A public meeting to support the growing protests in India organised by Momentum Internationalists

Tuesday 30 March, 6pm to 8pm

Speakers:

• Nadia Whittome, Labour Member of Parliament for Nottingham East

• Dr Pritam Singh, Oxford Brookes University

• Amit Malde, Fire Brigades Union London black and ethnic minority members rep

More tbc

Narendra Modi’s neo-liberal, Hindu-nationalist regime is being shaken by mass farmers’ protests against its pro-corporate agricultural reforms – protests which are mobilising many hundreds of thousands, women as well as men, and building new solidarities across divisions of religion, caste and region. Modi is responding with heavy repression.

Join this discussion to learn about the Indian farmers’ uprising and the workers’, women’s and other movements fighting in solidarity with it, and how the left and labour movement in Britain can build solidarity.

Zoom link for attendees

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83717779466?pwd=NVRUb2FlY2R0NkFwSDZoZjFjWFZmUT09

By Sacha Ismail

In the last decade local authorities, consistently disempowered by central government since the 1980s, have been subjected to sustained and vicious attack. It is not too much exaggeration to say that local government, certainly as we knew it in the recent past, is being destroyed.

Since “austerity” began in 2010, councils have lost something like 60pc of their central government funding – and are now facing further cuts. The cuts have fallen disproportionately on poorer communities and on Labour local authorities. The flip side of the staggering statistics is the growth of human suffering as local services and jobs people relied on disappear. The gutting of local government has been an absolutely central to the Tories’ assault on working-class rights and living standards over the last decade.

Momentum’s new strategy document, “Socialist Organising in a New Era” (https://peoplesmomentum.com/updates/socialist-organising-in-a-new-era) refers to local government a fair bit. Among other things, it says:

“Deepen alliances with… socialist… councillors.”

“Our aim is to build a well-organised socialist current at every level of the Party, in local government…”

“As we’ve seen in Preston and Salford, committed socialists can use local government to make a real difference to people’s lives, and Momentum will support and encourage this new municipal socialist movement. We’re also assisting Momentum members to develop the knowledge and skills they need to navigate the selection process and campaign to become a councillor. We’ll continue the Future Councillors Programme and we’ll relaunch Momentum’s Councillors’ Network – a home for socialist councillors across the country, where they can debate and develop policy and explore how Labour councils can engage with and support local communities.”

But the document says virtually nothing about what “socialist” or “left” councillors or councils should be doing, and nothing about the fundamental issue of council cuts.

(In other words, rather than seeking to push Labour councillors or raise the political level among them, Momentum is reflecting and reproducing their general lack of fight. It is not at all clear what the Momentum Councillors’ Network does, or even that it actually functions as a meaningful network, even to the extent of its “members” being collectively in touch with each other.)

At the 18 March meeting about the strategy document, questions about these issues got relatively little response.

In the break out group about local government, a Momentum full-timer responded by saying that the key issue was how councils can make up funding lost from central government (ie by raising money themselves, locally) and that “community wealth building” as practiced in Preston is a good model.

This is not the place for an indepth criticism of the “Preston model”. Often “Preston” and “Salford” seem to be brandished as magic solutions without those doing so explaining – or perhaps even knowing – much about what has been done in those authorities. What is clear is that Preston and Salford councils have, like others, made deep cuts, and that neither has done or is doing much of anything to generate campaigning against cuts and to win restored funding from the government.

For whatever reasons, Momentum seems to have got into a political “space” where it seems to regard fighting over council funding as impossible or undesirable, even on the level of just verbally raising it as a demand. (This despite the fact that the demand to reverse all council cuts was included in the 2019 Labour manifesto.)

Without fighting on that, talk about “muncipal socialism”, “socialist strategy” in local government, “left” or “pro-working class” policies and so on, seems pretty hollow. Trying to find ways to make up money locally cannot possibly reverse cuts or even prevent further ones; and it in practice far more regressive in terms of where money is raised from and funding for poorer areas. It essentially means accepting defeat.

Even if what is being done in, for instance, Salford is genuinely clearly better than most Labour councils – and Momentum doesn’t really explain what it has involved – it must be very limited in the context of the lost funding. In an article in Tribune https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/01/sensible-socialism-the-salford-model advocating the “Salford model”, council leader Paul Dennett says the council has cut a majority of its workforce, but done so in relatively humane way, with few compulsory redundancies. The article says nothing about fighting cuts.

