The following essay was written as a school homework assignment by a member of Red Youth and was published as the editorial to issue 50 of the magazine Proletarian.
This summer, we witnessed the spectacular event of the Olympic Games in our very own capital city. However, at the same time last year, London and Britain were shocked by the London riots, when the youth in poverty-stricken areas expressed their anger towards the state.
Exciting, wonderful, immense – all these words could describe the London Olympics. But we could also call them corrupt and hypocritical. Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis were all over the front pages of all the newspapers posing proudly with their gold medals. There was no outcry about one of the world’s largest monopoly corporations, which has contributed greatly to the western world’s obesity pandemic, being a major sponsor of the games.
And what about ATOS, a company which has stripped thousands of people of their needed benefits and humiliated many more in their benefit-stripping tribunals? Whilst many of us were watching the mainstream media promoting the Olympic Games enthusiastically, the needy people of Britain were fighting to keep their benefits from being cut back owing to a financial crisis they have not contributed to. You might think the Olympic Games were amazing and have left a fantastic legacy, thanks to the fanatic promotion job done by the media, yet, behind the scenes, a major struggle between the working class and the ruling class of Britain was going on!
In the 2011 London riots, you might have been thinking how disgracefully these lunatic rioters were behaving – stealing bottles of water and breaking shop windows down – but you were probably just regurgitating what the media were saying. Remember, media corporations such as the BBC and the Murdoch press have all been directed into stating what the ruling class wants them to say.
This was proved by the Leveson inquiry, which showed how the politicians and the mainstream media work hand in hand to mislead the public and to promote monstrosities around the world such as war. During the London riots, there was also a riot going on in Libya. But the differences were that the rioters in Libya were armed and supported from the start by the West, ie, by the USA, France and Britain. Some even called it a ‘revolution’!
But when it comes closer to home, Britain will do anything to stop the riots. They were even considering using rubber bullets. When it doesn’t suit their interests, they will do anything to stop it! People were told that all the looting would affect the economy, but it was nothing compared to all the looting done by the ruling class, which has left the country in a state of emergency and crisis.
The real trouble is caused by the oppressors, and you can’t compare their violence with that of the oppressed. For centuries, the British ruling class has perpetrated disgraceful crimes against humanity, such as the slave trade, and it still seeks to dominate today. But when, for a few days, the British working class expresses its deepest anger by rioting and looting, it is treated like a mass murderer.
You might have been thinking that this article is turning truth on its head, but all it’s really doing is contradicting the media’s propaganda, which has been used to disparage the rioters and to promote the Olympic Games. We should always look at both sides of a situation before we make up our minds about it.
Red Youth and cpgb-ml comrades attended an anti-cuts demo outside the Labour Party Conference on Sunday. Comrades were there to highlight the role played by all the main parties who’re in service to big business, and to argue that a simple changing of the guard is not going to get us out of the mess we’re in.
In June, a 48-year-old man tied himself to the railings of a Jobcentre, doused himself in flammable liquid and set himself ablaze. (See Guardian, 29 June 2012)
This desperate act reveals, in the most brutal of terms, that poverty in Britain is not only material deprivation, in which sky scrapers are erected and social housing bulldozed, but a multi-dimensional assault – physical and psychological – on working-class people.
Indeed, research published last month by the Centre for the Modern Family showed that one in five British families are ‘living on the edge’. (See Independent, 26 June 2012)
As retail food prices have increased by 25 percent since 2008, and the price of child care and average household bills have sky-rocketed, so too have levels of stress and mental ill health. (See Economist, 23 June 2012)
This reality is worse still in the north of England, Wales and Scotland. And, throughout the country, young people are bearing the brunt of British austerity.
Since last year’s youth uprisings, dubbed criminal rioting by bourgeois commentators, no serious attempt to tackle youth poverty has occurred. In fact, changes to benefit entitlement have pushed thousands more into deprivation; implanting feelings of failure, shame and psychological distress upon an entire generation of young people. (See BBC News Online, 11 October 2011)
It is only logical, therefore, that – with a diminutive job market, an education system that is being progressively commodified, and a vanishing NHS – class antagonisms will intensify and uprisings may become as much a part of the British summertime as corporate-sponsored sporting events.
From the student activist to the unemployed youth, in the classroom and in the street, young people are awakening to discover that our political and economic system is not designed to help realise their potential but only to exploit the labour of some and utterly discard the rest.
