Miliband Wins Another Round

Last night's “Question Time” format of Leader's debates was the least acceptable version of all those used by the broadcasters. It was neither an actual Leaders' Debate nor even the usual Question Time format of a panel discussion and response to audience questions. More than all the others it reflected the extent to which the broadcasters had simply given in to the Tories demands, and Cameron's fear of actually debating with Ed Miliband. Moreover, the actual structuring of the event was rigged to favour the Liberal-Tories. Despite all that, it was another win for Ed Miliband.

At the start, David Dimbleby pointed out that the audience had been specifically constructed of 25% Tories, 25% Liberals, 25% Labour and 25% undecided. In other words, the supporters of the Liberal-Tory government, that has cratered the economy, over the last five years, that has attacked workers' living standards, cut public services and undermined the social structure, were given 50% of the audience to start with, as against 25% for Labour, a 2:1 advantage for the Liberal-Tories.

That reflects the media bias over the last five years too. Although we have had a single Liberal-Tory government over all that period, when it comes to media representation, the Liberals and Tories have been treated as though they were still two separate parties, and each was given the right to a representative to speak on behalf of the Liberal-Tory government, as against just one for Labour. To do that now seems even more ludicrous, when its clear that at the election, the Liberals are going to get wiped out, and already have as low a showing in the opinion polls as the Greens, and only about half the support even of UKIP!

Moreover, its even more ludicrous, because its obvious from the comments from Clegg that they are fighting the election on the clear basis of a continuation of that Liberal-Tory government after the election. Cameron has to maintain the fiction that the Tories are trying to win a majority, by repeating the mantra that they only need to win an extra 23 seats. But, in reality, he knows that the Tories will win fewer seats than they already have, not more, and any seats they do win will be at the expense of the Liberal wing of the Liberal-Tory party, not of Labour.

Clegg does not even have the luxury of Cameron in pretending that he might win an outright majority. If the fantasy of Cameron is that the Tories might win a majority, the fantasy of Clegg is that the Liberals will not be entirely wiped out. The best Clegg can do is to plead with us that our only hope of stable government is to vote Liberal and deny anyone else a majority! But, in reality, its clear that what Clegg is really saying is vote Liberal so that some of us can remain in a Liberal-Tory government, and keep our ministerial limos.

Clegg's latest argument is a clear manifestation of that. He's ruled out any kind of deal with Labour, even if the SNP were to just vote for Labour measures put to Parliament. He argues that the Liberals would first have to approach Cameron if the Tories had the most seats, even if they could not muster a majority. But, that is nonsense. The Liberals have long argued in favour of electoral reform, and the idea of coalition governments based upon it, so as to better reflect the views of the electorate. He argues that this would make Britain more like the rest of Europe, where such coalitions are commonplace.

But, nowhere in Europe are those coalitions constructed on the basis that Clegg demands. In Germany, for example, the Free Democrats and other right of centre small parties do not enter coalition with the CDU/CSU on the basis that the latter is the largest party, but because they share a similar ideological outlook! In fact, if a coalition government is intended to be a better reflection of the votes of the electorate that is the only basis on which it can be justified.

One Liberal voter in the audience, last night made the point that Clegg had made a conscious decision in 2010 to enter into the coalition with the Tories, rather than with Labour. As he pointed out Clegg can hardly now distance himself from the fact that the Liberal-Tory government has caused more than a million people to rely on food banks, that public services have been cut, that living standards have been slashed, that VAT was raised, that Tuition Fees were trebled and so on, because all of those things are a direct result of Clegg putting a Tory government in power rather than a Labour government. In fact, as the contributor pointed out many of those who voted Liberal would far more have preferred that they do a deal with Labour than the Tories, which is why so many former Liberal voters, and indeed Liberal party members have deserted them.

So, if the point of coalitions is to better reflect the political leanings of the electorate, how on earth could Clegg justify his alliance over the last five years with one of the most right-wing ideologically driven Tory parties seen for some time. Indeed, how can he justify his obvious intention to resume that alliance after the election, if the Liberals have any seats left to ally with anyone?