Shortly before “Socialist organising for a new era” came out, Momentum did promote a meeting called by Lambeth local government Unison to discuss building a union and Labour network to fight council cuts. An NCG member attended the meeting and spoke positively about developing an initiative on these issues. Yet none of that is reflected in the document or what Momentum is saying and doing.

Given its weight and connections across the Labour Party and beyond, Momentum could make a major difference to generating a fight back. However, it it continues to advocate getting more “left” councillors while saying nothing about cuts and local government struggles more generally, it will instead play a fundamentally negative role.

The first most basic question is: does Momentum want to see a fight to stop further cuts and win restored funding from central government, or not? If it does, the first thing is to publicly and clearly advocate it.

By Mohan Sen

About 200 people attended the Momentum meeting on its new strategy document on 18 March. Not so big, but to be fair it was at the same time as huge anti-Policing Bill meeting organised by Sisters Uncut.

The discussion was interesting and there were some useful points made, but it was all rather meandering and unfocused. I did not get a clear picture of what Momentum’s leadership and organisers want.

A few things jumped out at me:

Someone asked about “democratising” Momentum, and whether this means having a national decision-making conference. A National Coordinating Group member who essentially said it was up to the members whether they wanted that. This reaffirmed my impression that most or much of the new, post-2020 Momentum leadership (“Forward Momentum”) are not keen on establishing such a democratic sovereign body.

To be fair, the meeting reinforced my picture of a problem which would make a well-functioning national conference difficult, namely that most local groups no longer function. Another NCG member made big claims about the recent revival of groups. What is the situation in your area?

A number of speakers talked about the soon-to-be-launched Momentum trade unionists network. It wasn’t made clear what this network will be for. An NCG member reported that there are (reasonably enough I’d say) differences on whether Momentum should take stances in internal union elections (and presumably other internal debates and arguments). Useful things a Momentum trade unionists network might do included helping mobilise Labour Parties and party members in support of workers’ struggles, and working with Free Our Unions to establish clear Labour policy and campaigning on the right to strike and repealing the anti-union laws.

Last but in a way most importantly there was – as in the strategy document itself – quite a lot of mention of local government, but a complete lack of substantive proposals about what Momentum should actually advocate and campaign for. The focus seems to be predominantly on getting more “left” councillors.

Pushed on this a bit at the meeting, several Momentum organisers advocated Preston and Salford councils as a model. But neither of these councils is doing anything to fight and reverse cuts, despite the increasingly apocalyptic financial situation councils face. In a break out session on local government, I asked about the lack of even a mention of fighting cuts. A Momentum staff member replied, very tellingly I thought, that the key thing was how to make up money lost from central government funding by other means, such as Preston’s “community wealth building”.

In other words, Momentum has no perspective of even advocating the restoration of government funding for councils, let alone fighting for it. (This despite the organisation sponsoring the meeting on this organised by Lambeth Unison and other trade unionists last month.)

There were a number of mentions of the Momentum councillors network, but it’s not clear if this network does anything or even really exists as something coherent.

Momentum really needs shaking up on this point.

• More: ‘An open letter to my fellow Labour councillors, by Hertfordshire councillor Josh Lovell

Ballot 24-31 March 2021: vote here. See our events calendar for Zoom meetings over the period 24-31 March 2021 explaining and promoting some of the motions below.

Momentum Internationalists welcomed Momentum’s decision to hold a policy primary to allow local groups and campaigns to feed in to deciding which motions Momentum should support at Labour Party conference.

We have supported the following motions, which reflect Momentum Internationalists’ programme around democracy, class struggle and internationalism, and encourage members to vote for them in the all-member ballot. 

• Build back fairer: attack poverty and inequality
• China, Hong Kong and the Uyghurs: solidarity, peace, democracy and liberation
• Migrants welcome: end deportations and the racist Hostile Environment
• Unshackling workers from draconian anti-trade union laws
• Global climate justice

Title: Build back fairer: attack poverty and inequality

The Marmot report “Build Back Fairer” says: “mismanagement during the pandemic, and the unequal way the pandemic has struck, is of a piece with what happened… in the decade from 2010… enduring social and economic inequalities… mean that public health was threatened before and during the pandemic and will be after.”

