John McDonnell: Dave loves Gordon
John McDonnell: Dave loves Gordon
Submitted by hangbitch on 10 October 2006
Labour leadership candidate John McDonnell at a public meeting in Islington
There's a pleasing aspect to John McDonnell's public statements on New Labour-arselicking union leaders: he identifies the worst of these toadies by name, and encourages his audiences to laugh about it.
This is one of the more heartening experiences that shop-floor union reps and stewards have had for a while. Alas, one of the most depressing aspects of trade union activism in the last few years has been union bosses' reluctance to criticise New Labour and their active persecution of trade union members who dare to. Public sector union Unison in particular is famous for hunting down and disciplining any Unison member who comes to its attention for making public statements that suggest, for example, that Tony Blair sucks, or that the Iraq war is shit.
It is thus that a group of trade union activists comes within a few short breaths of collective rapture when a Unison member and Labour MP such as McDonnell stands before them and says that he thinks that even union bosses are starting to wake up to the fact that a relationship with New Labour brings absolutely no advantage. 'Even Dave Prentis [Unison's grey-man general secretary, who has allowed witch-hunts of anti-Blair activists and socialists to flourish in Unison in recent years] is realising that. Even within Unison [they're realising that].'
McDonnell's audience giggles. It's not often that they hear one of Unison's MPs imply that a Labour-affiliated union's hierachy is as feeble as it is useless, for laughs. People also enjoy statements from McDonnell such as 'this idea that the unions have that they can negotiate with New Labour is not working... What I'm trying to say to the general secretaries is that this stuff [decent pay and conditions for staff and workers] is non-negotiatable. Let's have a day of action, with everybody out. You know, like they do it in France. Everybody [leaves work] goes out on the streets. I think there are a number of trade unions that would sign up to this now.'
There might be, too. Tonight's meeting - called in Islington to discuss ways to organise against the private companies that are making ridiculous profits out of public-sector contracts at the expense of staff and services - has brought together a hall-full of very angry individuals who are almost all involved in appallingly difficult workplace battles to keep private companies out of public services like schools and home care. They are very, very tired of hearing that they - or the people they represent as trade union activists - have to put up with massive job and wage cuts because the private companies who now have the contracts to provide those services in Islington can make more money for their shareholders if they get rid of half their staff and pay the rest shit.
One of these people is Ken Muller, from the Islington branch of the National Union for Teachers. Muller is a veteran of the grisly fight to keep private companies out of Islington Green School and to save the school from being turned into one of Blair's ridiculous city academies - 'there'll be no comprehensive education left in in Islington if that happens,' Muller says.
Muller recounts the whole evil story of the government fibs, fraudulence, cheap shottery and treachery that is the Islington Green School narrative. It all began when, in 1997, the then chief inspector of schools, Chris Woodhead, overruled his own school inspectors' reports and said that Islington Green - which was until then an excellent school - was a failing school - that is to say, a school that could only be delivered from the brink if the public sector got out of it and the private sector got in.
The school was placed in special measures, at which point, needless to say, all the teachers and pupils with other options (including Tony Blair's children, who were in the zone) fled the scene. The stage was thus perfectly set for a so-called charity by name of Ark (which stands for Absolute Return for Kids, or something equally, and unbelievably, daffy) to offer itself as a sponsor for the school's transformation into a city academy. The remaining teachers and parents at Islington Green weren't too thrilled at these plans - the Ark 'charity' and the whole Islington proposal involved hedge fund managers, the Church of England and other sharks, and teachers and parents weren't convinced that a committment to comprehensive education figured high on the agenda of any of these parties. The upshot was that parents and teachers launched a major protest campaign against Ark. Ark, amazingly enough, took the hint - or came fast to the view that there must be other, more tranquil, villages and villagers to rape - and bowed out of Islington sometime last year.
It was, as Muller rightly says, a great victory, but alas, it was not a permanent one. Now, the City of London has got in on the act and proposed itself as Ark's replacement as a local city academy sponsor. The whole freakshow has kicked off again, only with a different sponsor's name on the bill.
Muller is clearly amazed that the second attempt has even been made. 'Not one person supports this city academy here. We are fighting it, and we fought it, but the plans for the city academy just roll on.' Like so many people here, Muller is wondering, in a roundabout way, how a government gets to be so arrogant that it geuinely believes an ideology that has had local people protesting in the streets will lead to that government's re-election.
