from Willie Telfer, SSP Campsie Strathkelvin Organiser
Many groupings look to their elders for sage advice on the future. This should be the case in relation to local labour activists approaching the independence referendum next year.
Willie Telfer (left) "Labour Party activists would do well to listen to Canavan and Charlie Gray - stalwarts of long standing commitment to true 'Labour' values."
Look at the position of the once giants of the local Labour party, Dennis Canavan and Charlie Gray. Names from the local past when a labour party branch was an integral part of the life of every town and village in Strathkelvin, where the pursuit through representation of social justice provoked large numbers of ordinary folk to become active to ensure their election to Westminster and to the Strathclyde region.
With their experience and their long standing commitment to true Labour values surely the modern day Labour activist would be well advised to listen to them on independence. Denis is of course a national co-chair for a Yes vote and is proving a powerful advocate who is respected by all in Scottish politics, he links independence with the opportunity to build a progressive society which could show the way for other progressive forces in UK . Gray would agree with that opportunity,though his recent declaration for independence is perhaps more targeted at the heart and soul of Scottish Labour and those activists that still carry the torch for socialism in an organization embarrassed by the very word.
The fact is that the Labour party in an independent Scotland would and should go back to being the mass party of the people,of the working class. It would be free of the shackles of chasing the minds of middle England, placating the Sun, the Mail and the Express, Old Scottish labour values for Scottish people, I believe they would see a regeneration of activism as they rediscover the cause.
The recent white paper on independence shows at present that amongst the larger parties the SNP have at least a decent idea of politics for a cause and in coalition with the SSP, the Greens and other forces on the left, the message of a fairer more just Scotland will gain the day.
I say the only place for a true socialist to be,no matter which party banner they fly, is in the yes camp. Don't take my word for it comrades, Canavan and Gray are calling you again to build a better country and to save the soul of the Scottish Labour party itself.
By Richie Venton, SSP national workplace organizer
25 May 2011
The annual conference of the UK’s fifth-biggest trade union, the Public & Commercial Services union (PCS), marked a decisive turning point in the resistance movement to public sector cuts.
The delegates there, representing 300,000 members, with branch mandates behind them, voted almost unanimously to ballot for strike action and action short of strikes, on the issues of jobs, pay and pensions.
They explicitly named 30th June for a one-day strike, and are seeking simultaneous strike action by other public sector trade unionists. Teaching unions – UCU, NUT and ATL – seem firmly committed to this day of united action. Other unions – UNITE and UNISON- have signed agreements with the PCS to combine and collaborate in anti-cuts action. Their leaderships should now move without delay to ballot members in affected areas for strike action to coincide with the plans for 30 June.
Build 30th June strike
And every other union in the public sector should be pressed from its branches, union reps and membership to follow suit. Even a partial general strike of public sector workers – numbering over 600,000 in Scotland alone – would be an industrial and political hurricane that could begin to blow the axe-wielding governments off course, at Westminster, Holyrood and local council levels.
There is no shortage of reasons for united action. Most people have yet to feel the full force of the storm of cuts descending on our workplaces and communities – apart from some of society’s most vulnerable, the sick and disabled, and big swathes of council workers.
Cameron and Clegg’s cuts orgy of £81billion includes £9bn being chopped off benefits for the sick and disabled. Over 5,000 of those hammered by these cruel cuts braved all obstacles to demonstrate in London last week. Protests in Scotland are being mounted against the vulture capitalists of Atos, the company hired to hand out callous, unprofessional, cost-cutting medical judgments that throw people off slightly higher rates of benefit.
Hurricane hits Scotland
But the looming assault on jobs – with economists predicting up to 100,000 job losses in Scotland – local services, pay and pensions are a cocktail about to explode and cause terrible social and human wreckage. The generalised nature of the attacks require a generalised response – a potent combination of direct action protests, united strike action, and hard-hitting arguments that explode the lie that cuts are either necessary or unavoidable.
