Good old British Bobbies! Don't they make you feel safe?

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Good old British Bobbies! Don't they make you feel safe?

Police, spies, surveillance and the capitalist state

The latest revelations about police spying should come as no surprise to those who recognise the role of the state as an instrument of class rule.

When Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death in 1993, the high-profile failure of the police to carry out anything resembling a proper, competent investigation into this racially-motivated crime led to unprecedented scrutiny and public exposure of the institutional racism which remains firmly entrenched in Britain’s police force today.

The brave and tireless work undertaken by a number of anti-racist campaigners and support groups, alongside the dogged persistence of the Lawrence family, proved extremely unpopular with the police and government top brass, who, whilst publically maintaining they were doing all they could to help the Lawrence family, covertly worked to undermine and discredit both the family and the campaign for a proper investigation.

Peter Francis, whistleblower

Now, an ongoing investigation by the Guardian newspaper has revealed an extensive and long-term programme of covert surveillance and political policing, which was led by a force known as the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). This gang of mercenary sociopaths infiltrated a wide variety of campaign groups, in many instances for years at a time, and many of its officers formed sexual relationships with campaigners and activists under false pretences. Some even fathered children with the partners they were living with under these assumed identities.

Peter Francis, who has worked with the Guardian for the last few years, was one of these officers, and is the source of the latest revelations regarding the surveillance of the family of Stephen Lawrence and the attempts to undermine and discredit the campaign his family waged for justice. On 24 June the Guardian reported:

“A police officer who spent four years living undercover in protest groups has revealed how he participated in an operation to spy on and attempt to ‘smear’ the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, the friend who witnessed his fatal stabbing and campaigners angry at the failure to bring his killers to justice.

“Peter Francis, a former undercover police officer turned whistle-blower, said his superiors wanted him to find ‘dirt’ that could be used against members of the Lawrence family, in the period shortly after Lawrence’s racist murder in April 1993.

“He also said senior officers deliberately chose to withhold his role spying on the Lawrence campaign from Sir William Macpherson, who headed a public inquiry to examine the police investigation into the death.

“Francis said he had come under ‘huge and constant pressure’ from superiors to ‘hunt for disinformation’ that might be used to undermine those arguing for a better investigation into the murder. He posed as an anti-racist activist in the mid-1990s in his search for intelligence.

“‘I had to get any information on what was happening in the Stephen Lawrence campaign,’ Francis said. ‘They wanted the campaign to stop. It was felt it was going to turn into an elephant.

“‘Throughout my deployment there was almost constant pressure on me personally to find out anything I could that would discredit these campaigns.’

“Francis also describes being involved in an ultimately failed effort to discredit Duwayne Brooks, a close friend of Lawrence who was with him on the night he was killed and the main witness to his murder. The former spy found evidence that led to Brooks being arrested and charged in October 1993, before the case was thrown out by a judge.

“Francis was a member of a controversial covert unit known as the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). A two-year investigation by the Guardian has already revealed how undercover operatives routinely adopted the identities of dead children and formed long-term sexual relationships with people they were spying on.

“The past practices of undercover police officers are the subject of what the Met described as ‘a thorough review and investigation’ …

“Francis has decided to reveal his true identity so he can openly call for a public inquiry into undercover policing of protest. ‘There are many things that I’ve seen that have been morally wrong, morally reprehensible,’ he said. ‘Should we, as police officers, have the power to basically undermine political campaigns? I think that the clear answer to that is no.’”

It’s not just a ‘Met’ thing

Anyone with the misconception that it’s just the Met police who are institutionally racist and underhand should look no further than the case of Christopher Alder. Christopher, a black male and former soldier, died on the floor of a Hull police station as he choked on his own vomit in 1998.

As he died, police stood about watching, made monkey noises and laughed and joked. All this was caught on CCTV. An inquest found that Christopher was “unlawfully killed”, but of course no police officer has ever stood trial, and the report into his death found that the police had been merely “unwittingly racist”.

Following on from the revelations of spying in the Met, an internal search of police records by Humberside police ‘discovered’ information to suggest that Christopher’s sister Janet, who bravely campaigned for justice after his death and continues to campaign against racism, injustice and police crimes, was spied on by the Humberside force.

Janet has not only exposed the actions of the police inside the station on the night of her brother’s death, she’s helped many other campaigners to call into question the appalling racism inherent in the police force and challenged the state-sponsored myth that the police are merely there to ‘serve and protect’ the community!

