Sustainable Council Housing

Glyn Robbins is the former Chair of Tower Hamlets RESPECT, and a member of Unite, the largest manufacturing union in Britain, and a supporter of Defend Council Housing. This article is a contribution to the discussion at the coming Trade Union Conference on Climate Change, to be held at the University of London on February 9, 2008. For more information on the Conference, email ccctu@hotmail.com

Tower Hamlets RESPECT won massive support from it's grassroots campaigns in defence of council housing, they organised huge meetings on council estates that saw estate after estate reject privatisation. In South Wales, RESPECT played a key role in the Swansea DCH campaign that led to two-thirds of tenants rejecting stock transfer. The Chair of the campaign went on to stand as a RESPECT candidate to continue the fightto defend public services.

The government says it wants to see 240,000 new homes built a year and that by 2016 all of them must be ‘zero carbon.’ Both of these targets are very ambitious and raise numerous serious questions about existing housing policy. The fundamental problem is that, as in many other areas, New Labour believes the private sector has all the answers, when in fact, it's a large part of the problem.

To embark on a discussion about the environment is to run the risk of being overwhelmed by the scale of the problems and this can undermine our sense that we can do anything about them. Meanwhile, environmentalism has spawned an industry of agencies and quangos, with a lexicon of jargon. It’s important that the trade union movement both demystifies and convinces rank and file members that we can change the situation, which is why the conference on the 9th February is so welcome and important.

While there are still a few people in denial, the scientific argument on climate change is now closed. Global industrialisation and consumerism are causing enormous damage to our planet and the consequences are literally disastrous. As ever, it’s the poor who suffer first and most, as graphically illustrated by the 2004 Tsunami, hurricane Katrina and the recent cyclone in Bangladesh. There are more to come. The cause of climate change is global warming which is the result of greenhouse gases that are produced by our industrial processes which depend on burning fossil fuel (gas, coal and oil). Reluctantly and belatedly, all governments now acknowledge the problem and are committed to various targets for reducing carbon emissions. Prime Minister Brown has said that he wants to cut UK emissions by 80% by 2050. The target of zero carbon homes is part of this.

The homes we live in – or rather the way we live in them – are responsible for 25% of UK carbon emissions. Improving design and construction can certainly play a part in reducing this, for example better insulation and windows can substantially reduce energy used on heating. In Germany there are thousands of homes that are so energy efficient they can reduce heating costs by 90%. Less heating means less burning of fossil fuels – and lower bills, particularly important for our poor and elderly. Using solar panels can heat water for almost nothing after the initial outlay, while forms of combined heat and power (CHP) can produce cheaper energy and cut emissions by up to 30%. Recycling water could cut consumption dramatically.

Perhaps you are beginning to see part of the problem. Re-read the paragraph above and imagine that you are a fat-cat director of one of the privatized utility companies!

Technology can make a real difference, but it’s only part of the answer. David Cameron with his wind turbine on his roof is not going to get us to zero carbon homes.

I regularly attend gatherings of the house building industry – and I include housing associations as part of that industry. If government policy doesn’t change, it’s these private companies who are charged with the responsibility of building sustainable homes. They’re not going to do it.

Estimates vary, but some say that the cost of building a ‘zero carbon’ home adds up to 30% on building costs. Again, assuming that policy does not change, the expectation is that most new homes will be for private sale. Even in a buoyant housing market, a 30% price increase is not something that developers will want to pass on to their customers – much less in a struggling market we are now seeing the first signs of. Private developers are also conservative, in more ways than one! They often have a very fixed view about what a house should look like. Go round most new developments and you’ll know what I mean. Developers worry that any deviation will hit their profits and they certainly don’t want to invest in the renewable energy technology that are crucial to meeting the government’s 2016 target.

The house building industry is also wedded to a concept of individualism. Having a mortgage is the ultimate expression of this and is strongly reinforced by the government’s obsession with increasing home ownership. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with buying your own home, but we need to think about the way it impacts on our society and environment.

