Why the Trade Union bill is the biggest attack on workers in a generation and why we must all fight it.

Flashback to the 1970s and apparently the Trade Unions had control of the weak Labour Government. The 3 day weeks and rubbish piled up everywhere was because of constant strikes and lack of communication and negotiations between Government and Trade Unions. So something had to be done supposedly.

Enter stage Margaret Thatcher who basically sold us the idea that the Unions were part of “the enemy within”. So she bought in a raft of anti-union legislation that banned workplace ballots, stopped union members getting paid for going on strike and introduced notice periods for strike action. By the end of 18 years of Tory rule we had the strictest trade union laws in Europe. Whilst New Labour didn't really change anything in regards to Trade Union law, they did bring in a raft of measures that generally helped people at work including the minimum wage and Working Tax Credits.

So flash forward again and it is 2015. After a few years of Tory/ Lib Dem Government there had been a number of strikes in the education sector, the healthcare sector and of course infamous tube strikes because of a change in pay and conditions at work. So now with the Tories in government on their own, they are bringing in further anti Trade Union legislation. Their tightening up of Trade Union rights include a 50% turnout to make any strike eligible, at least 40% support for strike action in vital public services such as education and transport. Furthermore they are increasing the notice period at which you can call a strike from 7 to 14 days and the Government are going to allow companies to hire agency workers to replace striking staff. In addition if a Union official at a picket line isn't wearing an official armband, they could be fined up to £20,000.

So you may be thinking, well what is wrong with having at least half a union turnout to vote for a strike. It makes it more legitimate and the public will more sympathy with them. If the Conservatives actually believe a majority turnout means real legitimacy for a result of a ballot, why are the Local Elections and European Election results, with less than 40% turnout, legitimate? Also the Alternative Vote referendum had barely 30% turnout, yet the Conservatives at the time claimed that the result of that meant a majority of British people supported the current voting system. One rule for Trade Unions, another rule for the British Electorate it seems. Here’s an idea, if you want to increase voter turnout for Trade Union strike ballots, why not bring back workplace ballots or bring in online voting rather than arbitrarily having a minimum turnout. Personally I’d do the same for elections as well.

So increasing the notice period at which a strike can be called may seem reasonable as it means other workers not on strike can make contingency plans in regards to themselves getting into work. However sometimes negotiations take a while and things can be agreed at the last minute and most strikes are called off because of this. If you have to give more notice to strike then that gives the employees less bargaining power when fighting for their rights and means the employers call the shots. Employers bringing in agency staff to cover striking workers may again seem positive on the surface as the company don’t lose productivity and their business activities keep going so therefore this benefits the economy. However this is where the threat of strike action becomes completely pointless. If employers can replace staff like that just for going on strike then they are hardly going to care whether their staff go on strike and once again this gives Trade Unions pretty much no bargaining power when fighting to improve their members pay and conditions.

So to sum up. Yes strike action can annoy and affect a lot of people that are not Trade Union members. It means people are late or can’t get to work at all. However, the rights that we take for granted today weren't given to us willingly by employers and Governments. They were fought for by Trade Unions fighting for individual members pay and conditions as well as taking direct action collectively such as going on strike. Whether it is paid holiday, maternity leave, health and safety in the workplace, Trade Unions have benefited all of us. If we allow the Government to curtail Trade Union activity even more, there is nothing to stop them pursuing a race to the bottom on rights at work and who is going to be able to stand up for us then?

NB: For full disclosure, I am a member of Unite, which is the biggest Trade Union in the country. The Trade Union bill passed it second reading earlier this week. To help fight the bill, lobby your MPs and join the TUC’s campaign

Corbyn supporting Labour purgees don't despair. There is another option for you.

Well after a few months of trying to get people to support Jeremy Corbyn, I've been purged from the Labour Party. They've rejected my application to be a supporter. I joined in mid July. I have had many promotional emails from different candidates but no ballot and it took my brother phoning on Friday to confirm what I feared. And apparently you have to pay £10 to find out why. Isn't democracy wonderful?