UK Growth had been rising before the Liberal-Tories
took office.  At no point since have they matched the 1%
quarterly growth they inherited from Labour in the second
quarter of 2010.  Rather the immediate effect of Liberal-
Tory austerity was to crater economic growth.

Clegg was laughed out of court by the audience, when he claimed that in 2010, Britain was in the same position as Greece.  In fact, even during the coalition negotiations, the Liberals were maintaining the position they held during the 2010 election that introducing austerity, until the recovery that was then happening had taken hold, would be a mistake.

The real strategy of the Liberal-Tories has been given away by the Tories own house journal – The Sun. The Sun is as close as you can get to the official propaganda sheet of the Tory party. It has mirrored the Tories actual electoral strategy. In England and Wales, the Sun has not surprisingly come out in support of the Tories. In Scotland, the Sun has come out in favour of the Tartan Tories of the SNP. At one time, the Tories used to have a majority of seats in Scotland. That ended a long time ago, but the votes that formerly went to the Scottish Tories simply went across to the SNP. That is the bedrock of the SNP's support, whatever the demagogic rhetoric of the SNP leaders, the ideology that underlies it is conservative nationalism.

The Tories have been encouraging a vote for the SNP in Scotland, therefore, because it bolsters that underlying conservative ideology, whilst taking votes away from Labour. Were it not for the fact that the Tartan Tories of the SNP look set to pick up a lot of votes, Labour, in the whole of Britain, would already be set to win a clear majority. In fact, the lesson for the people of Scotland is vote for the Tartan Tories of the SNP, get a Union Jack draped Tory Government in Westminster. The Sun's support for the Tories in England, and the Tartan Tories of the SNP in Scotland, is a clear statement of that reality.

Miliband was right to say that he would rather remain out of office than to have to do a deal with the Tartan Tories. After all, we have seen how reliable they are in the past. Just as it was the Clegg's Liberal-Tories that put Cameron into government in 2010, and helped him carry through his ideological agenda, so in 1979, it was the SNP that put Maggie Thatcher into government, and thereby unleashed 18 years of Tory attacks on workers across Britain. Far better for Labour to govern as a Minority government, and dare the Liberals and SNP to put Boris Johnson into government, or for Labour to adopt a position of extreme opposition, to oppose line by line every measure adopted by a Liberal-Tory/UKIP/DUP/SNP lash up.

The average deficit to GDP ratio under the last Labour Government
was half what it had been under Thatcher/Major, up to the financial
meltdown.  Even taking that into consideration it was still much lower
on average, and for 4our years at the end of the 90's and start of the
 2000's, Labour actually ran a budget surplus.  The Liberal-Tory claims are
simply lies. 

Miliband more clearly than he had done before also rejected the idea that Labour had overspent in the previous period, bringing howls of outrage from the Liberal-Tories, who have made that lie the centre piece of their justification for existence, and sole explanation for the ideologically driven policies they have adopted over the last five years. In what was clearly a choreographed manoeuvre, a Tory supporting small business woman in the audience referred to Liam Byrne's humorous note left to his successor, joking that there was no money left.

She complained that Ed Balls had pointed out that the note was a joke, and said that anyone making such a joke in private business would have been sacked. Really???? I've worked in private business, and also been self-employed, and its my experience that the people who work there are not as devoid of a sense of humour as this woman was suggesting at all. Such kinds of humour occur all the time, and, in fact, if you were to look at the e-mail conversations of people in the City you would find numerous examples of such humour, including from those very people in the financial sector who actually were responsible for the financial crash, and the fact that the last Labour government had to bail out those banks!

In fact, Miliband should have been even more clear that Labour had not overspent. As I've set out elsewhere. The average deficit to GDP under the last Labour Government, for the period 1997-2007, was half what it had been under the Thatcher-Major governments of 1979-1997. Even taking into consideration the period up to 2010, when Labour had to bail-out the banks that had failed due to the massive financial bubbles encouraged under Thatcher and Major in the 1980's and 90's, the average deficit to GDP ratio was significantly less than it had been under Thatcher and Major. It was also lower than it has been under the Liberal-Tories since 2010.