Janet has had to endure further misery at the hands of police, including the trauma of burying her brother again after his body was ‘discovered’ in a morgue some 11 years after he was supposedly buried. An unfortunate mistake? Perhaps not.

The latest findings concerning the surveillance of Ms Alder by the cops have led to the instigation of yet another IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) investigation and, perhaps, after a few years, there will even be an apology.

But whilst the state seeks to manage this most recent exposure of police criminality, subversion and interference, we must make it clear that the role of the police under the bourgeois dictatorship (democracy for the rich, dictatorship for the rest of us) is to protect the interests of the ruling class, manage the plebs and ensure the status quo is preserved.

Marxism and the state

Although the bourgeois class (the capitalist ruling class) prefers to maintain its rule by consent (whether through apathy or bribery), it is quite ready to resort to naked force, or covert intrigue and espionage, to maintain its class rule over the proletariat (the working classes).

The history of the police is the history of the class struggle. From its earliest days to its modern incarnation the police have always been a tool of the capitalist class to protect their property and their hold on power.

All revolutionary movements – and even those movements and campaigns which do not have conscious revolutionary goals but which bring into question and expose the injustice of bourgeois rule – present a challenge to the capitalists’ hold on state power. All of these are therefore legitimate targets for the police and law courts as far as the capitalists are concerned.

Whether it’s the mighty Bolsheviks or the Youth against Racism in Europe (another of the former targets of the Special Demonstration Squad), the bourgeoisie knows that its system is riddled by internal contradictions; that the majority of the people would benefit from socialist revolution; and that anything which brings them closer to social revolution, anything which challenges the idea of the total supremacy and ongoing hegemony of the rule of the financial elite, the banks and barons of finance capital, is a danger that has to be dealt with.
From the very beginning, the police have been used as an instrument of class rule. In 1820s’ London, Bow Street Runners (the forerunners of modern policemen) infiltrated the revolutionary movements of the British working class, most famously in the Cato Street conspiracy.

Outraged by the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, in which unarmed workers had been chopped down by the army, and under the heavy weight of autocratic rule, a group of revolutionaries called the Spencean Philanthropists were betrayed by police agents in their ranks.

The group’s members were captured, and they were hanged and beheaded at Newgate after a trial in which police agents were the key witnesses. How very democratic! Right from the start, the police were involved in maintaining the rule of the bourgeois class by any means necessary – not in helping Victorian grannies across cobbled Cockney streets!

Fast forward and cross the Atlantic to the civil-rights movement of 1960s America and we find a network of police spies and agent provocateurs sent into the movements of the revolutionary workers and students such as the Black Panthers, Young Lords and Students for a Democratic Society.

A huge programme of surveillance, murder and covert operations known as Cointelpro (Counter Intelligence Programme) saw the false imprisonment of many of the best leaders of the working class and oppressed masses, and the eventual subversion of their once-revolutionary organisations.

Everywhere, the class struggle rages on. At times it is more open and the clashes are sharper, at other times less so. Everywhere, the workers and the poor organise to advance their interests or to protest at their poor treatment and conditions. And everywhere, the ruling class, through its lackeys, dupes and flunkeys inside our movement, and by its use of paid police agents and provocateurs, works to ensure that our movement is discredited and undermined. And when it is deemed to be necessary, the ruling class has no hesitation in using lethal force to protect its privilege.

Whether your name is Pat Finucane or Fred Hampton – if you’re getting in the way of the profit-takers you may well find yourself going the same way as the Spencean Philanthropists. That the police continue to conduct undercover investigations – spying, counter-intelligence and reconnaissance work – comes as no surprise to those advanced workers who make a study of their history and use Marxism Leninism as their guide to action.

What is to be done?

A struggle against the bourgeois class is possible. Whilst the means of terror, subversion and murder in our rulers’ hands are unparalleled, the great appear great merely because we are on our knees!

Lenin and Stalin, the leaders of the Russian Bolsheviks, forged a disciplined and centrally-organised party of revolution that waged a determined struggle against the Russian king (the tsar) and the Russian capitalists, as well as against the regime’s paid agents, spies and traitors, and they were able to overcome all obstacles in their path and build up a new type of society – one where the police, army and state machinery was in the hands of the Russian workers and peasants.