Now there are those that will say that it's only fair that I got rejected as I am a member of the Green Party. I accept that but many other Corbyn supporters that joined have also been purged. Comedians such as Francesca Martinez, Mark Steel and even PCS union leader Mark Serwotka. These people are not members of any other political party so it is suspicious that they have been purged.

It's interesting though because a quick check from Labour HQ at the general election would have confirmed I was actively campaigning for the Greens yet that didn't stop them bombarding me with election literature and I'm sure come the next election, they'll do the same. My thoughts are if they don't want my support now, why should I support them in the future when it's convenient for them?

To fellow Corbyn supporters that have actually been unfairly purged I say this. There is a political party that will welcome you with open arms and that is actually united against austerity. Join the Greens because unlike Labour there is no risk of us ousting our leader for being too left wing.

If Corbyn does win the Labour leadership election, I genuinely wish his supporters in the Labour Party the best of luck in changing Labour into a bottom up movement that is democratic and makes them a force for socialism and equality again. It will be a massive struggle so be prepared to fight it out with the authoritarian blairites.  At the end of the day, I want see progressive socialist politics get more popular and I don't mind which vehicle it is driven in, hence I why I initially joined as a supporter to vote for Corbyn.

For now I'm focused on helping The Green Party's campaign for the City Hall elections next May and in particular promoting our #workfair campaign as part of it. Sounds interesting to you? Then join and be part of a real progressive change for London.

Three Months into a Conservative majority Government. What have we got so far?

So here we are. Three months in to a Conservative majority Government and all the media can talk about is "Corbynmania". But whilst everyone is finding as much dirt on Corbyn as possible, the Conservatives have been quietly getting on with some of the most controversial policies we've seen.

So I'm going to break down the bullshit Cameron talked about on a lovely video on his Facebook page when he marked the first 100 days of his government, staring at you with his cold dead eyes, talking about how his Government are a "one nation" Government providing security at every stage of your life. Yes I'm talking about YOU in particular.

He starts off by talking about education. Saying that by turning every failing school into an academy and giving the Government power over local authorities to do so, this will ensure that every child has the best start in life. Let's forget then that a recent report that said that almost half of academies are failing disadvantaged students. Also they don't have to provide support for SEN students because they can be selective about who they take in rather than meet the needs of local students as happens under local comprehensives. Given the new reliance on passing tests rather than teaching life skills as well as cuts in further education colleges along with maintenance grant scrapping at universities, what kind of security is that?

He then talks about making the NHS 7 a day a week service (it is already) and investing an extra 10 billion into it. He obviously leaves out the selling off of services to private companies and the closure of some hospitals due to PFI debts.

Furthermore he goes on to say about how by raising the minimum wage to a "living wage" of £9 an hour and by lowering the benefit cap, it will always pay to be in work and by increasing the tax threshold to the minimum wage he is creating a low tax, low welfare, high wage country. First off that living wage isn't a living wage. The current London living wage is £9.15 an hour. Secondly by scrapping working age benefits for 18-21 year olds and by excluding them from this living wage, where is the security for them? Also arbitrarily lowering the benefit cap at a time of ever rising rents will just lead to homelessness.

Speaking of homes, he says he is providing the security of home ownership for all by allowing Housing Association tenants to buy their own homes. What about a young person like me that just wants to be able to afford to rent? Or people that are on the social housing waiting list? Where is the security of being able to have somewhere affordable to rent?

Instead of building affordable homes he is just selling off social housing and cutting inheritance tax for home owners. You can see where his priorities lie.

And for the final stage of life, the Government say they will provide security by "triple-locking and increasing the state pension." Never mind that increasing the retirement age means future generations won't get this. Also no one seems to have noticed this but the Government are quietly dropping the cap on the cost of social care that they introduced in the last parliament. At every stage of life, Cameron seems to be giving with one hand and taking with the other. Apart from children and young people in which he is literally taking every opportunity they get and squishing it into the ground with his massive shiny spam-like hand.

