats. But mainly as a result of their at times indistinguishable policies from the other big business parties, they will not make sweeping advances at this stage. That could well change under the impact of the economic carnage sweeping its way from the US.

But because they are tied to the interests of big business, the gains the SNP can make in the future will mean that they will fail to satisfy the needs of the working class of Scotland.

The International Socialists, who are working to build the Scottish Socialist Party with a clear Marxist programme, argue that workers' interests are independent to those of the bosses and the SNP leadership.

Even the struggle for independence will require that the working class armed with a socialist programme take the lead in a fight for both national democratic rights and socialist internationalism.

We will campaign for an independent socialist Scotland to be part of a wider voluntary socialist alliance of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland as a step towards a socialist confederation of Europe.

The above is an edited version of an article from International Socialist the paper of the International Socialists, Committee for a Workers' International (Scotland).

Further details contact the SSP on 0141 221 7714 and International Socialists (CWI Scotland) on 01382 833759.

THE THREE main parties of big business have all made law and order a central plank of their election programmes. Each accuses its opponents of being 'soft on crime'. MICHAEL LAWRENCE, a criminal justice worker, discusses the issues behind the law-and-order debate and asks how socialists should counter the capitalist parties' offensive on crime.

Law and order:

Soft on a criminal system

DON'T LET anyone tell you voters have no choice in this election. Vote for PC Blair and you are promised thousands more police on the streets, more support for the victims of crime, and a no-holds-barred clampdown on villains.

Alternatively, you could vote for PC Hague and get thousands more police on the streets, and - well, the same again.

Meanwhile, PC Kennedy is slightly concerned that what PC Blair and PC Hague are doing is "undermining civil liberties". At the same time, he feels we need thousands more police on the streets, more support for victims of crime and a no-holds-barred...

In the last eight years, the official debate on criminal justice has been driven to the right. In 1991 a Tory Home Secretary said prison was "an expensive way of making bad people worse". Judges were told to consider alternatives to custody and where they did pass custodial sentences, simply "make the punishment fit the crime".

A few years later, Michael Howard as Home Secretary announced: "prison works". Soon Tony Blair as shadow home secretary was starting his campaign to turn Labour into a party of big business by competing with Howard under the slogan "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime".

Having conquered the Tories' territory, New Labour has kept up a ceaseless round of legislation, press releases and reports on criminal justice. The right to trial by jury has been attacked, so far unsuccessfully, and Labour has raised the possibility of prosecutors being able to reveal defendants' past convictions in court in certain circumstances.

This would lead to more miscarriages of justice, with the scales tipped against an innocent defendant with a record.

In February, a government report announced 100,000 'persistent offenders' are responsible for over half of all crime.

On 'zero tolerance' principles imported from the United States, Labour resolved to target this group with "increased severity of punishment" for each conviction. It pledged to track 2,500 of them 24 hours a day!

However, the document admits the membership of this 100,000 is constantly changing. In other words, there is no list of 'usual suspects' for the authorities to pursue. Significantly, the crime section of the Labour Manifesto runs to hundreds of words but doesn't mention this.

The Guardian says such ideas will lead to people being sentenced for what they are, not for what they have done and points out this is just a new version of Howard's 'two strikes and you're out'. In the USA, it "led to a life sentence for a pizza slice theft" (Guardian 16 May).

Soundbite justice

AS WITH Labour's naughty 100,000, the reality behind criminal statistics is more complicated than in the soundbites of capitalist politicians.

Over much of the 1990s, recorded crime fell in the USA. The apostles of 'zero tolerance' immediately claimed credit. But others pointed out that over the same period there was a fall in the number of young men in the 15-30 age group, the classic pool from which offenders are drawn and the crack-cocaine epidemic in American cities declined.

Labour says its policies have cut recorded crime. But some commentators say violent crime is still rising. Meanwhile, recorded crime only accounts for a third of all crime.

All the capitalist politicians pose as the friend of the victims of crime. Labour is pushing the old idea of victims having an input to the criminal justice process and offering opinions on the sentences given to their assailant (or at least, the person convicted).

But if two victims of the same type of crime adopt different views on each defendant and their opinions affect the court's decision, this will undermine any principles of fairness.

How much do the establishment parties really care about victims? Last week, in a Bush-style dirty broadcast, the Tories hurled allegations about a government tagging scheme, which their spokesperson had supported, leading to rapes taking place.

Earlier Labour had exploited the same issue by changing the law to prevent defendants in rape trials cross-examining their alleged victims.