In fact, Labour ran a budget surplus for four years at the start of the century! The only reason the deficit shot up, was because of the financial crisis. In my opinion, Labour should not have bailed out the banks, but should have let them go bust, and then allowed their workers to take them over for free, so as to run them as worker owned co-operatives. That would have avoided having to borrow to bail them out. But, of course, the Liberal-Tories would have howled with anguish had that happened, because it would have meant that all their friends in the financial aristocracy would have had their fictitious wealth wiped out over night. They would far rather have a Labour government bail out the banks, and for workers then to have to pay for it.

The Liberal-Tories are now proposing yet again to sell off shares in those banks to the rich, after workers have rescued them, which is what has happened with every nationalisation in the past. If Labour wants to really bring about a shift in wealth and power, and the “predistribution” that goes with it, they should legislate to give workers democratic control over their pension funds, and they should transfer at no cost, all the shares that the government owns into a worker owned and controlled pension fund. In fact, it would be useful if they were then to legislate to transfer the hypothecated value of the National Insurance Fund into such a Pension Fund too, so that workers could utilise it to take over most of the rest of British businesses, and start to run them for their interests rather than the interests of a tiny number of multi billionaires.

The Tom Brown Conundrum

Tom Brown or Flashman?

Yesterday, I heard a Daily Telegraph journalist, on TV, describe Ed Miliband's problem as follows:  "He looks like the kid who at school we all wanted to bully.  He's the kid who's lunch box we wanted to steal."   I'd like to say that this comment tells us more about the nature of Torygraph journalists than it does about Ed Miliband, but unfortunately, there is an element of truth in his comment, and it was not immediately challenged by any of the other journalists at the time.  The reason is that, this is precisely the way the media have presented Ed Miliband, and his problem, as they see it, in becoming Prime Minister.

I for one, never saw any kids at school, I wanted to bully, or whose lunch boxes I wanted to steal. Quite the contrary.  Perhaps that is what differentiates a socialist from a conservative.  Whenever I have read Tom Brown's Schooldays, or watched the film, I have always associated with the bravery and the values represented by the self-effacing Tom Brown, rather than the rich, arrogant, bullying Flashman.  Perhaps, that is why Jeremy Paxman's question to Cameron, last night, about his natural affinity with Jeremy Clarkson, and a string of other establishment figures, who have been found to have broken or bent the law, in one way or another, was particularly relevant.

As a society, Britain continually tells itself this story about being a peaceful, tolerant and sympathetic country.  Yet, the reality is that it has always been a country that has thrown its weight around across the globe; it is a country that spread racist and supremacist views, right out of its Public School system, across its Empire, partly to justify its enslavement of millions of people; it is a country where despite all of the anti-discrimination laws, bigotry abounds.  Whether you are black, Jewish, Muslim, a woman, gay, or disabled, or, just like Ed Miliband, portrayed as a geek, you are likely to find yourself under attack - both physical and verbal - as a result of that bigotry.

So, its no wonder that a comment from a journalist, that presents us all as a nation of Flashmans, who could never relate to Ed Miliband as a Tom Brown, as the kid who had to simply put up with such bullying, provoked no response.  Its the same establishment mindset that has no problem with the idea that any ordinary worker, who assaulted someone, should be sacked on the spot, but which rallied around their own posh boy, Jeremy Clarkson, to demand that he be let off, and instead blamed the BBC, with apparently no concern whatsoever for the poor bloke who was assaulted, and who still had to go into work with the bully who had attacked him.