And because the communists were successful in carrying out a workers’ revolution, because they were able to use state power against the old bourgeois class and build a socialist society, our bourgeoisie continues to moan and wail about the ‘police state of Bolshevik Russia’, to decry the ‘terrible crimes of the KGB’ and to squeal about the ‘oppression of the Stasi’ and ‘secret police’ in the former socialist countries!

This is all done to distract the workers from the real facts. That the Met Police, the LAPD – indeed, all police forces in the capitalist world, are in the hands of the capitalists and conduct daily outrages against the poor and oppressed – the majority of the people – on behalf of the minority, the rich.

The police are just one tool by which this tiny class exerts its rule over the masses. What our rulers really despise about the KGB, the Stasi and other socialist police forces is the fact that for the first time in history the workers had taken hold of the reins of power and expropriated the scum that for so long had murdered and set up for hanging, deportation or destitution those who dared to challenge the ruling class and fight for a better world.

Whilst the police and state security apparatus is huge, it is not as large as the working class. Moreover, it relies on workers to do its dirty work. Without our cooperation, our rulers would have no power at all and their machinery of repression would be useless!

We are the majority; we must harness the power of this mighty class; we must unite and lead the working masses in a revolutionary struggle against imperialism and capitalist dictatorship. We have allies in this mission, and they are the people who currently wage struggles in their own countries to be rid of the British, American and French invaders, corporate looters, spies and agents. We must unite with these brave fighters against our common enemy and build a new, socialist society!

http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=946

join the struggle!

Nadezhda Popova, WWII ‘Night Witch,’ Dies at 91

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Nadezhda (Nadia) Popova, night bomber pilot, died on July 8th, aged 91

popova

This article is from the New York Times Europe

WHEN their hair was chopped off—as it had to be when they joined one of the Soviet Union’s three women-only air-force regiments—some of the women looked just like boys. Add in the bulky flight jackets, the too-big trousers and the size 42 boots, all made for men, and they could have passed for male pilots, just about. Not Nadia Popova. Somehow she managed, with a cinched waist here and a few darts there, to look like a Hollywood star. Between sorties she would fluff her hair, pressed flat by her leather flying helmet, in her tortoiseshell mirror (as at the centre of the picture above). Before each flight she would pin to her uniform a beetle brooch, which also served as a lucky charm. Beside her wooden cot in whatever shed they were sleeping in—once a cowshed—she kept a white silk blouse and a long blue silk scarf, in case she had to make a really feminine impression.

This was also the young woman—she was 19 or 20 then—who could turn her aircraft over and dive full-throttle through raking German searchlights, swerving and dancing, acting as a decoy for a second plane that would glide in silently behind her to drop its payload of bombs. That done, the second plane would act as decoy while she glided in to drop bombs herself. She made 852 such sorties in the second world war as a pilot in the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, later named the 46th Guards in honour of its courage. Once, over Poland in 1944, she made 18 sorties in a single night. The aircraft were old two-seater biplanes, PO-2s, originally training planes, made of canvas and plywood with open cockpits. When it rained, water ran over the instruments; when the planes were shot at, shrapnel tore the wings to shreds. There was no radio and, to save weight, she never wore a parachute. If you were hit, that was it.

She was a wild spirit, easily bored; she loved to tango, foxtrot, sing along to jazz. It made her feel free, which was also why at 15 she had joined a flying club without telling her parents. A pilot had landed his aircraft one day outside their town, Donetsk in Ukraine, astonishing as a god fallen to earth, in his leather jacket. From that moment she too wanted to soar like a bird. Walking towards a plane, every time, she would get a knot in her stomach; every time she took off, she was thrilled all over again.
Often she flew in pitch dark and freezing air. In an aircraft so frail, the wind could toss her over. Its swishing glide sounded, to the sleepless Germans, like a witch’s broomstick passing: so to them she was one of the Nachthexen, or Night Witches. To the Russian marines trapped on the beach at Malaya Zemlya, to whom she dropped food and medicine late in 1942, she sounded more like an angel. She had to fly so low that she heard their cheers. Later, she found 42 bullet holes in her plane.