Rape is one of the most traumatic crimes. But many rape crisis centres, which offer long-term support to victims, can no longer operate.

Law-n-order politicians have slashed the funding for these and other groups at local and national level. So much for 'supporting victims'!

Roots of crime

Socialism means a society based on human solidarity, with the mass of the population exerting democratic ownership and control of production.

Socialists do not condone or idealise genuine crime - as opposed to the new 'offences' which criminalise legitimate demonstrations and other kinds of innocent behaviour.

A 'life of crime' is no way out for working-class youth, or anyone. Sometimes people enter upon lawbreaking as a form of raw protest against the system. But individual bids for 'liberation' like this generally end in the brutalisation and waste of prison.

Working people pay for crime. First as the main victims of burglary and then through our taxes for the police and the apparatus of state power over which we have no control.

Finally, we pay with the loss of our civil liberties, when capitalist governments get away with using the supposed 'war on crime' to increase police powers and roll back rights to free speech, public assembly and so on.

The amount of money lost by top supermarkets through theft, for example, is trivial compared to their profits. Socialist lose little sleep over this loss. But ordinary people are made to pay for this through increased insurance premiums and security systems.

Workers and youth should take collective political action to campaign for public ownership and do a 'supermarket sweep' of these and the other big corporations which have a stranglehold over our lives.

We understand why people trapped in poverty, or desperate to get drugs they've become dependent on, may be driven to shoplifting. But we believe in fighting inequality and support the case for a change in society.

We expose the social roots of crime, including poverty, low pay, 'hidden' unemployment, a crisis-ridden education system and the catastrophic de-industrialisation which has taken place in many working-class communities as a result of Labour and Tory market policies.

Capitalist ideology does the exact opposite. Apologists for the system are intent on obscuring the real causes of crime. Instead they demonise individuals who get caught up in the criminal justice system.

Instances like the tragic death of the toddler James Bulger are milked ruthlessly by the tabloid press, big business politicians, police chiefs and others. They are wheeled out to reinforce demands for get-tough policies and help perpetuate the idea of a minority of wicked outcasts beyond the pale of 'respectable' society.

Yet, a survey by Mori for the government's own Youth Justice Board has just revealed a quarter of secondary school students admit to committing crime. For young people excluded from school the proportions are two-to-three times higher.

Criminal justice offensives are justified to protect the 'little man and woman'. In reality, at elections, hang 'em, flog 'em policies are targeted mainly at the upper middle class and wealthy voters of so-called 'Middle England' whom capitalist parties fall over themselves to please.

Between elections, big business propaganda on crime is designed to keep working people in line. Ultimately what is at stake isn't cars, mobile phones or garden gnomes, but the wealth and privileges of the ruling class.

Democratic control

TONY BLAIR'S '100,000 persistent criminals' are not the latest tragic generation of youth drawn into an offending lifestyle. They're the tiny unelected minority of super-rich shareholders, at the top of a few major companies, who control the bulk of industry and land and exercise a stranglehold over society.

Social phenomena such as petty offending are symptoms of the divisions in a problem-ridden capitalist society. Socialists do not condone real crime. At the same time, we do condemn the establishment political agenda behind the business parties' law-and-order bandwagon.

To get real justice we need to fight for social justice - a socialist society. With the power of the ruling class ended and the waste of capitalism removed, a completely fresh approach to justice could be implemented.

There would be no need for an expensive, brutal and racist prison system. These resources and more could be ploughed into alternatives which really support individuals in difficulty and genuinely serve the community.

Socialist planning would include a new democratic justice system under popular control, unlike the current set-up, where Crown Court judges on salaries of £100,000-plus who are completely insulated from the pressures of ordinary life, sentence ordinary people and lecture them about thrift and hard work.

Britain has a higher proportion of the population in prison than any EU state except Portugal. The dictatorships in Burma, China and Saudi Arabia have lower imprisonment rates than Britain.
Over the period 1925-1985 there were only six major acts of Parliament on criminal justice, while between 1986 and 1998 there were ten.
In the last 20 years, there have been over 80 pieces of criminal legislation. During the same period conviction rates fell from 18% of all recorded crime in 1980 to 9% last year.
Since 1997 the number of prison inmates has grown by 6,000 above the record level left by Tory home secretary Michael Howard.
No extra criminals were convicted - the courts simply passed longer sentences.
Labour's ten-year Criminal Justice Plan provides for 2,700 new jail places.
However reports suggest that its sentencing policy could actually require over 12,000 extra prison units.