Muller is passionate about a problem he describes as 'a crisis of representation.' He talks about the 'two million people [who protested] on the streets against the Iraq war,' in 2003, and the thousands of people who protested outside the Labour party conference in Manchester only a week or so ago, 'and still they ignore us. There is a crisis of representation at the moment.' He says he finds it 'sickening that there will be a coronation [to Gordon Brown, for the Labour party leadership]. We need fighting trade unions. There is nothing that working class people have achieved that they haven't had to fight for.'
That includes care services, which are also in shambles on the local scene. Those residents of Islington who have the misfortune to require home or residential care now have the very doubtful pleasure of the services of the massively lucrative private home and residential-care company Care Uk . Islington Unison deputy branch secretary Andrew Berry tells listeners tonight that Care Uk - as keen to drink to good health as it is to milk it - made some £80m for its shareholders last year and aimed to raise its profits in the coming financial year by 12%. (Care UK's numbers to May 2006 look even better than that - turnover and operating profits are both up 18% and the company describes its growth as continued and strong. Its financial reports also observe that there will be even more growth opportunity through NHS reform).
The bad news is, says Berry, that the good times are not enjoyed by either the people who use these services, or the staff who have to provide them. One of the ways, for example, that Care Uk plans to realise its dizzying fiscal returns is to cut staff pay by 50% - and after Islington Council promised care staff and their unions that Care Uk was a good employer, from whom staff had nothing to fear.
'People [the low-paid and black women staff who work in this industry] will have to work for 60 hours a week just to get by, just to get a living wage,' Berry says. 'It's like the council is scuttling around giving a bung to Care UK.' As Berry points out, these services are not cheaper under privatisation. Wages are lower - they're being stolen from low-paid black women and given to rich white blokes who own companies, if we can put it that way - but that's it.
Still, the privatisation train steams on. It's not cheaper - in fact, it's often much more expensive than providing services in-house. No end of failed public-private partnership projects stand as testimony to that. It's not better - it creates a low-paid, understandably disgruntled workforce which rightly can hardly be bothered turning out for work, let alone making an effort if it does get there.
'Ideology,' John McDonnell says. 'It's all about ideology. It's not about what works, or what is cheaper. Some of these private companies have performed so badly that they're taken back into public ownership. We fix them up and then the contracts are let it out [to the private sector] again. It's unbelievable... the drink sodden clique of MPs and journalists in Westminster have underestimated the feeling of anguish. We had the largest majority of a Labour government in history and we've blown it.'
Submitted by hangbitch on 10 October 2006
Labour leadership candidate John McDonnell at a public meeting in Islington
There's a pleasing aspect to John McDonnell's public statements on New Labour-arselicking union leaders: he identifies the worst of these toadies by name, and encourages his audiences to laugh about it.
This is one of the more heartening experiences that shop-floor union reps and stewards have had for a while. Alas, one of the most depressing aspects of trade union activism in the last few years has been union bosses' reluctance to criticise New Labour and their active persecution of trade union members who dare to. Public sector union Unison in particular is famous for hunting down and disciplining any Unison member who comes to its attention for making public statements that suggest, for example, that Tony Blair sucks, or that the Iraq war is shit.
It is thus that a group of trade union activists comes within a few short breaths of collective rapture when a Unison member and Labour MP such as McDonnell stands before them and says that he thinks that even union bosses are starting to wake up to the fact that a relationship with New Labour brings absolutely no advantage. 'Even Dave Prentis [Unison's grey-man general secretary, who has allowed witch-hunts of anti-Blair activists and socialists to flourish in Unison in recent years] is realising that. Even within Unison [they're realising that].'
McDonnell's audience giggles. It's not often that they hear one of Unison's MPs imply that a Labour-affiliated union's hierachy is as feeble as it is useless, for laughs. People also enjoy statements from McDonnell such as 'this idea that the unions have that they can negotiate with New Labour is not working... What I'm trying to say to the general secretaries is that this stuff [decent pay and conditions for staff and workers] is non-negotiatable. Let's have a day of action, with everybody out. You know, like they do it in France. Everybody [leaves work] goes out on the streets. I think there are a number of trade unions that would sign up to this now.'
There might be, too. Tonight's meeting - called in Islington to discuss ways to organise against the private companies that are making ridiculous profits out of public-sector contracts at the expense of staff and services - has brought together a hall-full of very angry individuals who are almost all involved in appallingly difficult workplace battles to keep private companies out of public services like schools and home care. They are very, very tired of hearing that they - or the people they represent as trade union activists - have to put up with massive job and wage cuts because the private companies who now have the contracts to provide those services in Islington can make more money for their shareholders if they get rid of half their staff and pay the rest shit.