Falling torches

Loving life as she did—running barefoot in the grass, exulting in the cherry trees that flowered outside her bedroom window—it was odd that she had suddenly wanted “the freedom to die”. It took no time, though. The moment the German invasion was announced, in June 1941, she abandoned the dance-dress she was ironing and ran to the airfield. She was one of the first to enlist in her regiment, demanding to be a fighter pilot. Soon enough, too, she had personal reasons to hate Germans. They killed her brother Leonid in the first month of the war. In August 1942, having crash-landed her plane in the North Caucasus, she saw Stukas bombing the desperate columns of refugees on the road. Her family home was commandeered by the Gestapo, the windows smashed and the cherry trees cut down.

The worst, though, was to lose friends. Eight died in a single sortie once when she was lead pilot, as hulking Messerschmitts attacked them in the dazzle of the searchlights. To right and left each tiny PO-2 went down like a falling torch. She never cried as much as when she returned to base and saw the girls’ bunks, still strewn with letters they had never finished writing. She was tough (“No time for fear”) and surprised at her increasing toughness as the war went on. But she was a woman, too.
The military men never let them forget it, mocking “the skirt regiment” even when its members had become heroines in the press. The women expected it, and did just fine without them. It was fun, though, to organise dances with the men; many of them fell in love; and so did Nadia Popova, with a blue-eyed heavily bandaged pilot she spotted under a tree, another god fallen to earth. He warned her not to make him laugh, as she clearly wanted to, because his wounds hurt. She read him poetry instead, and when she found her Semyon again for good it was at the Reichstag in Berlin in 1945, where they wrote their names in victorious pencil on the walls.

Instead of her beetle brooch she eventually wore on her smart dark suit the medal of a Hero of the Soviet Union, the Order of Friendship, the Order of Lenin and three Orders of the Patriotic War. With enormous pride she sported them, a beaming blonde among the men. She admitted she stood gazing at the night sky sometimes, wondering how she had ever managed to perform such feats up there. Well, came her down-to-earth answer, because you had to; and so you did.

The battle of Stalingrad – 200 days of fire!

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February 2nd this year marked to 70th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Fascism at the Battle of Stalingrad.

Harpal Brar, chairman of the CPGB-ML, delivered this outstanding presentation on the military and political significance of the Battle of Stalingrad, on the 70th Anniversary of the Great Soviet victory in that titanic struggle against the marauding Nazi Fascist Armies.

The video has just become available, and we share it with you in this post for the first time.

Stalingrad was the decisive blow that shattered the myth of German, and arguably – for the Germans at least – ‘aryan’ invincibility. Stalingrad was the battle that turned the tide of WW2. Field Marshall Paulus, 26 other generals, 2,500 officers and 300,000 men were captured or killed as the German 6th army was surrounded, harassed and finally capitulated, its morale in ruins.

As well as giving a detailed background and the course of the key events of the battle, Harpal picks out 5 themes that led to the victory of the Soviet forces in WW2, liberated the earth from Nazi imperialism, and changed the shape of our world today.

1. Elimination of the 5th column: Unlike Vichy france, the Moscow trials and the trial of the military block had dealt with the military and political forces that would have turned Russia over to the Fascist forces.

2. Socialism – Economic construction: The tremendous pace of industrialisation in the decade preceding the German invasion of the USSR (Operation Barbarossa), and the intensified tempo of war industry after that time, along with its shift to the east, deep behind the Ural mountains and beyond the reach of the Nazi forces, was a key factor in training the Soviet people in the use of modern machinery as well as the building of adequately equipped and modern Nation and Red Army capable of scoring these monumental victories.

“We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us” — so Stalin had spoken exactly ten years before Hitler set out to conquer Russia. His words, when they were recalled now, could not but impress people as a prophesy brilliantly fulfilled as a most timely call to action. And, indeed a few years’ delay in the modernisation of Russia might have made all the difference between victory and defeat. ” (Deutscher, Ibid. p. 535).

3. The USSR: had replaced the fratricidal strife and oppression that characterised Czarist Russia as a’prison of nations’ with real internationalism, fraternal cooperation between brotherly nations which had built their new socialist paradise together, and fought so valiantly and heroically together to defend it. Some 27,000,000 Soviet citizens gave their lives to defeat Fascism.