Oh F**k, this sounds completely horrible. What can we do to fight it?

I'm glad you asked that. Very eloquently put aswell. As I mentioned in previous posts, join a trade union or a direct action groups or dare I say it a political party. Apart from the Tories obviously. Which would be a weird way to fight them. Unless you want to infiltrate them like they are doing with Labour. But they've gone so far to the right that trying to influence them is like a metaphor I can't come with right now. But anyway the point is, it's impossible to do so. I digress. We've fought back against  privatisation of our forests and national parks and the closing of certain A & Es. We can fight against some of these changes aswell. It will be a long hard slog, but f**k it what have we got to lose?

We shouldn’t let fear of a coup stop potential progress. Why we should all support Corbyn.

Over the last month or so I and many others on the left of politics have been really considering whether to join the Labour Party as supporters in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn as leader. It is easy to see why this would be a serious consideration. Corbyn is anti austerity, anti-fracking, pro investment in renewable energy projects, anti trident and of course favours nationalisation of public services such as the Banks and the Railways.

So what should non-labour member do? Well I have heard different opinions being expressed. One being that as it is an internal Labour election, those of us not members of Labour should just leave them to it and see what happens and just build the anti-austerity movement outside Labour. I have also heard the argument that there isn’t a short term solution to getting progressive policies implemented and it is a ‘certainty’ that Corbyn will get ousted should he be elected leader so there is no point in supporting him anyway. I’ve even seen it suggested that if some of us join Labour to help make Corbyn leader, the inevitable coup from Labour MPs will discredit those of us on the left and keep the agenda of the Tories intact.

And on this potential coup, yes it is true that Corbyn barely scraped enough support by fellow Labour MPs to get on the ballot. Yes it is true that a lot of MPs that nominated him won’t vote for him. And if you believe certain Labour insider’s, there could well be a rebellion by right wing Labour MPs, who only need just over 40 MPs to take down their leader. Corbyn could then be gone in a matter of months and MPs could discredit him in the meantime by voting for some of the government’s policies. If Corbyn did win the leadership election, his role of Leader of the Opposition could be seriously undermined. These are serious issues that have rightly been looked at when deciding whether to throw our support behind Corbyn.

But even if there is a coup, why does that mean the left wing of the Labour Party will be discredited in the media and in the public’s eye? Yes the Murdoch press will gloat bigtime in the split and chaos of Labour and will vilify Corbyn as someone who can’t keep a unified opposition. However it could well be the case that the general public have sympathy with Corbyn and distrust and dislike those that bring him down undemocratically. And actually that could help political parties like the Greens become more popular and get grassroots Labour members, who have been frustrated and ignored for years by the leadership, to join,

Whatever the risks of Corbyn winning the Leadership contest are, you can’t just not do something because of the risks involved. Life is full of risks. At the general election I voted for the Green Party in a Tory/Labour marginal seat and was accused of splitting the vote and letting the Tories in. However, It didn’t happen. Labour won the seat. But if it had happened, I would not have regretted it because I knew that at the time the Green Party were the only party to offer a clear and coherent alternative to the Government. Now a Labour leader candidate is offering that, I’m not going to turn down an opportunity to help build the anti-austerity movement. I want to see progressive policies put forward so the poorest and most vulnerable in our society can actually be helped. If that means I back a Labour candidate who advocates those policies, then so be it. There is too much at stake for the left to be tribal and split on this as we are on so many issues. 

He may not even win in the end, but he has certainly opened up the debate and got the anti-austerity message out into the mainstream media. And if he doesn’t win, I WON’T be supporting Labour at all. I’ve made that clear from the start of this. In the meantime, join me and many others in backing the only Labour candidate who is offering that alternative to the Conservatives we really need right now. #Jezwecan

Osborne’s budget: If you’re young, you’re on your own!

Well it’s been over a week since Osborne’s budget and I know I’m probably repeating what others have said but I wanted to put my thoughts out there for what it’s worth.