The Resolution Foundation and Wealth Tax Commission estimate that concentration of wealth in the hands of the super-rich is even worse than previously thought – by £800bn! We need to take back wealth, with a wealth tax, increased corporation tax, capital gains tax and taxing very high incomes; and taking banking and finance into democratic public ownership.

We commit to “building back fairer”, campaigning for all with targeted action to increase racial, ethnic, gender, class and economic equality, campaigning for and implementing:

● Benefits increased to a liveable level. £260pw Universal Credit (demanded by the TUC).

● Extension and strengthening of furlough and self-employment schemes.

● Increase the minimum wage to £12ph, scrapping exemptions and differentials. Action to increase wages; substantial increases for public-sector workers.

● The right to isolate on full pay; improved sick pay for all, 100% of wages for all sickness periods.

● Repeal of all anti-union laws.

● Banning of zero-hours contracts.

● Reversal of all cuts since 2010, increased funding.

● Comprehensive reversal of privatisation and outsourcing; full public ownership of health and social care.

● Abolition of ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’.

● Building at least 100,000 council homes a year.

● Creation of millions of secure, well-paid, public jobs in services and green industry.

Submitted by: North East Momentum, Stevenage Momentum and Southampton Momentum

Title: China, Hong Kong and the Uyghurs: solidarity, peace, democracy and liberation

Conference notes:

● Uyghurs and other majority-Muslim peoples in Xinjiang/East Turkestan suffer genocidal persecution including racist surveillance; political, cultural and religious

repression; forced contraception and sterilisation; forced labour in global corporate supply chains; children removed from families; and concentration camps.

● A violent, corporate-backed crackdown has attacked Hong Kong’s movement for democracy and civil liberties. Independent unions like the HKCTU are surging but under assault. British colonial-era anti-union and anti-democratic laws facilitate this.

● Throughout China, worker exploitation is rampant. Wealth inequality approaches US levels. Independent unions and protests are suppressed while corporations and state bureaucrats profit. But workers, women, minorities and dissidents continue to resist.

Conference believes:

● Socialism means political and economic democracy. Despite pretences, China’s authoritarian state represents neither.

Conference resolves that Labour will:

● Build solidarity with independent labour, democratic and liberatory movements, protests and strikes in China.

● Resist hijacking of this cause by nationalists and hawks promoting anti-Chinese racism, superpower rivalry, trade wars and militarisation.

● Support freedom and human rights for the indigenous peoples of Xinjiang/East Turkestan and Tibet, and their right to democratically determine their futures.

● Support universal suffrage for Hong Kong, release of political prisoners and repeal of the National Security Law.

● Propose Magnitsky sanctions against officials involved in these abuses;

● Support protests and worker action against businesses complicit in these abuses;

● Propose laws requiring big businesses to transparently audit supply chains to source worldwide, and cut ties to rights abuses.

● Welcome unconditionally all refugees who seek sanctuary here from tyranny and persecution.

Submitted by Uyghur Solidarity Campaign

Title: Migrants welcome: end deportations and the racist Hostile Environment

Covid-19 has underlined how Hostile Environment policies hurt us all. Excluded from social and medical support, migrants have been left hyper-vulnerable to employers. Many EU citizens are falling through gaps in the Settled Status scheme.

The Stansted 15’s exoneration, appalling conditions at Napier Barracks, deaths in the Channel and closing of safe routes for child refugees highlight the cruelty of Tory migration policy. The Windrush Lessons Learned review has been ignored by the government.

Attacks on migrants are attacks on the labour movement. Making migrant workers precarious diminishes our power to unionise and fight back. Labour must reject divisive “good migrant/bad migrant” narratives and oppose all legislation that undermines migrants’ rights.

Conference resolves that Labour will work at all government levels, and campaign at the grassroots, to:

● Re-enter Europe’s free movement area, and pursue free movement with other countries, including in all future trade deals.

● Reject immigration systems based on migrants’ incomes, savings or utility to employers;

● Abolish “no recourse to public funds”, minimum income requirements, and all Hostile Environment policies including restrictions on NHS access.

● Introduce an easy process for all UK residents to gain permanent residency with equal rights.

● Introduce equal voting rights for all UK residents.

● Guarantee safe routes for asylum seekers and rights to family reunion, work and social security.