One of these people is Ken Muller, from the Islington branch of the National Union for Teachers. Muller is a veteran of the grisly fight to keep private companies out of Islington Green School and to save the school from being turned into one of Blair's ridiculous city academies - 'there'll be no comprehensive education left in in Islington if that happens,' Muller says.
Muller recounts the whole evil story of the government fibs, fraudulence, cheap shottery and treachery that is the Islington Green School narrative. It all began when, in 1997, the then chief inspector of schools, Chris Woodhead, overruled his own school inspectors' reports and said that Islington Green - which was until then an excellent school - was a failing school - that is to say, a school that could only be delivered from the brink if the public sector got out of it and the private sector got in.
The school was placed in special measures, at which point, needless to say, all the teachers and pupils with other options (including Tony Blair's children, who were in the zone) fled the scene. The stage was thus perfectly set for a so-called charity by name of Ark (which stands for Absolute Return for Kids, or something equally, and unbelievably, daffy) to offer itself as a sponsor for the school's transformation into a city academy. The remaining teachers and parents at Islington Green weren't too thrilled at these plans - the Ark 'charity' and the whole Islington proposal involved hedge fund managers, the Church of England and other sharks, and teachers and parents weren't convinced that a committment to comprehensive education figured high on the agenda of any of these parties. The upshot was that parents and teachers launched a major protest campaign against Ark. Ark, amazingly enough, took the hint - or came fast to the view that there must be other, more tranquil, villages and villagers to rape - and bowed out of Islington sometime last year.
It was, as Muller rightly says, a great victory, but alas, it was not a permanent one. Now, the City of London has got in on the act and proposed itself as Ark's replacement as a local city academy sponsor. The whole freakshow has kicked off again, only with a different sponsor's name on the bill.
Muller is clearly amazed that the second attempt has even been made. 'Not one person supports this city academy here. We are fighting it, and we fought it, but the plans for the city academy just roll on.' Like so many people here, Muller is wondering, in a roundabout way, how a government gets to be so arrogant that it geuinely believes an ideology that has had local people protesting in the streets will lead to that government's re-election.
Muller is passionate about a problem he describes as 'a crisis of representation.' He talks about the 'two million people [who protested] on the streets against the Iraq war,' in 2003, and the thousands of people who protested outside the Labour party conference in Manchester only a week or so ago, 'and still they ignore us. There is a crisis of representation at the moment.' He says he finds it 'sickening that there will be a coronation [to Gordon Brown, for the Labour party leadership]. We need fighting trade unions. There is nothing that working class people have achieved that they haven't had to fight for.'
That includes care services, which are also in shambles on the local scene. Those residents of Islington who have the misfortune to require home or residential care now have the very doubtful pleasure of the services of the massively lucrative private home and residential-care company Care Uk . Islington Unison deputy branch secretary Andrew Berry tells listeners tonight that Care Uk - as keen to drink to good health as it is to milk it - made some £80m for its shareholders last year and aimed to raise its profits in the coming financial year by 12%. (Care UK's numbers to May 2006 look even better than that - turnover and operating profits are both up 18% and the company describes its growth as continued and strong. Its financial reports also observe that there will be even more growth opportunity through NHS reform).
The bad news is, says Berry, that the good times are not enjoyed by either the people who use these services, or the staff who have to provide them. One of the ways, for example, that Care Uk plans to realise its dizzying fiscal returns is to cut staff pay by 50% - and after Islington Council promised care staff and their unions that Care Uk was a good employer, from whom staff had nothing to fear.
'People [the low-paid and black women staff who work in this industry] will have to work for 60 hours a week just to get by, just to get a living wage,' Berry says. 'It's like the council is scuttling around giving a bung to Care UK.' As Berry points out, these services are not cheaper under privatisation. Wages are lower - they're being stolen from low-paid black women and given to rich white blokes who own companies, if we can put it that way - but that's it.
Still, the privatisation train steams on. It's not cheaper - in fact, it's often much more expensive than providing services in-house. No end of failed public-private partnership projects stand as testimony to that. It's not better - it creates a low-paid, understandably disgruntled workforce which rightly can hardly be bothered turning out for work, let alone making an effort if it does get there.
'Ideology,' John McDonnell says. 'It's all about ideology. It's not about what works, or what is cheaper. Some of these private companies have performed so badly that they're taken back into public ownership. We fix them up and then the contracts are let it out [to the private sector] again. It's unbelievable... the drink sodden clique of MPs and journalists in Westminster have underestimated the feeling of anguish. We had the largest majority of a Labour government in history and we've blown it.'
No comments:
Post a Comment