Take the washing machine as an example. It has become a foregone assumption that all new homes will have one (and not necessarily one of the more energy efficient models). No developer or housing association would dream of not providing for one, even in homes where space is of a premium. In flats, a dryer may also be provided, rather than communal drying space. Our use of washing machines, dryers and dish washers create five million tones of carbon a year, at a cost of £800 million. We need to add to that the environmental cost of producing millions of new appliances every year, many of which also cause serious environmental problems when they are disposed of.

There is an alternative – the launderette! Many council estates were built with on-site launderettes and drying rooms. Admittedly, this was in a time when owning your own washing machine was not an expectation and along with the rest of council housing, these facilities have suffered from neglect and under-investment. But the idea is sound and it’s the type of thing we need to urgently revisit if we are serious about low carbon homes. With improved technology and especially if linked to a CHP, communal launderettes could make real savings on emissions and bills, but they could also serve another important function, by restoring part of our ever diminishing public realm.

We here so much from government about ‘community cohesion’ and yet we live in a society where individualism and private ownership is deeply enshrined. The aspiration of private home ownership is also directly linked to our patterns of consumption. Dixons and Currys don’t want to see a revival of the launderette, just as General Motors don’t want us to reduce our use of petrol.

To meet the 2016 zero carbon homes target will require a radical rethink of housing policy, but it is one that government must make for a number of other reasons. As repeated Labour Party conferences and all the big trade unions say, we must start building council housing again. The most obvious and pressing reason for doing this is that there is a critical shortage of genuinely affordable housing, but we should also see a restoration of municipally owned and democratically controlled housing as a vital step in helping our environment.

We need our house builders to be properly accountable, to us, not their shareholders or Boards. As well as affordable rents and security of tenure, we need homes that people can afford to run and heat. In fact, a lot of our council housing stock is already far more energy efficient than the alternatives and has far more potential to benefit form the new technologies than the individual suburban semi, but it will take proper, public investment.

But as well as the physical improvements, we need to foster a more communal approach to how we live. Tower Hamlets, where I live, has the poorest recycling record in the UK. It also has one of the most disadvantaged and poorly housed populations.

These things are connected. We need homes where people feel a greater and more genuine sense of community and can see the point of taking care of our environment.

Expecting the private sector to do any of this is like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas.

Cardiff RESPECT will be supporting the UK Climate Change March to the US embassy in London on Saturday 8 December. Coaches will be going from Cardiff, Newport and Caerphilly. For more info. contact: CardiffCCC@hotmail.co.uk

Northern Rock - Government: Money for Banks, Not for Homes

The private troubles of Northern Rock are fast becoming a public scandal. With no democratic debate in parliament, the government has committed over £25 billion of our money to bailing out the failed company. With the hard earned savings and jobs of thousands of workers at stake, there is no doubt that the government should intervene, but how?

The crisis is a direct consequence of some of the most grotesque features of New Labour and its conversion to global neo-liberalism. Northern Rock is in trouble because it was gambling in the international casino economy so beloved by Gordon Brown. In particular, it hoped to profit from the unscrupulous selling of the "sub-prime" mortgages that have led to the collapse of the US housing market. The resulting panic has seen huge losses for banks around the world and now poses a serious threat to the UK economy

When people place a bet on a horse, it's on the understanding that they will lose their money if the horse doesn't win. That's not how the rules work for big business. Now that the Northern Rock's gambling addiction has been exposed, it wants to use public money to cover its losses and Chancellor Darling has fallen over himself to oblige. BBC sources say that he has underwritten Northern Rock for up to five years, with little or no guarantee that the public will get its money back.

There is another way. Instead of flogging a dead horse, the government could use this opportunity to address the failure of its housing policy. The Northern Rock should be nationalized and become the nations housing bank. The value of its existing mortgages could be added to its other assets, along with the public money it has received.

In future, the bank could be used as the publicly-owned vehicle for investing in housing, particularly the new-build council housing we so desperately need. It could also provide mortgages for the many so called "low cost" housing products that are currently earning fortunes for housing associations and private lenders, with all proceeds to be ploughed back into a public housing investment programme.

If the government can find billions to prop up Northern Rock, it can also do it to invest in genuinely affordable housing.

RESPECT is proud to have been at the heart of the struggle to defend council housing in Wales. In Swansea, Paul Lynch, Chair of Swansea Defend Council Housing led a grassroots campaign of working class people on his estate that led to two-thirds of council tenants voting AGAINST the multi-million pound campaign by the LibDem council to sell off council housing.