This is the hypocrisy of the British establishment and its media.  It runs news stories about kids who have committed suicide because of bullying at school or on social media, and opines at what a sad state of affairs that is.  Yet, it then has spent the last few years doing exactly the same thing to Ed Miliband, and, by extension, every other person in the country who is a bit of a geek, who is the kid who reads books, and so on.  The reason Miliband shows so badly in polls, as against Cameron, is not just because incumbent Prime Ministers always have an advantage over challengers, in that respect, its because the media have continually told us that Miliband is the kid at school who always gets bullied, and Cameron is the posh, popular kid, whose friend we all want to be.  Its politics, reduced by the media to the level of Beverley Hills 90210.

Unfortunately, the TV Leaders debates only emphasise that idea that politics is all about presentation, which is why I've always thought that they are a bad idea for democracy.  In the end, Miliband did well in the programme, and it was obvious why Cameron did not want to debate with him directly, because for the last five years, he has not been able to give a straight answer to any question put to him at Prime Minister's Question Time.  The only time he has come up with anything approaching a straight answer, is in the last week, as part of an obvious political game over VAT.  But, given the Tories' record on VAT, Miliband was quite right to say nobody could believe Cameron's answer.  The Tories would be likely to get round the issue, for example, by just extending the scope of VAT to food - as they tried with the pasty tax - or to children's clothing, books and so on.

The decision Britain faces in the Election then, as presented by the media, over the Leaders' Debates, is do its people see themselves reflected in the mirror of a self-effacing Tom Brown, with basic decent values, and a commitment to fairness and principles, or do they see themselves reflected in the mirror of a rich, Public School, Posh Boy and arrogant bully like Flashman?

Cameron Just Doesn't Get It

Almost every time he speaks, David Cameron shows just how far removed from ordinary people he really is.  Yesterday, during Prime Minister's Questions, Ed Miliband understandably asked Cameron to explain the links between the Tory Party, and HSBC, after it was revealed that the bank had helped some of its private clients in Switzerland not just to avoid tax, but to evade it, which is a criminal act. The former head of the private banking section of HSBC, Stephen Green, was made a peer, and a Tory Trade Minister, by Cameron, several months after the facts about HSBC had been passed to the HMRC.  Cameron's refusal to answer any question put to him during PMQ's has become a sick joke, but his refusal to answer the questions about his links with Lord Green, reached a new low.

Over the last few days, the Tories have tried ludicrously, but in accordance with their attempt on any question you might ask to simply blame Labour, to shift the focus on to the fact that the tax avoidance and evasion brought to light, was uncovered back in 2007.  That is ludicrous, because the information itself was not passed to HMRC until 2010, when the Liberal-Tories took over the government.  A government could hardly be held responsible for not taking action in response to activity that had not yet been uncovered!  The real question is why, after 2010 when the information had been passed to HMRC, the Liberal-Tories did nothing about it, and why, in fact, the Tories made Stephen Green a peer and a Minister in their government!  This has all the hallmarks of Cameron's appointment of Andy Coulson.

But, what was worse in Cameron's response, was that rather than answering the question he revealed the true nature of how he and the Tories see the world.  Firstly, he tried to tell us that the fact that some very rich people donate millions of pounds to the Tory Party has nothing to do with the kinds of policies the Tories pursue, or the fact that some of those people become peers and Ministers.  He then tried to contrast this with the fact that the Trades Unions donate money to the Labour Party, and the Trades Unions, are also affiliated to the Labour Party, and thereby have a vote in determining its policies, and its MP's, and leader.

What Cameron cannot seem to grasp is that there is a world of difference here.  When he looks at businesses - as set out recently  - all he sees are those same fat cat bureaucrats, who represent the interests of the money lending capitalists that sit on company boards.  He does not see businesses as actually being comprised of millions of workers who actually produce the goods and services, and make the profits, that are appropriated as interest payments (dividends, bond yields) by those money lending capitalists, or even as the day to managers of those businesses (the people who Marx termed the "functioning capitalists") who organise the work of those workers, undertake the supervision and planning of production and so on, and who are themselves likely to be members of trades unions as any other worker.