No to a bosses' Europe

Fight for workers' unity

ONE OF the media's big general election issues is whether Britain should join the European Monetary Union (EMU) during the next government.

Judy Beishon

Britain is part of the bosses' European Union (EU) but both Tory and Labour governments have resisted signing up to EMU, which would mean replacing the pound with the Euro.

New Labour would prefer the whole issue to remain in the background during the election campaign, as they are split and wavering on what to do. To put off a decision, they have promised to hold a referendum on the Euro within two years of forming the next government, and will recommend adoption of the new currency if five economic criteria are met.

Tory divisions

HOWEVER, TORY leader, William Hague, is intent on highlighting Europe in an attempt to boost his poll ratings. He is trying to court the over two-thirds of voters opposed to British entry into the Euro zone, by whipping up nationalist sentiment and posing as an anti-Brussels figurehead.

In doing this, he has great trouble with his party, due to the deep divisions that exist. Some leading Tories are pro-Europe, while others go even further than Hague in a Euro-sceptic direction; they refuse to accept his promise to rule out the Euro in the next term of government, in favour of ruling it out forever. Some call for complete withdrawal from the EU.

The differences between the official New Labour and Tory positions are not any indication of a left-right divide between the parties but are simply a reflection of the fact that the capitalist class in Britain is divided on Europe, with a section favouring adoption of the Euro, and a section being against. A Reuters survey in February this year showed the top 350 companies as favouring joining the Euro by two to one.

However, a poll of manufacturers in the Financial Times a month later stated only 29% of them supported the government's 'in principle' policy, and 36% supported a more wary position of 'wait and see'.

Euro trading bloc

THIS DRIVE for monetary union by the political representatives of capitalism in many European countries stems from their desire to end the trading obstacle faced by the multinationals through currency fluctuations and to create a bloc that could rival the world's other main trading areas, in particular the Americas dominated by U.S imperialism.

The course towards greater European integration was also used by European governments to unleash programmes of cuts and wage restraint on their working classes in the name of meeting the criteria for currency union - the Maastricht criteria.

Recently there have been concessions in some countries, made under pressure from below. Greek workers held a successful general strike on 26 April, followed by a second general strike on 17 May, which paralysed public and private sectors and forced the government to withdraw an attack on pensions.

In France, the employers' federation was forced to back off from an attack on pensions after workers pressure. However, any lessening of the pace of the onslaught on workers' living standards is only temporary, as the plans and pressure of top European financiers and industrialists are for continued cuts in public expenditure in the interests of their profits.

In Britain, New Labour have set out spending plans up to 2004 which means we will suffer an even lower level of public spending as a percentage of GDP (economic output) in 2004 than we had at the end of the last Tory government. However, top EU representatives have attacked this pitiful level of spending as being excessive, because it violates the EU stability and growth pact for countries seeking to join EMU!

This is when European economies are still just about growing. As the fast-approaching recession sets in, governments will attempt greater attacks to try to prevent budget deficits from spiralling upwards, provoking huge workers' anger in the process.

For Euro zone governments, this will initially be the only option open to them. They will no longer be able to alleviate economic crisis by altering interest rates or devaluing their currency.

The strait-jacket of the Euro with the dictates of the European Central Bank will prove an impossible burden for the weakest economies in particular, making a 12-country Euro zone unviable on a permanent basis.

Class interests

The arguments of Tory and New Labour politicians do not stop at the single currency. Hague is also calling for renegotiation of several major EU treaties, including the recent Nice treaty.

Hague represents the interests of a section of the British capitalist class who do not believe their best interests are served by many of the EU projects. However, the Nice summit revealed clearly that even the strongest representatives of the pro-integration capitalists in Europe are completely unable to develop integration as far as they would like, because they all fiercely defend their own national interests.

At the summit, there was a major argument over voting rights, they failed to reach agreement on the planned 60,000-strong Rapid Reaction Force and they did not agree any details regarding allowing more countries into the EU.

Most trade union leaders argue that British membership of EMU would lower interest rates making manufacturing exports to Europe cheaper and more competitive, thereby protecting workers' jobs.

However, there is no certainty that joining EMU would improve the position of British capitalism vis-ˆ-vis its European competitors, nor guarantee workers' jobs.

When Tory chancellor Norman Lamont effectively devalued the pound against other European currencies following the crisis of Black Wednesday, September 1992, any competitive edge was squandered on increased shareholder dividends and boardroom bonuses.