4. Communism, and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik): Gave outstanding leadership to the anti-fascist struggle. Members of the Communist Party, trained in the politics and spirit of Marxism-Leninism, always stood in the front ranks, leading by example,and making the greatest sacrifices. The CPSU(B), led by Joseph Stalin, was the key to the unwavering and unflinching morale of the courageous Russian and Soviet people

5. The leadership of Stalin himself, who worked tirelessly and courageously, never loosing faith in the masses, in the Soviet people, in communism and in the possibility of victory, even when the enemy were at the gates of Moscow.

Sleeping only 4-5 hours a day, he viewed the war from the point of view of logistics; building up strategic reserves, transporting them to the key points and concentrating Red army forces at decisive moments, leading to such outstanding military victories as Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin, withstanding the onslaught, turning the tide and finally crushing the fascist hordes, raising the red flag over the Reichstag, while the Fuhrer, cowering in his bunker, and unable to face the enormity of his crimes, took his own life by swallowing cyanide.

The victory of the Red army at Stalingrad, and of the Soviet Union over Fascist imperialism in WW2, is an episode in the history of communism, and our world, that all progressive humanity can and do take pride in.

Long live the memory of Stalingrad! Long live people’s victory over the dark forces of reaction and imperialism!

Henry Metelmann gave a presentation to the Stalin Society in 2003 at which he gave his personal recollections:

http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/may2003/metel.html

And a he can be watched in the video “through hell for hitler” here:

A book review of Antony Beever’s book on Stalingrad can be read here:

http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/jul2005/beevorreview.php

60th anniversary of the defeat of Fascism (pamphlet):
http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=books&subName=display&bookId=9

Full text here:
http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/may2005/victory.php

PRESS RELEASE: Harlow trades council

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Friday 2nd August 2013

Harlow picket

For immediate release.

This morning (02 August) members of Harlow Trades Council picketed the Mead Park depot of Kier Harlow to show solidarity with our UCATT comrades in their dispute with Kier Services over imposition of delays to salary payment.

Today marks the first day of the official industrial action ballot which ends on 19 August. We we were in attendance to support UCATT members and urge a YES vote in the ballot, which will give union negotiators a stronger position from which to seek a negotiated settlement.

The dispute has been triggered by Kier Services just as the school holiday period is under way, with parents amongst the workforce now facing the prospect of running out of money mid-month and then having to wait 2 more weeks for their pay.

Some workers pay their council rent and council tax through their salaries, so a two week delay in payment by Kier Services could increase the arrears faced by Harlow council, not to mention an increased load on enquiry staff at the Civic Centre.

Kier Harlow employs people with learning difficulties on the ETF team and the effect of changing their routine is far greater than the rest of the workforce. We wonder if Kier Services undertook an Equalities Impact Assessment?

We are already concerned that a Labour controlled council has a near 20% stake in a firm associated with the blacklisting scandal, but more so at the public silence of the Labour Group on this pay issue. However, UCATT has the firm support of Councillor Waida Forman, a Unison branch secretary, who is pictured on the picket line with a fellow Unison steward.

Harlow Trades Council urges Harlow Council to put pressure on Kier Services to negotiate with UCATT and other unions to resolve this unnecessary dispute.

END

Contact:
David Forman
Secretary
Harlow Trades Union Council

CPGB-ML and Workers Party of Korea mark 60 years since the first historic defeat of US imperialism

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Comrades and friends assembled in Saklatvala Hall on Saturday and celebrated both the defeat of US imperialism in the Korean war and the attacks on the Moncada barracks led by Fidel Castro which heralded the beginning of the Cuban revolution.

Members of the Kim il Sung Socialist Youth League performed revolutionary songs and cpgb-ml artists performed classics such as Joe Hill with everybody finishing with the Internationale.

Kim il Sung Socialist Youth League DPR Korea Embassy Victory in Korea cpgb-ml
cpgb-ml bbq

A history of the communist movement in Britain has now been uploaded to our youtube and can be seen here presented by cpgb-ml member -and former CPGB and NCP member- Steve Cook:

A video of the Internationale performance is here.

Harlow trades council defending workers terms and conditions

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We reproduce below a letter to Harlow council Labour group leader Mark Wilkinson from the Harlow trades council, and the reply from the local Labour group leaders…

“Dear Mark,

From the link below you will see that Kier Services in Harlow intend to delay the pay for monthly paid workers by 2 weeks without agreement with the recognised union UCATT.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/135939

I recall that when Cllr Forman introduced her Kier blacklisting motion to the Labour Group earlier this year, much was made of the partnership deal with Kier Services where Harlow Council retained 10% of the shares.