Yet, in fact, when the decisions are made to make donations to the Tory Party by businesses, all of these millions of workers, who produce the commodities, and create the profits, along with the day to day managers of those businesses, are given no say whatsoever in the decision.  Those decisions are preserved as the function of those top level boards of bureaucrats who look after the interests of the shareholders.

Similarly, therefore, when Cameron looks at the trades unions, and the donations made by them to the Labour Party, he again does not see millions of workers, who make up those trades unions, he only sees the leaders of those unions, who unlike the top Directors, have actually been democratically elected.  For Cameron, the millions of ordinary people do not exist.  Whether it is as the actual components of businesses - the people who make the goods and services, and create the profits - or whether it is as members of trades unions, who voluntarily give their time, and vote to elect their leaders, to donate to the Labour Party, and to actively take part in democratically determining its policies, its MP's and its leaders, they are invisible to Cameron and the Tories.  They do not exist, for him.

In his Public School, elitist mentality, the only people who exist are the few at the top, whether it is the bureaucrats at the top of businesses, or the bureaucrats at the top of the trades unions.  In respect of the latter, the situation is far from perfect from the perspective of a Marxist, but it is far, far better than the situation in respect of the select few who control the board rooms of companies.  It is our small, individual contributions that makes up the money that is donated to our Labour Party, it is our voluntary action in attending union meetings to take part in electing our officials, in determining union policy, and in determining Labour party policy, and choosing our LP officials that he is attacking.  When cameron attacks the role of the Trades Unions in donating to the Labour Party, and in helping to determine its direction, he is again attacking millions of ordinary working people.

He can't see that, because for him, those millions of people do not exist.  He just doesn't get it, because he lives in a different world from the rest of us.

Miliband And The Media

Murnaghan last Sunday, asked the question whether Ed Miliband is being hounded by a hostile media. Coming from someone who works for the Evil Media Empire, of Rupert Murdoch, the question itself seems a bit rich. The answer is, of course, Miliband is being so hounded, but the further, more interesting questions are why, and what should Labour do about it?

The glib answer to why would be that we have a Tory press, so why would we expect that they would not attack a Labour leader? But, that begs further questions such as, why do we have an overwhelmingly Tory press? The answer cannot be that the Tories are the party of business and Labour are the party of the workers. As far back as Lenin, it was recognised that Labour was only the Workers' Party in the sense that its membership was made up of workers, and it was organisationally and ideologically tied to workers organisation like the trades unions. But, as Lenin pointed out, it was a bourgeois workers' party. That is the reformist ideology that underpinned it was the same bourgeois ideology that underpinned the trades unions from whence it came, and which also dominated the vast majority of workers.

In other words, the LP, from the start, has been a party which has been little more than a development of the Liberal Party, from the end of the 19^th century, a party that relies on the votes and activism of workers, but whose ideology, and, therefore, its actions, are ultimately governed by what is in the interests of capital, and in particular, that big industrial capital, whose interests, and those of the workers, are mediated and negotiated within a modern social democracy.

Over the last century, capital has had enough experience of Labour to affirm itself of this understanding. Nor is it the case that “Red Ed” is in fact anything more than the palest pink with a hint of purple. Miliband differs little ideologically from Blair, who repeatedly won the support of the Tory press, despite trebling spending on the NHS, introducing the minimum wage, let alone being an ardent advocate of that one idea sure to set Tories off on an apoplectic fit – Europe.

In fact, the one paper you would think would be the clearest voice of the interests of the most important section of British capital – the FT – has, if anything, been more pro-Labour than Tory. It has generally criticised the policy of austerity, as opposed to fiscal expansion, in the US, for example.

Although part of the explanation of the actions of the British press can be located in its ownership structure, which gives a few, very rich, press barons the ability to treat the papers in their stable as their own playthings, it also has to be remembered that newspapers are businesses, and have to provide a commodity they can sell. Each will then try to place its product in a segment of the market it believes it can exploit to maximise its sales.