So you can see I'm trying to be fair, I'll start with the positives. There are very few but I'll try my best. Raising the tax free allowance £12,000 and putting in law that the minimum wage should always be tax free. Sounds good when you think it about it, but why not raise the minimum wage to a living wage rather than just cut taxes. He also raised the 40% rate of tax to earnings over £43,000 and raised the inheritance tax threshold to £1 million. The problem with being a 'low tax' chancellor  is that even though you may increases peoples disposable incomes, you actually lower the tax revenues coming in, thus less money to spend on public services and therefore they could get worse as a result. Osborne also raised the minimum wage to a new 'national living wage' of £9 an hour by 2020. A step in the right direction but when you look at the fact that the current living wage in London is £9.15 an hour and £7.85 nationally and you take into account the cuts to tax credits , a lot of people are going to be worse off. Also why are under 25s excluded from this?

That was literally the most positive I could be about his budget. Now onto the really negative stuff. The threshold at which you can claim working tax credits has been reduced to yearlyearnings of £3850. Considering the chancellor is raising the minimum wage to £7.20 an hour and you have to work 16 hours a week to claim, he is essentially abolishing Working Tax Credits. You might think but he is raising the minimum wage to £7.20 an hour, why would they need them? Well unless people get a wage they can live on, i.e. an actual living wage, then they have to claim them. Some will argue that businesses won't be able to afford a living wage. Well big businesses absolutely can afford it. If small businesses can't afford it, you can either cut their taxes or you top up people's income with working tax credits so they have a wage they can live on. You don't cut tax credits and replace it with a paltry minimum wage.Not only are they cutting child and working tax credits, they are literally freezing the rate of all benefits barring disability benefits so essentially, given inflation, a lot of the poorest will be worse off. Some families could actually end up over a £1000 worse off a year as a result in the cuts to benefits.

Furthermore, the benefit cap is being lowered to £23,000 in London and £20,000 everywhere else. Despite what papers like the Daily Mail say, these benefits don’t go on flat screen TVs and lots of booze and fags. A lot of the Housing benefit bill in particular goes straight to private landlords that charge high rents. One of the ways you can get the Housing Benefit bill down fairly isn’t by punishing the claimant but by capping the rate of rents. It is so obvious.By the way just as a personal anecdote, when I was first started claiming JSA and Housing Benefit, even though I declared my rent to be £300 a month, as a result of the benefit cap, my housing benefit only reached £260 a month. It was only because of my JSA and the minimal earnings from my Saturday Job that I managed to scrape by every month. So imagine what it would be like if I needed that now?

Speaking of Housing Benefit, one of the cruellest, yet most expected measure in the budget was scrapping of Housing Benefit eligibility for 18-21 year olds. Apparently if you are that age you have to “earn or learn” and live at home with your parents. Now what if you can’t get a job or a place to study? Even if you can find a job, it is likely to be low paid. I mentioned earlier that under 25s aren’t entitled to the new national living wage and actually for years they haven’t been able to claim Working Tax Credits. So how will you afford to live on your own if you’re parents (if you have any) can’t afford to support you? The likely result is, that young people will made homeless or have to consistently move between different B&Bs. It shows how out of touch the chancellor is if he thinks that every adult between the ages of 18-21 can all afford to just live with their parents.

Another way the chancellor is screwing young people over is by removing maintenancegrants from poor students going to university from 2017 and basically saying they can only get loans out. There is no guarantee that what they would of got in a grant, they’ll get in a loan. All it will do is add to the burden of debt along with the tuition fees and basically make the debt they accrue at university unpayable, thus costing the taxpayer more in write-offs. So not only is it just harsh but it is also economically illiterate as well.