Everyone would welcome the pre-election pledge of ‘no compulsory redundancies’ in the public sector from the Scottish government. But nobody should have to pay the price demanded for this promise – years of pay cuts and effectively a no-strike deal.
And one of the unions whose leadership was most craven in bowing down to a pay-cutting, conditions-hacking deal with COSLA – the EIS – has been given a rude lesson in the simple fact that weakness invites aggression. COSLA now wants to increase teaching hours; lengthen the working week; wipe out time protected for vital lesson preparation and marking; slash holidays and make them training days instead; and bring in fixed-term contracts for promoted teachers. All this on top of a two-year pay freeze 9at least a 10 per cent cut in reality).
Nobody is safe
Whether it is teachers facing this warfare from their employers, lecturers and students facing wholesale course closures and job losses, disabled people confronted by closure of their centres, or civil servants hit by closure of local offices in areas officially declared to be the unemployment blackspots of Scotland, nobody is safe. And that’s even before the £3.3bn cuts demanded of the Scottish government over the next two years.
The outcome of the Scottish elections was an attempt by besieged communities to find shelter from the storm of cuts issuing from Downing St. Mostly they entrusted the SNP to stand up for Scotland. The SNP made a good job of luring people into thinking they would do precisely that, and hid from view their spineless failure to stand up in defiance of the Westminster butchers’ £1.3bn cut to the Scottish budget last October.
And they cunningly disguised their plans to carry through cuts, not by defying and refusing to implement them, but by delaying them beyond the recent elections, stockpiling them, creating the conditions for a ‘double whammy’ of cuts over the next 2-3 years.
Demand SNP resist cuts
Now the SNP are in power, with hopes and expectations of protection raised. So anti-cuts campaigners – and in particular the STUC and various mass-membership trade unions – should demand the new government fulfils the hopes invested in them, use their popular mandate, declare unequivocally that they will refuse to pass on Westminster’s butchery, and mount a mass campaign of the Scottish people demanding the powers and the money to defend every single job, service, community facility, pay packet and pension.
Alex Salmond quite rightly immediately demanded of the London government an extension of powers for the Scottish government – including control over excise duties and Corporation Tax. But instead of demanding the latter to slash tax on big business to Southern Irish levels of 12 per cent – as Salmond clearly wishes to do – the unions should demand this extension of powers for Holyrood, not to reduce but to increase Corporation Tax to its pre-Thatcher level of 52 per cent – a policy that the PCS union shares with the Scottish Socialist Party.
Tax big business and the rich
That would enormously expand the funds available to the Scottish government, in order to build the best public services and welfare system in Europe, with a vast expansion of jobs, mopping up the criminal waste of a young generation left jobless, turning talent to the use of society as a whole.
One of the best possible ways of holding the newly elected Scottish government to account, of demanding they give material reasons for the “hope” and “vision” which they astutely preached to win the election, is to build a mass strike and rallies on 30 June. Public sector workers, students, communities, disabled people, pensioners … an army of resistance to the cuts on that day showing their angry determination, would not only rattle the severely weakened and divided ConDem Coalition, but also put the SNP government on the spot – not to mention an array of council leaderships who are busy slaughtering jobs, conditions and services.
Victories through action
In campaigning for 30 June to become a mass show of unity in action, we should be encouraged by several recent victories against cuts. Cameron, Osborne and others have been spewing out bellicose, bloodcurdling class warfare against workers and their unions, with for instance Osborne advising the Institute of Directors to “get stuck in” with even worse attacks on workplace health and safety regulations and more vicious anti-union laws than even Thatcher dared to wield. But alongside that, the ConDem government is executing more U-turns than the average professional ice-skater.
A mass petition frightened them into dropping plans to privatize the woodlands – but now they want to slash one in four Forestry Commission workers’ jobs.