The reason we have an overwhelmingly Tory press is not because the Tories represent the interests of capital, and newspapers are owned by capitalists. The reason is that a large proportion of the population, who buy newspapers, hold the same kind of reactionary views that the newspapers they buy are happy to validate for them. We have the gutter press we have, because it acts like a comfort blanket for bigots, and the kind of bigotry that infects a sizeable section of the population, and whose manifestation is shown in the votes for the BNP, UKIP and the Tories.

None of this bigotry should be confused with the interests of capital. In large part, it is, in fact, contrary to the interests of modern, large-scale capital, particularly in respect of Europe and the free movement of labour and capital. If its in the interests of capital at all, its only those backward sections of capital, particularly those kinds of small, inward looking capitals, that make up the core of Tory votes and membership.

There is then another reason why the media don't like Miliband, and that is he appears different – summarised by the media as geeky. A fundamental aspect of bigotry is the singling out of anything or anyone who is different. Ed Miliband might be the finest P.M. the country ever had, might have all the qualities of intelligence, organisation, hard work, determination and courage required, but all that amounts to nothing when, in the mind of a bigot, he appears as “different”.

And, once that meme is established, simple game theory demonstrates that no paper that wants to retain its readers is going to demur from it. Indeed, few media commentators are going to risk their own reputation and prospects by challenging it.

Unfortunately then, for Miliband, he faces a perfect storm, in relation to the media. On the one hand, he had the audacity to be elected leader, despite the fact that the majority of the media were backing his brother, and confidently predicting he would win. From the start, he has faced their wrath, therefore. Secondly, he is seen as different, which is never going to be acceptable to bigots, or those that appease bigots. Thirdly, he is seen as part of the metropolitan elite, whose culture is antipathetic to the reactionary ideas and bigotry of those backward sections of the population that make up the bulk of the readership of the Tory press, and whose ideas have been reinforced as a result of the economic crisis engendered by the policies of the Liberal-Tories, and for which Europe, immigration etc. are an easy explanation.

So, what should Labour do about that? Perhaps, given the money paid out to David Axelrod, its a question he should already have answered. And, in doing so, he should have advised Miliband not to appease the worst representative of that reactionary media, by posing with a copy of the Sun. In fact, Miliband should stop being an appeaser altogether. You cannot appease bigots. Their bigotry has to be confronted, and the fears that underlie their bigotry addressed.

Miliband did well when he was attacking the Evil Empire, rather than appeasing it. Labour in general needs to go on the attack. After 30 years of monetarist and Austrian orthodoxy it was inevitable that its spell would be hard to break. Gordon brown should take credit for doing so in 2008, in response to the financial crisis, but he and Alistair Darling, should not have responded to the Tories switch back to austerity in 2010, by following suit. They should have followed Obama's lead, in demanding a continuation of fiscal expansion, until the economic recovery was fully established.

Brown was also wrong to have opposed Blair's support for joining the Euro. A single European market only makes sense in the context of a single currency and state. Labour should be spearheading the drive, with workers' organisations across Europe, for the establishment of a United states of Europe. That would be the best way of dealing with the arguments of euroseptics about benefit tourism, and the undercutting of wages etc.

Instead of appeasing the bigots with weasel words about preventing foreigners obtaining benefits in Britain, Labour should say we need a united Europe to bring the low levels of workers benefits and conditions, in Britain, up to those of the best in Europe, such as Germany. Labour needs to give a strong, clear and confident message, based on promoting the interests not just of British workers, but all worker across Europe, and should do so unashamedly, rather than trying to appease those reactionary ideas of the Tories, which do not even represent the interests of big capital, which itself requires a forward looking, modern European economy, that can quite easily provide decent minimum standards for workers, even if the backward looking, inefficient small capitals, built up under Thatcher, cannot.

In fact, Miliband has the opportunity to make a great advance, simply by making the decisive break from all of the mistakes that arose under Thatcher and her heirs. There would be nothing geeky about that.

What Is An Irresponsible Strike?

"Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system."