So, naturally, I request that the Labour Group use it’s 10% stake to demand that Kier Services negotiate with UCATT on the pay issue to defend workers’ interests just as vigourously as it did to defend Kier’s over blacklisting.”

In response to the request on behalf of the interests and rights of workers, Mark Wilkinson responded,

” I am sure the labour group will do everything possible to support this issue.”

Red Youth supports wholeheartedly the actions of Harlow Trades Council in bringing this matter to the attention of local trade unionists. What is to be seen yet again is the willingness of the Labour party to serve big business interests rather than the working class! If all trades council’s were as quick to challenge such behaviour the movement would be in a much better place!


The comments of Mark Wilkinson are a clear indication of how little regard the Labour group leaders have towards workers’ interests. Red Youth rejects the words of ‘reassurance’, and suggests that any affiliation with Labour is one for the benefit of the capitalists rather than the workers.

cpgbml break link

Meeting remembers brave anti-imperialist Ghadar fighters

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A packed meeting in Handsworth, Birmingham remembered the sacrifice of those who took up arms against British imperialism for freedom, independence and liberty. About 300 people came to the hall to hear speeches from Birmingham and Sandwell Indian Workers Association (GB) President Harbahjan Dardi, Secretary Sheera Jouhl, IWA(GB) General Secretary and CPGB-ML cadre Avtar Jouhl and CPGB-ML Chairman Harpal Brar and others. Cultural performances and songs performed by Bhagwant, Virdee and other talented performers finished an excellent afternoon of celebration. The meeting received a message of greetings from the Socialist Labour Party General Secretary and the full speech of comrade Harpal will be available here shortly. Congratulations must go to Birmingham and Sandwell branch of the IWA and all the family for an inspiring afternoon remembering and honouring these braves sons and daughters of India and flowers of the international proletariat. Inquilab Zindabad!

For now here are some photos.

cpgb-ml ghadar party

Ghadar Party 100th Anniversary,

Ghadar Party 100th Anniversary,

Ghadar Party 100th Anniversary,

ghadari

A young person's reflections on a parent who works in the NHS

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nhs save

Red Youth welcomes letters and comments from supporters and friends. Below is a heartfelt letter which we have received from a young comrade in the east midlands. We reproduce it below without change…

Having a family member work for the NHS rarely entitles you to any benefits. Working for the NHS in 2013 is synonymous with working unsocial hours trying to manage the work of a dozen on your own, all the while the sword of redundancy hangs precariously above your head. Having a mother who has worked for the NHS for nigh on two decades now, this is the sort of thing I’m used to hearing when she returns home. Nevertheless, despite all this, my mother has consistently come home with some of the most humorous and also some of the most saddening stories from a workplace that I’ve ever heard. Unfortunately, this story falls into the latter category.

Allow me to set the scene for the last tale she came home with. The hospital my mother works at currently, and has done for the best part of 10 years now, has been relatively ‘lucky’ when it comes to NHS cuts. The hospital (which I will not name to spare it the embarrassment) still stands relatively intact and has no major calamities to plague it. To the voyeur, this is one of Britain’s better public hospitals. If there was ever an apple with a rotten core however, then this would be it.

My mother works in the pathology department of the hospital. Or at least, sometimes she does. Her hospital has experienced such a shortage of staff (many of which due to walk outs due to poor treatment, but more on that later) that she and her co-workers often rotate between three and four different departments simply to cover the workload. Of course, this is masqueraded as a ‘varied experience’ for the staff, but in reality means they can’t afford to set on any more staff. 

This tale from my mother concerns one of the other employees at the hospital, a co-worker left to manage an entire department on her own during a particularly busy shift of organizing blood samples, which are obviously quite crucial to the maintenance of patients’ health. Aware of the high workload demanded of its staff, the management’s solution to this problem is to send any excess work on to a nearby (by which I mean around 75 miles) hospital to be completed there. So, worrying that that the workload would go uncompleted if she were to carry on by herself, she sends some of the samples on the 150 mile round trip to be completed elsewhere. All done according to the guidelines she was given. Job done, work sorted, everyone carry on.