As the interview with Willie Telfer of PCS [see below/box] reveals, their plans to crucify the coastguard service have been thrown into rapid meltdown by a powerful community and trade union campaign. And bosses in the Driving Services Agency have capitulated in the face of threatened strike action by PCS members against a brutal array of cuts they’d planned. Action works!
BA battles
Twin lessons on this theme arise from the 2-year-long battle conducted by BA cabin crews, members of the UNITE union.
These workers originally had no option but to strike against multiple attacks on their jobs, pay and conditions – including reduction of staffing levels for in-flight crews, and the introduction of new cabin crews on far worse wages and conditions, all imposed without even seeking talks with the union.
The UNITE members were driven to strike to defend union recognition, in order to defend their conditions against blatant attempts to wipe out both.
The tenacity of the cabin crew UNITE members has been remarkable, but a combination of anti-union laws and failure by the national union leadership to rapidly spread the action to the wider BA workforce left them in a dangerous stalemate, ruthlessly exploited by management, who launched a vicious press propaganda war, and meantime victimised strikers.
They disciplined and sacked UNITE union reps, ripped up union facilities previously agreed, and withdrew travel concessions from staff who had taken part in perfectly legal strikes. The battle went from defence of staffing levels and pay to one for the very survival of the union as a workers’ defence organization.
Now, faced with further strike ballots, BA bosses have conceded on most of their witch-hunt against the union, its reps and its members, restoring travel concessions to the strikers; restoring wages docked from crew off sick during the strikes; conceding union facilities again; and agreeing binding arbitration through ACAS on all the union reps who were victimized. A victory for the tenacious action of union members on those issues – but no concession whatsoever has been won on staffing levels and the galloping introduction of lower-paid new starts.
The twin lessons for other workers from this protracted struggle is that action forces concessions out of even the most hard-faced exploiters, but action in isolation from wider workforces severely weakens the chances of outright victory.
All out 30th June
Over 250,000 civil servants striking on 30 June, alongside tens of thousands of teachers and lecturers, would be a powerful body-blow to those in government hell-bent on making ordinary people pay for the bankers’ and billionaires’ wrecking ball to the economy.
But what an infinitely more potent weapon it would be if they were joined by EIS members facing the worst assault on their conditions in generations from COSLA; plus Scottish NHS staff who face 3.3 per cent cuts to health care this year and a future with redundancies, as Heath Boards seek to cut their deficits, according to new research by the British Medical Journal; and council workers who are already facing the brunt of pay cuts, work overloads and savage job losses?
Action and arguments
Every opponent of cuts, all who yearn a decent, civilized society that raises hopes fro the future and protects the most vulnerable, should work flat out to make 30 June the biggest and widest possible day of strikes and rallies.
Direct action protests against the perpetrators of cuts, combined with arguments for taxing the rich and taking wealth into public, democratic ownership, will help to raise the sights of people who otherwise despair at what the future holds.
The SSP will not flinch in helping build such actions and popularizing socialist alternatives to the cuts. We will stand up for Scotland – and demand the newly elected SNP government do the same, rather than asking for the power to cut taxes to the obscenely rich whilst sharpening the knives for the jobs, wages and public services that ordinary Scots depend upon.
Richie Venton spoke to Willie Telfer, PCS Dept for Transport Group Assistant Secretary
“There are 18 Coastguard stations in the UK. The government planned to centralize them into two super-stations.
There was huge uproar, for instance in Stornaway and Shetland, with mass community campaigns.
Coastguards tend to be ex-fishermen or seafarers, and live locally. There are also retained coastguards, with jobs ranging from the local church minister to civil servants. The service is a matter of life and death, and local communities know that. They know how absurd the government plan is, to leave only two stations, near Aberdeen and Southampton, over 600 miles apart!
So the fury was deep-rooted, with, for example, 250 at public meetings in Stornaway.
It was a mostly community-led campaign, with the scattered PCS membership (coastguards) joining in – with the open threat of strike ballots by PCS across the entire department for transport if there are any compulsory redundancies; driving examiners standing up for coastguards.