● End all immigration raids, detention and deportation, especially childhood-arrival deportations and racist “double sentencing”.

● Replace Settled Status with an automatic Right to Stay.

● Support workers who refuse to implement deportations or Hostile Environment Measures.

Submitted by: Labour Campaign for Free Movement, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, Momentum Stevenage, Momentum Oxfordshire, Momentum Watford, Three Rivers and Hertsmere

Title: Unshackling workers from draconian anti-trade union laws

The pandemic has amplified the need for workers to guarantee their safety and working conditions. Draconian cuts and lack of investment in public services have undermined resilience and caused workers to be further exposed to the effects of the ‘free’ market.

Waves of job cuts, attacks on terms and conditions (e.g., “fire and rehire”) and plans to scrap sectoral collective bargaining, including in the fire and rescue service, have continued throughout this crisis.

Conference notes TUC policy that workers should be: “represented by an independent union; strike/take industrial action by a process, at a time, and for demands of their own choosing, including in solidarity with any other workers, and for broader social and political goals; and picket freely”.

Conference reaffirms the commitment to repealing all anti-union laws to ensure that workers have power in their workplaces.

This commitment includes repealing anti-strike laws, such as the ban on striking in solidarity with other workers or over political issues – an affront to democracy. These laws prevent workers from taking action directly over issues such as climate change, equality issues, and the NHS.

Conference denounces the Tories’ plan to impose new restrictions on transport workers through a “minimum service requirement”- it seems likely they will extend this to other groups of key workers.

Conference resolves that the party will actively drive trade union membership amongst all party members, campaign for the repeal of all anti-trade union laws, and that the next Labour government will repeal all anti-trade union laws.

Submitted by The Fire Brigades Union, Southampton Momentum, Brent Momentum and Free Our Unions

Title: Global climate justice

Conference notes:

● We must keep global temperature rises below 1.5°C.

● The communities hit hardest by climate change contributed least to the problem.

● The UK spends billions of pounds per year on fossil fuel subsidies and is a key jurisdiction for the enforcement of globally accrued debt.

Conference believes:

● Labour should make the case for rapid decarbonisation by 2030.

● The cost of decarbonisation must be borne by the rich.

● Debt cancellation is essential to achieve climate justice.

Conference resolves to support:

● Cancellation of all low-income country debt held by UK institutions; legislation to prevent UK courts prosecuting countries stopping debt payments.

● Immediately halting all fossil fuel subsidies, placing the money in a Just Transition fund. Sanctions on big polluters; incentives to rapidly reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

● Phase out of high-carbon industries with a just transition and support workers organising with unions and taking action to decarbonise industries and the global supply chain, while campaigning and educating for a Socialist Green New Deal

● All future stimulus and bailout eligibility linked to climate action and a just transition for workers.

● Bringing the banking and financial system into democratic public control to fund a just transition; regulating private banking and finance for its climate impact.

● Delisting of companies failing to protect the environment and uphold human rights in the global supply chain.

● Linking internationally with indigenous groups, trade unions and groups resisting ecological assault.

● Legal recognition of climate refugees’ right to asylum.

Submitted by: Momentum Norfolk, Momentum South Staffordshire, Momentum International, Momentum Southwark, Momentum North East

By Pat Markey

A well-attended online organising meeting on 9 March discussed Tracy McGuire’s victimisation by Rydal Academy, Darlington, and since then there have been three days of strikes by NEU [National Education Union] members at Shrewsbury College in defence of NEU rep John Boken. Their strike action is to run for three days every week, over three weeks.

The online meeting, hosted by Darlington Trades Council, heard from local and national trade unionists and Labour Party members about the current victimisation cases, and how they can be seen in the wider context of some school bosses clamping down on the space for discussion and union organising that has been opening up during the pandemic.

Victimised NEU reps Tracy McGuire, John Boken, Louise Lewis, and Kirstie Paton all participated, and it is good that the different campaigns have made links and are working together. The NEU nationally needs to step up and urgently develop strategy to ensure our workplace reps are better supported from management victimisation. The Darlington meeting agreed to reconvene soon to discuss local campaigning to seek justice for Tracy.

Campaigning has started for the local elections on 6 May, which in one form or another cover almost every area, since they combine polls due in 2021 with those postponed from May 2020. Official rules already allow canvassing as long as we abide by the 2-metre distancing rule.