This hospital has achieved something of a wonderful bureaucracy of late, where staff can be expected to answer to around half a dozen different ‘bosses’, who don’t really do a great deal of work nor management, and any work or managing they do often conflicts with the work or management of a rival boss. The entire hospital appears to consist of little more than bosses, not sure what to do or who to manage. When the employee was questioned about what was done with the excess samples by another ‘senior’ boss. When she replies, confirming that she did was was instructed, this senior boss’ reply is, ‘that costs too much, you should have done it yourself’. 

But what about the patients who needed these samples and who would go without if she was left to do them alone? The reply is, ‘stuff the bloody patients’.

So, what’s the point in this story? It might appear to be just another ‘boss from hell’ story, it certainly is, it’s much more than that. This is not just an isolated incident but a reflection of the way the entire hospital is run. The one thing that has plagued this hospital, and by extension the NHS, over the last few years is the complete disregard for human lives. Sure, these type of stories are your average ‘horrible boss’ story when it comes to any other place of work and I’m sure every person you talk to will have one. But when it come down to it, the ‘horrible bosses’ of the NHS are in charge of people’s lives as well as people’s wages. 

In one harsh sentence, this senior boss has reduced the lives of patients at this hospital to little more than a monetary exchange, where if the cost is too high then they are left to rot. But it is not just the patients who’ve been reduced, but also the staff. The management at this hospital have long had a reputation for treating both patients and staff as a little less than human, little more than machines. As is common in so many workplaces, the boss is the craftsmen and the workers his tools. Faceless objects of labour, built to work and little more. This senior is the face of capitalism corrupt, where money is deemed more valuable than human lives. 

Obviously, to attribute the failings of the NHS to the management based on a story from one hospital would be foolish indeed. But when the senior boss who was so keen to save money puts time aside in his schedule, which is quite frankly bare, to play golf every week with an even more senior management, then I find it hard not to judge the management for being completely detached and incompetent. The management at this hospital showed an attitude of such inconsideration which has no place in a modern society, let alone its health service.

It is the inconsiderate management that is to blame for the catastrophe that is the NHS in 2013, both within and without the institution. Whilst the hospital management do an excellent job of treating patients and employees like dirt, the management of the country do an even better job of treating everyone like that. Needless to say, the NHS is one of the greatest things that Britain has installed, so why is it being left to disintegrate? The simple answer to that question is because of the inconsiderate, incompetent and detached management, that comes in the form of the government. I write this in the wake of austerity measures, and coincidentally on the 65th birthday of the NHS, so we are all fully aware of the extreme measures that cuts to public services are facing. Only a few days ago, we saw that funding to hospitals, schools and other services was being cut again but somehow our government could justify increasing military and intelligence spending. Rather than nurture its own country, our government has chosen war-making and spying on its own citizens instead of caring for and educating its ill and vulnerable.

There is no justification for this. No excuse can warrant the slashing of public services whilst intelligence and military funding increases. Where is the intelligence in that? Its this kind of behaviour that leads me to label the government as incompetent and detached, but there are no other words to describe them (none I wish to put into print, at least). As it has been for so long, the few in our management seek to benefit themselves whilst the majority lay unattended for. The golf trip is paid for, whilst the many struggle. But where are we, the many, to turn to in such times? There was a time when the Labour Party were the obvious candidates to represent the many, who needed the NHS and the many other public services Britain used to provide. If you weren’t turned away from Labour after the Oil Wars, then you were almost certainly turned away when Labour declared they would do nothing to reverse austerity. What’re we to do, when the devil in the red mask is the same as the one in the blue? The words of Karl Marx spring to mind; ‘The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.’

The only thing the many who depend on public services can do is to continue fighting for them. Regardless of how powerful the few thing they are, they are still nought when compared to the many. The people you elected to represent you and your needs, now only represent the needs of themselves and the few. So no, this story is not just an isolated case and is not just the failure of management when it comes to the needs of employees and patients, but also the failure of government and ultimately the failure of capitalists when it comes to the needs of the working class.

The many must manage themselves when the boss is absent, which is why we have to keep up the defence of public interests, not the interests of those who seek to abuse us. The power has always been with the people, which is why they try so hard to repress us and take away that which we need. That is why its so important to keep fighting for the interests of the many, of the working class, of those who tire of seeing their rewards be reaped by someone else. We must remain defiant in the face of capitalists, for true power is possessed only by the people and the more the few are made aware of this fact, then the sooner we might seek to gain our rightful place as people, not just as tools.

Save the NHS from capitalist Greed!