Going back to housing, apparently households with an income of more than £40,000 living in social or council housing will now have their rents upped to the “market rate”. So this could then force people to move out of their affordable housing and have to rent in the private sector where the rents remain uncapped. Of course social housing should only be for the poorest. Never mind having a more cohesive society that has the well off and the poorest living along side each other. No let’s just segregate people from different social classes even more. What could possibly go wrong? Take this with the selling off of “high value” Housing Association properties, you begin to wonder if the government has any plans to deal with the shortage of affordable housing at all? I’ll let you be the judge of that. 

There is much more in the budget to go over but I can’t go on forever and I’ve probably bored you by now but I’ll just quickly sum up. £37bn of cuts. £12bn in Welfare cuts and an extra £20bn in departmental budget cuts. Oh and only £5bn invested to deal with tax avoidance and evasion which will raise only £7.5bn over the course of the parliament despite Britain losing over £100bn in tax avoidance and evasion. So basically there are going to be more cuts in welfare than money raised from rich individuals or corporations not paying tax. Says it all really.

To lighten the mood after this rather angry rant, on next week’s blog there’ll be exclusive pictures of Greek Prime Minister Alex Tspiras literally bending and taking some good old 'financial discipline' from Angela Merkel. ;)

Why Labour need Jeremy Corbyn as their Leader.

A month since the general election and the contest for Labour leader is heating up.
When the first four candidates were announced, I groaned at the thought of labour sharply moving back to the right with no proper consideration for what went wrong at the general election. The general assumption seemed to be that because Ed Miliband was supposedly too left wing they needed to re-ignite blairism in the hope of attracting that holy grail of voters. The "squeezed middle" in the south of England. Forgetting of course that they lost a lot of seats to an anti-austerity party in Scotland. Although I will concede that Miliband was certainly to the left of Tony Blair, was he actually that left wing?

Well if you believed the right wing media you'd be forgiven for thinking he was a rabid Marxist. In reality he promised austerity, backed academies, still wanted a role for the private sector in the NHS and promised to be just as tough on welfare as the Tories. So now when you look at that you think what do Labour actually stand for? And that was their problem in a nutshell. No clear narrative.

Anyway back to the candidates themselves, lets see where they stand. Liz Kendall believes Labour should be "reformists" and be "economically credible" and back austerity and welfare cuts. After researching Mary Creagh, I found out that she pushed the last Labour government to make school food healthier, supports HS2 and wants Labour to learn from what Blair did to win them elections. Yvette Cooper worked in the treasury under the last Labour Government and like Andy Burnham believes Labour should back "Aspiration" and not be too anti-business and encourage enterprise and business to grow. So far one staunch right-winger, A person that doesn't stand for much and two candidates standing for meaningless vacuous phrases.

However the last candidate to throw their hat in the ring was Jeremy Corbyn. Lets see what he stands for. Anti austerity, anti privatisation, pro public ownership of the railways and NHS and anti trident. Whatever your political views, you can't deny that Corbyn is the only candidate that puts clear distance between Labour and the Tories and the only one that seems to have any staunch principles. Offer a clear alternative and people will listen. The British public aren't that hostile to some of the things Corbyn stands for. For instance, there is quite a lot of support for public ownership of the railways.

And yes I am a Green Party member and I'll continue to vote green until another party offers a clear alternative to the Conservatives. Labour don't at the moment but if Corbyn becomes leader, I will look to see where he takes Labour and may vote for them in future but for now, lets hope he at least gets on the ballot.

So to sum up, I urge  the Labour MPs that haven't nominated anyone yet, please nominate Corbyn. As I type this he has the support of 11 MPs. He needs 35 to be on the ballot paper. And to anyone reading this, please also urge Labour MPs to back Jeremy Corbyn. They have until the 15th June to nominate a candidate. If nothing else, he could offer a real debate within the leadership race to what otherwise could be a very dull and samey affair that will do nothing to get people onside with Labour.

Three weeks since the general elections. Thoughts and musings and what to do next?

Yay we did it guys. We beat the Tories. There is now a progressive alliance between Lab/SNP/Green and plaid. Austerity is over.