Karl Marx - Value, Price and Profit

Ed Miliband's first speech as Labour Leader begged more questions than it answered. That is an indication that it was vacuous. The general themes of social justice were fair enough, but only because they are so general that almost anyone, including, as people like Andrew Neill pointed out, David Cameron could accept them. There may have been the odd commitment, such as to a Living Wage, which would be beyond the scope of Cameron and Co., but even that was set in such general terms as to be meaningless. How is this "Living Wage" to be implemented, for instance, and doesn't it imply that it requires the Minimum Wage to be set at a decent level? Why not just commit to that?

There were some moralistic comments about how unfair it is that a Banker can earn as much in a day as a Care Worker earns in a year, but his Dad would have told Ed that such inequality is an inescapable feature of Capitalism, and the fact that workers are deprived of ownership of the means of production. Unless you are committed to replacing Capitalism by returning ownership of the means of production to those very workers then those moral sentiments are meaningless. Inequality did not rise under New Labour because they set out to bring about such a situation, but because tinkering with Tax and Benefits to try to redistribute wealth will never address the real causes of inequality.

And, even within the context of Ed Miliband's argument and politics this approach is clearly flawed. He spoke about the dire consequences that the Liberal-Tory cuts will have on those very people at the bottom of the heap, and the need to oppose those cuts. But, at the same time he caved in to the bosses media - apparently according to Trevor Kavanagh, former Sun Editor, the first person he rang after his election was the current Sun Editor - by trying to separate himself from the unions with a meaningless statement. He warned against an irresponsible wave of strikes against the Cuts, saying that he would not support such strikes, and nor should the Party. But, what is an irresponsible strike?

If you listen to the bosses media then strikes are simply the actions of militant Trade Union leaders, and a handful of extremists. If that is true then the vast majority of workers must be very dumb indeed, because, especially today when unions are hamstrung all roads up by legislation, it is very difficult to win support for a strike. Every worker has to be consulted, and if there is any chance that the bosses can show that some worker has not been, or that some have been who should not have been, then a strike ballot can be disqualified as the recent BA Cabin Crew dispute shows. Even where a huge majority is obtained in such a ballot the Courts will throw it out if a few discrepancies exist. So, all those workers who do vote for a strike, were we to believe the bosses media must be real dupes to be voting for something that is against their interests, and is only being manipulated by a militant minority. But, of course workers are not stupid or dupes. They do not vote for a strike because they want to strike, or because they have been manipulated, but because they can see no other solution to the situation they face. A strike is a sign of workers weakness not strength.

And as the Channel 4 "Dispatches" Programme, "What's The Point Of The Unions", last night, demonstrated most workers experience of unions is not that of being manipulated to strike, but being manipulated not to strike, to accept deals with the bosses rather than rock the boat, of victimisation for those who do try to put forward such a stand. With union leaders, like Derek Simpson, being paid £200,000 a year, more like the boss of a medium size company or the Chief Executive of a Council, is it any wonder that such people associate more with the bosses than the ordinary workers?

Of course, there are some union leaders like Bob Crow who will set out to improve the conditions of their members, and who recognise the importance of effective action to bring that about. But, as the programme showed, such leaders "manipulation" amounts to nothing more than actually arguing with members, providing leadership to take a particular course of action. As though, every day workers are not being bombarded by propaganda from the newspapers and the media to take another course of action, to lie down and be rolled over by the bosses.

There are too, those within the Left sects for whom a strike is a means to an end. The conventional wisdom is that during a strike workers political consciousness is raised more than at any other time. Yet, there is really no evidence to support this contention. One or two people might be politicised as a result of being involved in a significant strike, but generally speaking those who come to prominence are people who have not been previously involved, and who just as quickly disappear after it has finished. The Left sects are more interested, because they believe that one or two of these individuals might be won to their particular organisation. This is essentially the outlook of the Leninist/Luxemburgist Left, which is that nothing can really be done short of the revolution, but Economistic demands have to be raised in order to provoke workers into struggle for them, out of which the Party can be incrementally built ready for the Revolution when it comes. But, as a strategy it is pathetic. If workers really were politicised by such strike action, then solely on an incremental basis over a few decades the forces of the Left - even broadly defined - should have grown to 100 times what they are today.