They are also discovering that our system is designed to enrich a tiny handful of financiers. It was revealed this month that the super-rich have between $21tr and $32tr stashed away in tax havens. (Seecnn.com, 25 July 2012)
This is not a charge from radical opponents of capitalism, but the findings of bourgeois investigation. Nor are these the dealings of shadowy businesses but the recognised and admitted practice of the world’s largest financial institutions. It is an astonishing figure, greater than the GDP of any imperialist nation, and it is the kind of wealth that could eradicate poverty for vast swathes of humanity.
There could not be a clearer example of how income disparity and material and psychological deprivation is becoming more acute in modern Britain. As welfare safety nets disappear, and government oppression increases, we should not only expect greater incidence of civil unrest but prepare to inject it with ideological direction.
Communists must seek to build and lead popular mass movements for real change; for a mere change of government will not suffice. Only an entirely new system can offer our youth a positive future.
It’s now six months since our beloved friend and comrade Godfrey Andries Cremer died, on 26 March 2012. This tribute, paid to him by his life-long friend, his brother, and comrade, Harpal Brar, is the first of several moving and politically insightful contributions we intend to broadcast, made by his comrades and family.
This and the other contributions were made at his memorial meeting held in April this year, attended by well over 120 of his friends, family and comrades, who packed into Saklatvala Hall to share our sorrow at Godfrey’s passing and our joy that he has enriched our lives.
Despite our sadness, it was an inspiring and uplifting celebration of the 50 selfless and meaningful years Godfrey devoted to the finest cause in all the world – the fight for the liberation of mankind.
As we move forward and build our movement, it has been hard to accept that Godfrey is gone. We share this footage with you now as it is a valuable chance to reflect upon the past half-century of British working class and anti-imperialist history; to evaluate the struggles we have fought, and put the tasks facing us in historical perspective.
It is, consequently, an uplifting celebration of a beautiful life. Godfrey’s deep love for humanity, his profound marxist understanding, and his determination to use all his talent to serve the working class by building a truly revolutionary movement dedicated to their emancipation from wage slavery, and a communist party capable of directing that struggle, were his consistent motivating forces.
It was this higher cause and meaning that enabled him to harness his creative powers and live an outstanding and exemplary life; a life full of passion and joy, free of black despair and wasted, petty and meaningless years.
Godfrey faced his final moments with the same optimism and fortitude that characterized his life. His abiding certainty was that his life’s work was a great gift to humanity – and we salute him for it.
Unemployment in Britain is now over 2.5 million, with young people being especially hit; people under 25 account for about 40 percent of the unemployed and according to latest figures youth unemployment stands in excess of 1 million. Any day you visit the jobcentre it is literally bursting with people competing for jobs and the chances of finding work are getting less and less. In our region so many factories, pits and traditional heavy industries have closed down that the only places to look for work appear to be Tesco, Asda and McDonald’s. This entire experience is depressing and degrading, how many times must you apply for a job and never even receive a response?!
Wales
Unemployment in Wales has been a serious problem for some years, but recent reports by the Office for National Statistics and subsequent work by University researchers show that the scale of the problem is huge. Two Welsh Council’s Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil now rank in the top ten of Britain’s worst hit areas with a study by Sheffield Hallam University claiming unemployment rates of 17% and 14.9%. The report claims that Wales is hit much harder by unemployment than official statistics for those claiming jobseekers allowance suggest. With thousands of school leavers entering the jobs market and thousands more being thrown off Incapacity Benefit by bonus hungry health ‘professionals’ at private company Atos; it leads any sensible and thinking person to ask, how are people in Wales supposed to find work?
How to fight back
In days gone by when the British working class had a strong militant communist party, mass marches, riots and street fighting with the police and state forces forced from local poor committee’s money and food to keep people from starving. All we remember of these days is the Jarrow March. But the reality of the fight for jobs back in the 1920’s and 30’s is much different from the toned down sanitised history we’ve been fed. A starting point for young workers must be to read Wal Hannington’s book Unemployed Struggles. Hannington was a leading member of the Communist Party of the time and led the National Unemployed Workers Movement. Radio 4 recently broadcast a biased history of these struggles, but the first hand accounts contained in the programme are well worth listening to and learning from. Listen to the unemployed struggles of the 20’s and 30’s.