Faced with this uproar, the government has made it clear they are not going to stick to their original, crazy plan of only two stations, though it’s still unclear how many will be saved. This goes to show what pressure can achieve.
In another section of the Dept for Transport – the DSA – we have won an outright victory, this time led by trade union action.
The Cardiff DSA office does the admin for driving tests in England and Wales, and includes the Welsh language unit. DSA management wanted to close it down, to get their hands on the building, and made it plain there was no way they would back down.
PCS balloted and won a massive vote for strike action. The Cardiff PCS DSA branch led the big anti-cuts march to the Welsh Assembly; were prominent on the TUC’s 26 March demo, and won the backing of politicians from several parties.
This high profile campaign, and the mere threat of strike action, has forced the intransigent DSA management into a total capitulation, saving our DSA in Cardiff, but also winning five other union demands, including a moratorium on plans to shed 40 per cent of the Driving Test centres.
Fighting the cuts, you often run into those who say ‘it can’t be done’. These two examples prove the government and employers can be stopped – even before generalised, widespread action.
This government is a coalition, divided and weak. So June 30th is not just a show of strength, but another step on the road to halting the cuts. And within PCS, we are not just building for national action, but also encouraging action locally and within groups/departments. Whilst defending ourselves from the government sledgehammer we are not going to allow ourselves to be tickled to death!”
(Watch Willie Telfer speak at an anti-cuts rally in a personal capacity)
These three podcasts where the result of a public meeting in Kirkintilloch on March 12th 2011. They include the opinions of Left Banker, Raphie de Santos, SSP Councillor and West of Scotland top of Scottish Parliament Elections List candidate, Jim Bollan and local activist and Union representative, Willie Telfer (Click on their names to access the podcasts). Details of music and musicians on individual posts.
To download the MP3 of the podcasts to your ipod/mp3 player, go to the SSP Campsie podcasts archive HERE
The views expressed are the speaker’s own and not those of any other individual or organisation.
This weekend was the Annual General Meeting of the Scottish Socialist Party. Over 100 delegates from all over Scotland met in the Victoria Halls in Dunblane.
The Party re-iterated it's conviction to fighting the Parties of war and capitalism, and we were unanimous in supporting a fightback against cuts and the mainstream parties who are making the poor and working class pay for an economic crisis caused by the rich.
Willie Telfer, Campsie Branch, speaks to conference about why we need to fight the cuts and the neo-liberal Labour, Tory, SNP and Liberal Democrat Partys.
Allan Armstrong introduces the new "John Maclean Society" - a new society set up for non-domiciled supporters of the Scottish Socialist Party.
Bill and Willie, two of the leafletting team today. 1800 leaflets advertising the Public Meetings were delivered to households in Lennoxtown. (see leaflet HERE) PRESS RELEASE FROM CAMPSIE BRANCH SCOTTISH SOCIALIST PARTY
Public Meetings in Lennoxtown and Kirkintilloch
The Campsie Branch of the Scottish Socialist Party is holding two public meetings to highlight the futility of the war in Afghanistan and in opposition to the local and national cuts planned by all the major political parties.
The first meeting will be in Campsie Memorial Lesser Hall in Lennoxtown on Wednesday, 31 March at 7.30. Speakers will include Colin Fox (spokesperson for the Scottish Socialist Party and a former MSP), a member of the Afghan community in Scotland and local Party members. This will be followed by a further meeting in the Kirkintilloch Leisure Centre at 7.30 on 21 April. The SSP believes that neither the truth about our economic crisis nor the real reason for the conflict in Afghanistan is being told and the meetings will encourage discussion on these crucial issues.
Colin Fox said, “After 8 years of occupying Afghanistan, 50,000 civilian and 270 British deaths, it is time to support our troops and bring them home. Our politicians at Westminster ignore the polls showing 70% of Britons want our soldiers brought back home and have themselves shown, just as they did whilst they were fiddling their expenses, that they are completely out of touch with public opinion in this country.”
