Reinventing Socialism
Edited by Ken Coates
The Spokesman 109
This number of The Spokesman is very much
as Ken Coates shaped it. He had completed his editorial, where we found
our title. There were some loose ends to tie up, and we had agreed to do
that after the weekend. Then came the news of his sudden death, on
Sunday 27th
June. Our work was put on hold, at least for a
short while, whilst tributes poured in. We have chosen a selection from
these to complete the contents of this issue.
Forty years earlier, in 1970, writing the Editorial Notes for the very
first issue of
The Spokesman,
Ken had remarked Russell’s own anticipation of the new journal during
what proved to be the last week of his own life: ‘He had wanted the
journal desperately in order to be able, the better, to organise support
in all the various battles in which he was engaged’. As Ken then said of
Russell, so we may now also say of him, The Spokesman is
dedicated to carrying on that work.
Editorial
Among all the smiles and handshakes and touching reconciliations, and in the convenient amnesia which has fostered the governing coalition in Britain, we can hear the nearly noiseless cranking up of drawbridges and steady quiet preparation for battle. Once again, it is the unions which are to provoke all this attention, and above all, the public sector unions. The Government has declared its need to draw back from a fiscal deficit of 11.1% of output. The first six billion pounds worth of cuts have already been announced. More, many more, are to follow, as an autumn spending review festers in preparation. Government employees await the next move with justified trepidation. Almost seventy per cent of them are governed by agreements on collective bargaining. All these are in the sights of the neoliberals who now regulate our affairs.There are many prongs to their projected offensive. Tighter pay settlements were already conveniently announced by the outgoing New Labour administration. Privatisation will contract out a larger proportion of public services to private profiteers, who customarily discover convenient ways of eroding wage settlements. Not only must collective agreements be steered into the new culture of squeeze, but national pay bargaining itself comes under attack. Our new masters wish to reform what they call rigid pay structures and agreements such as those governing working conditions in schools.
Schools are not the only places in which conditions can be eroded by the decentralisation of bargaining. If you live in a poor area, then clearly you deserve poorer wages. Does the market not decree official parsimony? If the evaluation of your work gives you low ratings, then your pay deserves to be further reduced accordingly. Once this principle is established, even if you have good ratings you will be in competition with other people who do not, and this mean market will depress your earnings, too. Cutting pay and perks is a fine economy which will commend itself to our shiny new rulers. But overtime hours are also a tempting target. If overtime can be exacted without payment, this is more tempting still. As always, in times of stress, pensions quickly demand central attention. Mayhem has already been unleashed in many sectors, but we must expect that ferocious new attacks are in preparation.
Ken Coates - READ MORE
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The Iraq Inquiry
Questions for Jack Straw
Reports of the International Committee of the Red
Cross on breaches of the Geneva Conventions are normally confidential,
being addressed to the authorities which may come under criticism. This
was the case when the International Committee
of the Red Cross presented its
twenty-four page report on serial breaches of the Conventions on
the part of coalition forces in Iraq.
Iraq Inquiry Digest
For further information please visit the Iraq Inquiry Digest's website.
Russell Tribunal on Palestine
On 4 March 2009, the
Russell Tribunal on Palestine was launched at a press conference
in Brussels chaired by Stéphane Hessel, Ambassador of France. The
initiators of the Tribunal, Ken Coates,
Chairman of the
Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation,
Leila Shahid,
General Delegate of Palestine to the European Union, Belgium and
Luxembourg,
and Nurit Peled,
winner of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought,
discussed why they called its creation.
Speaking for the Tribunal’s Organising Committee, the former Belgian
Senator Pierre Galand explained how it will work. Amongst more than a
hundred international personalities who have given their support to the
Tribunal, Ken Loach, Paul Laverty, Raji Surani, Jean Ziegler, François
Rigaux, Jean Salmon and François Maspero were present in Brussels to
give encouragement to this project.
In the tradition of the Russell Tribunal on War Crimes in Vietnam, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine is a citizens’ initiative which aims to reaffirm the primacy of international law as the basis for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and at raising awareness of the responsibility of the international community in the continuing denial of the rights of the Palestinian people.