Red Youth comrades joined the rally in Bradford on Friday protesting against the use of drones in Pakistan. The rally was addressed by Yvonne Ridley and George Galloway who called for an end to the use of these devastating weapons. A short video of the rally can be seen here: Telegraph and Argus
The US has extended its predatory Afghan war to Pakistan on the pretext that the Afghan resistance is using the Pakistani frontier provinces as a sanctuary and a base from which to launch attacks on US and Nato forces in Afghanistan. By doing this, however, the US has practically obliterated the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and turned the Afghan war into an AfPak war.
US drones regularly attack places in Pakistan alleged by the US to be Taliban or al-Qaeda hideouts. The use of remote aerial attacks is imperialism’s response, on the one hand, to stubborn resistance to US occupation and aggression, and, on the other hand, to the unpopularity of the wars waged by imperialism among the populations of the warmongering imperialist countries who are demanding that troops should be brought home.
Between 2006-2009, US drone attacks killed 14 mid-level or lower-level alleged al-Qaeda leaders, but resulted in 700 civilian deaths. According to David Kilcullen, former advisor to US General David Petraeus “That’s a hit rate of two percent on 98 percent collateral.” Even Mr Kilcullen was forced to remark “It’s not moral”!
The comrades also took the opportunity to build support for the upcoming meeting on Syria in Bradford. The meeting, entitled No war on Syria! will be held on Tuesday 25 September at 7.30pm in the Khidmat Centre, 36 Spencer Road, Bradford, BD7 2EU.
What can we learn in the midst of the worlds deepest crisis of capitalist overproduction from the one economy and society that was immune to the great stockmarket crash and depression of the 1920s and 1930s?
Julia Hawkins, member of the CPGB-ML talks about her family and her life growing up in the soviet union.
“The media portrays Soviet Life as dull, grey and oppressive. Nothing could be further from the truth, she says. We had rich, secure, cultured and meaningful lives. As workers, we felt we owned not just our places of work, but the whole country, which was set up from top to bottom to serve our interests.
“I didn’t become political until I came to this country and didn’t realise what we had until we lost it. That is the tragedy. I realise that it is because our nation was being dismantled from the inside, by the Khruhschevite revisionists and their successors.”
I recommend that everyone should read Harpal Brar’s book “Perestroika, the complete collapse of revisionism”
London’s a city that never quite lets you forget that you’re living in the heartland of imperialism; the belly of the beast.
Whether you’re watching the victory parade past nelson’s column in trafalgar square, strolling by South Africa, Australia or India house (embassies from which the countries themselves used to be administered over the heads of their peoples), getting attacked by the metropolitan police’s “territorial support group” riot police, for having the nerve to demonstrate against Israeli war crimes, or just seeing the worlds war criminals wined dined feted and entertained in the streets of our nation’s capital.
I walked into Burger King by St Mary’s hospital and Paddington station, in West London today to be greeted by a delegation of Columbian Army officers.
They looked delighted to be tucking into a juicy burger and were no doubt taking a well earned break from suppressing their own people’s popular uprising led by the FARC-EP, and building up forces capable of invading neighbouring Venezuela for the purposes of overthrowing the popular and progressive government of Hugo Chavez, should the slightest opportunity present itself.
One can only suppose they are here in order to secure diplomatic and financial sponsorship, and a perhaps a few practical tips on the efficient organisation of death squads – I mean, counterinsurgency operations – from the British state.
‘We’ are, after all, the oldest hands at keeping the (colonial and domestic) working people in check.
The mention of the FARC proved enough to make them quite jittery, and they packed up and went on their way. The question, of course, is who let these criminals in to ‘our’ country.
The answer, of course, is the criminals who run it and keep british workers in wage slavery, subject to crisis ridden capitalism. The British Imperialists – hangmen, to our shame, of progressive and revolutionary movements worldwide
A protester against ATOS profit driven murder in Birmingham, courtesy of Stalingrad O’Neill
Amongst the many cuts being made to jobs, pensions, public services and welfare provision in Britain today, the cuts to benefits generally and the benefits of the disabled in particular are perhaps the easiest to recognise as heartless targeting of ‘soft’ (ie, largely defenceless) groups to protect the profits of the rich and powerful.
Disabled people on benefits are stuck in a ‘Catch 22’ situation: do nothing and they hit you with cuts, take to the streets in protest and in all likelihood someone will try to use the fact to prove that you could be working! Yet the disabled have finally taken to the streets, as last year’s series of ‘Hardest hit’ rallies around the country showed. Unfortunately, these demonstrations and rallies were all guided and addressed by social democrats, and to have the likes of Hilary Benn talking about early-day motions is neither inspirational nor of any practical use to those under attack.