SSP Campsie Branch BBQ - Saturday 16th June - starting at 4pm, Mugdock Country Park. Transport details to follow.
Check out the Mugdock website and you will see that our BBQ coincides with an international music festival. Comrades come rally - with your instruments! And we can sing/ play some left wing music to the music fans!
Bring yer own food and drink - we will supply charcoal, fire, paper plates and music! Bring a banner/ flag!
Our next meeting is in Milton of Campsie Village Hall, at 7.30pm on Wednesday 13th JUNE. New members are welcome. We will be giving an update of the fantastic developments in the Twechar Housing Campaign (see below for update). Also, come with ideas on a new branch banner and topics you would like to hear speakers on - or discussions you would like to have in branch in the future.
All comrades in the branch will have recieved this letter from Joint Branch Organiser, Pamela Page. Click on image to read -
Twechar Miners Welfare - Monday 11th June 7.30 pm Since the Q&A session at Twechar Healthy Living Centre, confusion over the regeneration of Twechar has increased.
As one local resident put it - if you asked ten people who were at the meeting the same question you would get ten different answers!
People want answers to such questions as how many houses are being built and how many are being allocated to those being decanted? Where will people be decanted to and will amenities be adequate?
Older people are afraid that they will not be allowed to return to the village once they are moved -one of these a 93 year old woman who has lived in Twechar all her life...
and why is disturbance money being used to pay off rent and council tax arrears?
When one local resident contacted regeneration manager, JOHN GREY to ask some of these questions, she was informed that he did not speak to the public and that she should contact a housing officer. Where is the resident participation and transparency from Edinvar?
People are pleased that the village is being regenerated but are concerned and want answers to basic questions about their future.
Edinvar representatives, local Councillors and MSP's have been invited to this meeting. Come and put YOUR questions to those who should be giving you the answers YOU- THE PEOPLE OF TWECHAR - DESERVE.
TRANSPORT IS AVAILABLE.
For more information: Willie Telfer - 07966 782752
Our next meeting is in Milton of Campsie Village Hall, at 7.30pm on Wednesday 30th May. New members are welcome. We will be giving an update of the fantastic developments in the Twechar Housing Campaign, a real example of how people can make a huge difference, amongst other things.
SSP Campsie Branch BBQ - Saturday 16th June - starting at 4pm, Mugdock Country Park. Transport details to follow. Bring yer own food and drink - we will supply charcoal, fire, paper plates and music! Bring a banner/ flag!
Click on picture for info on Mugdock Country Park.
Scottish Socialist Party members who are delegates to this week’s PCS national conference in Brighton have made a huge impact. They’re speaking on issues like privatisation, and are moving a major motion to commit the union to an £8-an-hour minimum wage for all workers and trainees over 16. Colin Fox, the Scottish Socialist Party’s national convener, was a guest speaker at the Department of Transport PCS group conference on our case for free public transport - which was then debated and agreed as policy, moved by Campsie Branch SSP member, and Twechar Housing campaigner, Willie Telfer and supported by the union’s Group Executive Committee.
Willie has also been re-elected as UK-wide Assistant Group Secretary of the union in the transport section. Meantime longstanding socialist and SSP member John Jamieson has been elected to the PCS national executive committee, as part of an almost total clean sweep for the Democracy Alliance of socialists and democrats. And our efforts are not restricted to the PCS. At the Fire Brigades Union national conference Scottish Socialist Party members were at the heart of a solidarity collection for the Sunvic strikers, raising £1,500 to help sustain their battle against vicious treatment by scab-hiring bosses. And in a debate around the FBU and political links, during which a motion to re-affiliate the union to New Labour was overwhelmingly defeated, SSP member Jimmy Scott successfully moved an amendment which re-stated the FBU’s commitment to “a socialist form of society”, a longstanding FBU rule-book clause which collides with New Labour’s whole philosophy and practice.