Also, while exports may become cheaper the corollary is that imports would become more expensive, increasing inflationary pressures.

Even if British capitalism enjoyed a 'level playing field' with its EU counterparts it wouldn't have necessarily prevented factory closures and large-scale job cuts at Ford Dagenham, Motorola, Corus steel, etc. These job losses are a consequence of overcapacity and overproduction in world markets - a classic symptom of capitalist crisis. Britain lax employment laws also makes it easier to sack workers.

Socialist programme

SOCIALIST PARTY election candidates reject all the arguments of both pro-Europe and Euro-sceptic politicians of the three main political parties in Britain. The EU and all its projects are not in the interests of working people anywhere in Europe.

Neither is it in the interests of workers in Britain to support the Euro-scepticism of a section of the British ruling class.

We say no to a capitalist Europe in any form, and we fight for a socialist Europe. This will be a democratic, socialist confederation of Europe in which the major companies have been taken into public ownership under working-class control and management, so that the needs of all can be met.

Middle East - Edging closer to all-out war

FOR THE first time since the start of eight-month-long second Intifada, Israeli air-force F16 jets were used to bomb targets in the Palestinian Authority killing ten Palestinians in the process.

Kevin Simpson

This has enraged the Arab masses across the Middle East and pushes the region closer to an all-out war.

The F-16 operation followed a bombing attack by a Hamas suicide bomber in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya that killed five Israeli Jews. Hamas, on claiming responsibility for this attack, said that the bombing was in response to the killing of five Palestinian policemen by the Israeli Defence Force a few days before described by Israeli officials as a "security mistake".

Recent indications by representatives of US imperialism that behind the scenes negotiations - based on a cessation of violence and the recommendations of the US-sponsored Mitchell Commission leading to a new "peace" agreement - have been literally pounded into rubble.

The last eight months has graphically shown that capitalism can provide no solution to the national conflict in the Middle East.

The increasingly brutal repression meted out by the Israeli ruling class against an out-gunned Palestinian population has merely fanned the flames of resistance amongst the Palestinians.

The corruption and betrayal of the PLO leadership means that in the absence of any other alternative, many Palestinian youth have turned to the extreme Islamic group Hamas. However, their tactics of bombing Israeli civilians has been completely counter-productive, driving large sections of the Israeli working class into the arms of the most reactionary groups in Israel.

Socialist activists cannot support these individual bombing attacks. These tactics will not force US imperialism or the Israeli ruling class to concede a genuine Palestinian state but will increase the social foundations of support for Israeli capitalism.

However, the continued military repression by the Israeli ruling class will not succeed in crushing the resistance of the Palestinian masses to struggle for their social and national liberation.

Illegal settlements

In the Gaza strip, Israeli bulldozers have flattened 11,000 square metres of farmland and destroyed 94 houses as part of a process of creating a security buffer zone on Palestinian land around the settlements which divide up the Palestinian Authority area into cantonments. Once the area has been cleared it is occupied by more Israeli settlers in mobile homes.

Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, criticised the use of F-16 fighter jets against Palestinian targets. Yet this military hardware was provided by the US in the first place! When Cheney was asked if the US government would take any action against Israel he replied: "It's a very delicate situation".

Such criticism of the Israeli ruling class has nothing to do with the democratic rights of the Palestinian masses but a fear of the huge instability that a drift into regional war would lead to. As an editorial in the Financial Times (18 April 2001) stated: "...A continuing Israeli presence in Palestinian territory would only breed more anger among Palestinians. This could destabilise moderate Arab regimes and heighten feelings in the region... The new US administration's disengagement from Middle Eastern diplomacy and the European Union's inability to fill that vacuum may even have given Israel extra confidence".

In order to gain the initiative once again, US imperialism believed that the Mitchell Commission findings would provide a basis for further negotiations. This report calls for an end to violence on both sides and a freeze on the building of new Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

These recommendations will be derided by the mass of Palestinians. In the last seven years thousands of new Israeli houses have been built on Palestinian land through the expansion of already existing ones.

Even if negotiations started, any agreement would not hold because of the hardening attitudes on both sides of the national divide.

Only a struggle to overthrow capitalism in the region and create a socialist federation, where the working class on both sides of the national divide could discuss a solution to bitter conflicts that have distorted the development of the region, offers a way out.

There is a race against time to build a mass alternative like this. The only other alternative is a drift into more internecine conflict.

The Socialist 25 May 2001	Keep The Private Vultures Out
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Keep The Private Vultures Out

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