The real problem with strikes is that outlined by Marx above. It is not that workers are "irresponsible" in engaging in them, but, precisely because of the weakness of the workers position that leads them to engage in them, because of seeing no alternative, they are not always the best solution to their problems - they are not irresponsible but as Marx puts it an "injudicious use of their power." In part, they can be injudicious for the reason that Miliband was suggesting - the need to build a wider coalition of support for a better solution. But, they can also be injudicious for the reason Engels set out in his "Condition of the Working Class", where he wrote,

"and thus a new spirit came over the masters, especially the large ones, which taught them to avoid unnecessary squabbles, to acquiesce in the existence and power of Trades’ Unions, and finally even to discover in strikes — at opportune times — a powerful means to serve their own ends."

As I've written elsewhere, that appears to be the case in Greece. The bosses state wants to save money by saving on wages to Public Sector workers, it does that when those workers are on strike. It wants to save money by reducing the services provided to the Public, it achieves that when strikes stop those services being provided. It is falling into precisely the trap that Engels describes. The bosses state has no reason to concede when the strikers are achieving its ends for it. And all the time, those denied the services by the strike are turned away from their fellow workers. Unless, the strikes were to build into something more, into a challenge for power, they are a dead end. But, that kind of Luxemburgist strategy was shown to be false by Lenin. There is no necessary transition from mass strikes to insurrection. In fact, the longer the strikes fail to move forward, the more likely that demoralisation will set in, and the workers will be set back decades.

That is why I've argued that we need a more intelligent strategy against the Cuts in this country too. Rather than such strikes what we need is to use the experience of the Anti-Poll Tax Movement. We need to build the largest possible movement across society to oppose the Cuts, by Trades Unions mobilising to send their activists out into the communities to canvas people on every doorstep, and they should be supported in that by every Branch LP member. We need to build anti-cuts committees on every street, on every estate, in every town and city uniting LP's, Trades Councils, TRA's and every other rank and file organisation of workers. But, the basis of such a movement should not be to do the Tories work for them by depriving workers of the services they need through strikes, it should be to refuse to allow the Liberal-Tories to withdraw those services. Every school, library hospital or other facility threatened with closure should be immediately occupied, and the service continued to be provided under workers control with the democratic involvement of those dependent on the service. If workers within Council Building are threatened with redundancy, the Council Offices should be occupied the same, and only those Councillors who support the workers admitted. The buildings taken over should be financed by a Council tax and rent strike, with workers on each estate paying the money into an account established by their anti-cuts committee, and if the Council Offices have to be occupied the Accounts staff should stop payments to every large company, and to central government in order that funds remain available to pay workers.

But, we should learn the lessons of UCS and of May '68, and many more struggles. Having occupied these facilities and started to run them under our own ownership and control, we should not be persuaded to hand them back to the bosses state. To do so is to accept the bosses ideology that workers cannot run their own lives. It is to ask for the attack to be renewed upon us at a time of the bosses choosing. If Ed Miliband really wants a new politics for a new generation, if he really wants to put forward an alternative to irresponsible strikes, if he wants to support the idea of "Community", let him support and argue for such a solution.

But, having said all that, if instead workers threatened with cuts decide to strike, am I going to say, sorry I can't support that? No, of course not. Marx advised the Paris Workers not to rise up in 1871, but when they did he put himself wholly on their side. I disagreed with the slogan of "British Jobs For British Workers", raised by the Lindsey Oil Refinery Workers, but I supported their strike. Why because, ultimately it is a class issue. It is a question of "What Side Are You On?" I am on the side of the workers even when the tactics and strategy they use I think is wrong. Only then do you have the right to criticise those tactics, and to try to convince workers of a better course. Unfortunately, I suspect that Miliband's course is not even a different course let alone a better course, but is no course at all.