So that was the dream and now the reality that the Tories have an actual majority, I feel a sense of despair. I say majority, but 37% of the vote (if you don't count non voters) is hardly a ringing endorsement. To those that say "get over it, the Tories won the election, you lefties lost", I simply say this. Now matter how the election panned out, I was never going to stand by and watch Housing Benefit being taken away from young people, our Human Rights being taken away and our social housing being sold off. And also as I don't want to seem insular and narrowly preaching, I am happy to debate anyone who disagrees with me and have a genuine conversation about the future of the country. 

So are quite a lot people in the country on the right of politics?

This question is interesting. The opinion polls show majority support for things like rent controls and public ownership of the railways and health service. Yet considering how wrong the opinion polls were for the election, was this type of polling wrong as well? Were the samples they took accurate and representative? Maybe people are more right wing then polls suggest. Considering the insular individualistic culture and the divide and rule tactic that has been promoted over the last 30 years, is it any wonder 11 million people voted out of fear?

This brings me to my next point. The opinion polls showed a tie between Labour and the Tories right up to the election day, yet the there were still quite a few people undecided until election day. My theory is that the undecideds swung the election back to the Tories, partly based on fear of a Labour/SNP coalition. And even though the way data is collected for polls has been improved, occasionally polls will have wild inaccuracies, as proven by the 1992 election.

In this election, the Green Party got 1,157,613 votes. An increase of 336% from 2010 and the Tories got 2,000,952 more votes than Labour and won the election. It would be very easy to say the Greens split the vote on the left and let the Tories in. But looking at the figures, it would have not made much of a difference if all those that voted Green, voted Labour. It would of only meant one more seat for Labour but they still would of fallen short in votes. And if you look at the places that Greens did well but didn't win, I.e. Bristol West, Norwich, Islington North, Liverpool Riverside,  these were seats that Labour won . In my constituency, where it was a Tory/Labour marginal that Labour won, the Greens only got 2% of the vote. This shows that the Greens didn't really split the vote on the 'left' as much as people thought.

Furthermore this argument implies that Labour are still on the left. In my opinion, Labour sent a very mixed message in the election. On one hand they said they would tax the richest more but also stick to the Tories spending plans and cut public spending. At least with the Tories and the Green Party, you knew where you stood. Maybe this was also a contribution to Labour's downfall. With the Blairites taking control of the leadership contest, I think we can wave goodbye to Labour being a genuine opposition to the Tories in the next five years.

This is all well and good but what can the 63% of the electorate opposed to the Tories do now they are in power?

Good question. Well democracy doesn't just happen every five years at the ballot box. It happens when you join a trade union, take direct action by occupying spaces, going to rallies and protests, or even just chatting to someone in the pub or in the workplace about things.

It all counts. Especially that last one. It's all well and good going to a protest or a rally and preaching to the choir but if you actually chat to people on a everyday basis, you can get a sense about why they voted the way they did or why they didn't vote. As I said earlier, I am happy to chat to anyone about politics and if all of us on the left get out of our comfort zone and talked to people we don't agree with, maybe we can convince someone to take action or change their mind. Case in point. Someone I have known for years is quite Conservative in their views and we often disagree on politics but they were genuinely undecided at this election and voted Green for the first time because of the passion I showed for the Green Party. I'm not saying they are a Green Party activist now but I was told how they voted after the election and it genuinely made me happy and I felt that if I could convince just that one person to go from Conservative to Green, what else can I achieve? 

If enough of us fight for what we believe in, things can change. The people on The New Era estate stopped key social housing being sold off to rich US investors. A recent threat of strike action forced the Queen to pay her staff a living wage. It doesn't matter how big or small, every victory counts.

So what I suggest everyone does now is keep active, starting with a very important rally at Parliament Square on Saturday 30th may to defend the Human Rights Act. Already the government seem to be backing down on this. Lets keep the pressure up, not just now, but for the next five years. It's going to be tough, but hopefully it will be even tougher for the Tories when we show them that we won't stand by and let them enact their cruel policies.