Attacking society’s most disadvantaged
Incapacity Benefit (IB) was meant to compensate people for lack of earnings if illness prevented them from working. At the end of the last Labour government, IB was rebranded the ‘Employment and Support Allowance’ (ESA), and an independent medical assessment was introduced.
Hundreds of thousands of disabled claimants have lost around £70.00 per week in the move from IB to the new ESA as private firms who were employed to ‘assess’ claimants during the move from one to the other (presumably on a bonus system) have been declaring virtually everyone fit for some work based on a short examination from a ‘medical professional’ (usually a nurse of some undisclosed type).
According to Nick Sommerland, “The work capability assessments are carried out by private firm Atos, on a £100m a year contract.
“The firm made a £42m profit in 2010 and paid boss Keith Wilman £800,000, a 22 percent pay rise on the previous year.” (‘Thirty-two die in a week after failing test for new incapacity benefit’, Daily Mirror, 5 April 2012)
This ‘professional’ assessor ticks boxes on a form, and in very many cases the outcome is 0 points. This has the effect of putting many claimants off even trying to appeal against the adverse decision, as the required 15 points seems so far out of reach. Yet of those who have appealed, some 40 percent have been successful.
For those who win their claim, however, it is a long and arduous slog to get their money back. The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) shamelessly claims in this age of computers that it cannot be done instantly because of the backlog, and 8-10 weeks is now around the average time it takes to change a claimant’s rate to the appropriate one having worked out the difference between what they have been getting and what they should have been getting and multiplying that by the number of weeks/months that they have been underpaid!
Meanwhile, the government carries on enjoying what is in reality an interest-free loan from hundreds of thousands of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the country for as long as it can. Of course, that is still better for people than having that money taken away permanently and having then to submit to interviews to explain why they haven’t got a job, even though it is glaringly obvious that very few employers are interested in employing anyone who is not fully fit.
The disabled are then herded into what are mostly completely useless ‘retraining’ courses under threat of losing even more of their benefits if they fail to attend. For the chronically ill, who often are in extreme pain for much of the time, this is a nightmare without end, as jobs are few and no one will employ someone who is obviously incapable of work or even of turning up every day.
An independent website that offers advice and help to claimants trying to retain or regain their benefits pointed out two cases in its latest newsletter of people caught in this trap:
“Paul Mickleburgh, one of the world’s longest-surviving kidney dialysis patients is hooked up to a dialysis machine for five hours, three days a week. He’s also had cancer and pneumonia and suffers from spontaneous internal bleeding, brittle bones, a twisted bowel and agonising joint pains as a result of his renal treatment. He’s had four failed kidney donations. To top it all off, Paul has had 14 heart attacks in the last five years and believes his last attack was caused in part by the stress of trying to deal with the DWP.
“Sadly, patients with chronic kidney disease are actually more likely to die from associated heart disease than from kidney failure itself. In spite of this, Paul has been placed in the work-related activity group meaning that he is someone who is expected to return to the workplace in the reasonably near future. Paul’s request for this dreadful decision to be looked at again came back with the same result – he should be moving towards a return to work.
“Karen Sherlock, a disability activist whose kidneys were failing, was waiting to be put on dialysis. In spite of her very serious condition, Karen was placed in the work-related activity group, meaning that her benefit would soon stop altogether because of the time limit on contribution-based ESA. Karen spent many months fighting that decision. Two weeks ago she finally won her exhausting battle with the DWP and was placed in the support group. This week she died of a heart attack.
“One of her friends noted: ‘She was terrified. Beside herself with fear. She lived her last months desperately scared that her family would not survive the onslaught it faced … She spent her last months fighting for the ‘security’ of £96 a week and the reassurance that it couldn’t be taken away.’”
According to Nick Somerland, “More than a thousand sickness benefit claimants died last year after being told to get a job.” These include 53-year-old Derbyshire resident Stephen Hill,who “died of a heart attack in December, one month after being told he was ‘fit to work’, even though he was waiting for major heart surgery”. (Op cit)
The Benefits and Work newsletter also commented on a recent speech by the employment minister:
“Last month, in a speech to work programme providers at the Institute of Economic Affairs, Chris Grayling the employment minister explained why the Work Programme is not making the profits for the private sector that had been hoped for. His explanation as to why the much-prized incapacity benefit to ESA transfer claimants – for whom providers get paid £14,000 when they place them in work – are in short supply, touches directly on the fate of Karen Sherlock and others like her:
“‘We have more people fit for work, and moving to JSA. We have more people needing long-term unconditional support than expected. And those in the middle [work-related activity] group, who would expect before too long to be mandated to the Work Programme, have proved to be sicker and further from the workplace than we expected. So it will take far more time than we predicted for them to be ready to make a return to work.’