1.Voters use the first ballot paper to elect members of the Scottish Parliament. Your MSP's. This is where we vote to get Pamela Page into the Parliament as a representative of the Working Class - the other parties all represent the world of business and the millionaires.
2. The left side of the ballot paper is peach, the right side is lilac
3. You get two votes on this ballot paper
4. The peach side is where you choose your regional MSPs. This is where you will find Pamela Page - put your X beside Scottish Socialist Party - Pamela Page.
5. The lilac side is where you choose your constituency MSP.
6. If you do not want to vote for any of the constituency choices (the SSP are not standing in the constituency vote) - leave it blank. IF YOU SPOIL ANY PART OF YOUR PAPER IT INVALIDATES BOTH BITS!!
7. Do not fold the ballot paper when you put it into the appropriate box
Paper TWO - COUNCIL
1. Voters use the second ballot to elect their local councillor. In EAST Dunbartonshire, your SSP Choices are in Bearsden North, Neil Scott; In Milngavie, Bill Newman; in East Kirkintilloch and Twechar, Willie Telfer and in Lenzie and South Kirkintilloch, Moira Brown.
2. This is the white ballot paper
3. You do not use a cross for this vote
4. You number the candidates in order of preference 1 for SSP candidate and 2,3 etc for any other candidates you feel will promote social justice. You can only place the number 1 on the ballot paper if you like.
5. You can mark as many or as few as you like, but you must use numbers not an x
7. Do not fold the ballot paper when you put it into the appropriate box
Over sixty Twechar residents invaded Twechar Beach and then attended the public meeting on the Twechar “Regeneration” project.
The meeting was a real success for people power in the village. Pamela Page Chaired and said this meeting was not about her coming along to turn it into a political meeting. People knew the SSP record in the area and how they had helped in various campaigns in Twechar and beyond. She said this meeting was about what people wanted done about the issue of good quality, affordable houses in their village.
Willie Telfer, the SSP Council Candidate for the area reminded people how over the years, local government seemingly more concerned with the middle class voters in Milngavie and Bearsden, had let the village down. He also reminded them of the times over the past 25 years when the people of the village had to pull together and fight aggressive policies thrown at the village by Westminster and by Tom Johnston House, from the decimation of their local coal industry, to the campaign to keep the community centre in the community. He reminded them of how Jack McConnell had cut the ribbon on the new, village run centre the Labour / Lib Dem Council tried to close and do away with. They were reminded that it was not the Labour Party or any other outside force that had won their battles with the bus companies – it was them. It was the people of Twechar.
Willie also made two further election promises. He promised that if the people of Kirkintilloch East and Twechar returned him as one of the three Councillors, within a few weeks he would have chapped on every door in the ward. He said that if people wanted to slam the door on his face, then that was their right. But he said if people wanted to invite him in and give him scones and tea, he would sit with them and unlike the other parties with their meaningless surveys he would ask, “What do you want for your community?” And then he would fight tooth and nail to get what the community see as their priorities. His second promise was that if he WASN’T elected, he would ensure the Housing Campaign would be up and running, and not ran by the SSP – but by the people of the village.
Willie has not waited until election defeat. Already volunteers have come forward from the more than sixty people present to say they are willing to help organise the campaign.
Andy Locke, the SSP Housing Spokesperson is setting up a surgery for after the election at which people can question him on their housing issues. The first of these will be held at 11am on Saturday 5th May – two days after the election. The SSP are committed to helping this campaign and the people of Twechar regardless of the outcome of the election.
Anyone wishing to help the campaign should come along to a meeting on Tuesday 8th May at 7.30pm in the Miners Welfare.
Remember – this campaign can have a voice in Holyrood and East Dunbartonshire Council – Vote Pamela Page and Vote Willie Telfer!