From 29 March, when people will be allowed to gather socially in groups of six or two households outdoors, the same rules will apply to political campaigning. Campaign literature must be collected or dropped off, however, without people meeting indoors, and planning meetings must be virtual.

A first thing to talk about is the series of online meetings, poplar100.com, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Labour council in Poplar, east London, defying the government over social spending and winning.

The National Audit Office reports that 94% of councils are cutting services in 2021-2, and two dozen or so are in or near financial meltdown like Croydon council. Despite huge government spending on items like private-sector Test and Trace, central government funding will not cover councils’ extra spending and reduced income in the pandemic.

Some local campaigns are developing against particular cuts, like the one against the closure of John Carroll Leisure Centre in Nottingham. Often, however, cuts budgets and poor local Labour manifestos have gone through over the heads of local Labour Parties. Even in Leeds, with some left-wing local Labour Parties and big cuts by the Labour council, a general alternative to cuts and an adequate Labour democracy remain to be fought for.

Dozens of local Labour Party officers, across the country, were suspended in and around December for allowing debate on issues like the removal of the Labour whip from Jeremy Corbyn. A few have been reinstated, but most are still in limbo. According to LabourList their cases will be heard by NEC panels by the end of March.

In response to an enquiry from Emily Thornberry MP, G4S have confirmed that many of their staff operating virus Test Centres are employed on zero hours contracts and have no rights to company sick pay. If these staff have to isolate, then at best they would be paid £95.85 a week Statutory Sick Pay.

Stuart Jordan from the Safe and Equal Campaign explains: “Many Test Centre workers are employed on super-spreader contracts without occupational sick pay or job security. If they have suspected infection they are in an impossible situation: either isolate and face severe financial hardship or go to work and perhaps infect others.

“In effect, NHS T&T is a system for concentrating together all the people in the country with suspected coronavirus infection and getting them to file past an army of workers who cannot afford to follow isolation rules. By using outsourcing firms that employ their workers on these super-spreader contracts, the government have created potential Corona hotspots at every Test site. This £37 billion disaster may actually be a net contributor to the spread of this virus.”

Paul Edwards, G4S HR Director for the UK and Middle East, replied to an inquiry by Emily Thornberry: “Due to the unpredictable and, so far, short term requirements of these contracts, most of the staff operating at the Covid-19 testing sites are agency workers provided to G4S, supplied and employed through a number of temporary employment agencies.

“For the remaining staff (namely management and security staff), these individuals are engaged on fixed term contracts or casual worker agreements (flexible hours contracts where staff choose which hours/shifts they work).

“In the circumstance of employees of G4S needing to self-isolate for reasons of exposure to Covid-19, in line with Government guidance, these staff would receive company sick pay or statutory sick pay. This depends on arrangements in their employment contracts”.

The good news so far from vaccinations does not guarantee safety. Measured Covid infection rates across the world, and across Europe and South America, have been rising steadily since mid-February, and daily world death rates are running higher than the April 2020 peak. We demand that governments requisition Big Pharma’s patents to enable rapid vaccine roll-out across the world. Safe and Equal is campaigning for full isolation pay for all and to bring social care into the public sector.

• More at safeandequal.org

www.poplar100.com

Below is the model motion for trade union branches from the Poplar Rates Rebellion centenary committee:

This union notes that in 1921, the east London borough of Poplar fought back against the unfair rating system that penalised poor boroughs at a time of high unemployment and extreme poverty. Thousands of people protested and after the Labour council refused to collect and hand over part of the rates, thirty councillors [including members of our predecessor union/s]* went to prison. Their defiance won an important victory, forcing the government to change the rating system to make rich boroughs pay more in and poor borough get more out.

This union further notes that a series of events is being held this year to celebrate the centenary of the Poplar rates rebellion. 

This union believes that there are many parallels between the situation that Poplar faced then and the situation that we face now, and that we can take inspiration and learn lessons from their successful struggle. 

This union resolves to:

1. support and publicise the Poplar100 events

2. invite a speaker from the organising committee to a future meeting

3. donate £x to the centenary events organising committee 

* include the wording in brackets for RMT, Unite, NEU, CWU, GMB, USDAW, NUJ
More information, contact and payment details here: www.poplar100.com