“In other words, providers will have to be patient, but eventually those £14,000-a-time claimants will be handed over to them … unless, like Karen Sherlock and an increasing number of other seriously sick people, they die before the bounty can be claimed.” (Benefits and Work, PO Box 4352, Warminster, BA12 2AF, campaign@benefitsandwork.co.uk)
This takes us right to the nub of the issue: under the capitalist system even the robbing of the chronically ill by the government can be turned into a profit-making business for private companies – and in times of crisis like these, such opportunities are too lucrative to be missed!
For the disabled in Britain today, meanwhile, the attacks on living standards have not yet ended. The Disabled Living Allowance (DLA), which helps with extra living costs and transport for the disabled, is the next target.
Neil O’Brien reported recently that Iain Duncan Smith has pledged to “introduce an independent medical assessment, so that only those who really need the benefit get it”. For anyone who has gone through the process of moving from IB to ESA described above there will undoubtedly be a feeling of déjà vu.
“The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) thinks a new, independent medical assessment might reduce the number of people awarded the benefit by around half a million. It will even get a friendly-sounding new name: the Personal Independence Payment (PIP).” (Daily Telegraph, 14 May 2012)
Meanwhile, the Guardian has reported that “Some long-term sick and disabled people face being forced to work unpaid for an unlimited amount of time or have their benefits cut under plans being drawn up by the Department for Work and Pensions.
“Mental health professionals and charities have said they fear those deemed fit to undertake limited amounts of work under a controversial assessment process could suffer further harm to their health if the plans go ahead.
“The new policy, outlined by DWP officials in meetings with disabilities groups, is due to be announced after legal changes contained in clause 54 of the Welfare Reform Bill have made their way through parliament.
“The policy could mean that those on employment and support allowance who have been placed in the work-related activity group (Wrag) could be compelled to undertake work experience for charities, public bodies and high-street retailers. The Wrag group includes those who have been diagnosed with terminal cancer but have more than six months to live; accident and stroke victims; and some of those with mental health issues.” (16 February 2012)
The way forward
The plain fact is that all the provisions of the ‘welfare state’ under conditions of capitalism could only ever have been a temporaryconcession made to workers. After the second world war, when the tide of revolution was running high in the world, the imperialist ruling classes were much weakened – and they feared for the very survival of their system.
It was in that situation that our rulers agreed to allocate a portion of their superprofits (gained from intensified looting and suppression of colonial peoples abroad) to creating some of the facilities that had previously only been available to workers in the Soviet Union – free health care, free access to university education, guaranteed social housing, benefits for the sick and the unemployed, and so on.
In this way, workers were lulled into a false sense of security after these concessions had been made to them. They allowed themselves to believe (encouraged by the social-democratic leaders of the Labour party, trade unions etc) that perhaps capitalism really could deliver everything they needed after all. And so the working-class movement aimed at the overthrow of British imperialism was progressively decimated, as was the trade-union movement aimed at securing and protecting rights for workersunder the conditions of capitalism.
Add to that the collapse of the USSR and the east European socialist states, and, as far as our ruling class was concerned, the need for such expensive concessions for buying social peace was at an end. Moreover, the deepening crisis of capitalist overproduction, in which gigantic corporations are engaged in a ruthless struggle for survival and are desperately competing to find profitable activities for their bloated capital reserves, means that the ruling class’s ability to pay for such ‘optional extras’ is also disappearing.
It could not be more obvious that it will only be through the replacement of capitalism by a socialist system of production that the disabled and long-term sick will be permanently released from penury and insecurity. It is only under socialism that they and everyone else will be encouraged and supported in playing as much of a role as they are capable of in production for need (see for example the report of our delegation to Cuba, elsewhere in this issue, for information on the care of the disabled in a socialist society).
In such a society, the focus will not be on private accumulation of profit, but on all-round provision of necessities, as well as on education, development, care and support. As the exploitation of man by man is finally eliminated, a society truly fit for human beings will emerge – and all members of that society will finally start to be given opportunities to develop their true potential and make their unique contribution.