We believe that this kind of political organising at the grassroots is the ONLY way to beatback the neoliberal offensive against working people. Paul went on to stand as a RESPECT candidate in the Assembly elections to fight against privatisation and war, and help build a grassroots socialist alternative to the 4 major parties in Wales, a different kind of politics that empowers ordinary working people to take control of their lives and futures.

2007 - Year of Climate Catastrophe

Climate change is not a danger, it’s a reality. Its effects are hitting the poor now, and the rich and powerful are making things worse. Whether it’s war, earthquake or climate change, the poor pay the price. Phil Hearse writes:

For the small hard-core climate change deniers, no amount of evidence will make much difference. But there is evidence aplenty that in 2007 environmental damage has been accumulating because of global warming, and doing major damage to communities, nations and continents. As ever, it has been the poor who have been the most vulnerable, and who have lost most in terms of lives, possessions and livelihoods; in most places it is women and children who bear the brunt.

Most of all, 2007 has been the year of the flood. But is has also been the year of the forest fire on several continents, most notably in Greece and the United States. Climate change experts have long warned that global warming could have devastating consequences:

* More than a billion people may face freshwater shortages by 2050, especially in Asia, where rising living standards for the middle class will lead to increased water demand.
* Millions more will be threatened by floods due to rising sea levels, with island inhabitants and populations in large river-delta regions in Asia most at risk. Dry areas may become drier, with crop yields dropping by as much as 50 percent in sub-tropical regions by 2020.
* Higher rates of climate-related illness, including malnutrition, malaria, dengue fever, and heatstroke could take effect.

Mega floods

Increased rainfall in many area (although not all) is one of the obvious consequences of global warming. This year we’ve seen:

* Two waves of massive flooding in China in June and September-October in the centre and south of the country that have killed more than 1000 people.
* Connected with the same storms over southern China, Vietnam suffered widespread flooding in October and November which by the time this was written (early November) had killed more than 120 people.
* The worst floods in living memory in Central Africa, stretching from coast to coast, devastating crops and drowning hundreds.
* Unprecedented flooding in north and central England in June.
* What the Mexican president called the "greatest natural disaster of the country’s history" as the state of Tabasco was submerged for the second time in a decade, leaving dozens dead and making 100,000 homeless.
* Hundreds died in India in several waves of flooding from Mumbai, where 500 dies, to Bihar where a similar trail of devastation occurred.
* Several waves of flooding in the south east of Australia that wrecked the wine crop in many areas.

Much of this catastrophe has hardly been reported in the Western media; the fire risk to homes of Malibu celebs is of course of much more interest to the right-wing media than millions of workers and peasants in Africa or Asia!

Africa

Twenty-two African countries are experiencing their worst wet seasons in decades, and experts say that global warming is to blame. Devastating rains and flash floods have affected 1.5 million people across the continent, killing at least 300 since early summer.

West Africa has seen its most severe floods in years, as torrents swamped the Democratic Republic of the Congo's capital of Kinshasa in late October, killing 30 people in less than 24 hours. In northern Ghana, more than 300,000 people have been uprooted by devastating downpours.

In East Africa, meanwhile, hundreds of thousands have been displaced and scores killed in Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

As the rains continue, African meteorologists are warning that these events may be fulfilling predictions that the continent will suffer some of the worst effects of global warming. "Africa will be the hardest hit by climate change," said Grace Akumu, director of the Kenya-based nonprofit Climate Network Africa. "This is happening even faster than expected."

China

The China news agency says more than 1300 people have died in China this summer as a result of flooding. Another 332 missing; crops on at least 15.43 million hectares of farmland have been destroyed and 1.22 million houses ruined.

Direct economic losses were estimated to have amounted to 155.8 billion yuan (US$19.3 billion), according Vice-Minister of Water Resources E Jingping . The middle and downstream of Xijiang River in the Pearl River basin suffered a disastrous flood, and Hunan and Heilongjiang were hit by serious mountain torrents, mud-rock flows and landslides.

The hardest-hit areas include the provinces of Fujian, Anhui, Zhejiang and Hainan in southern and eastern China, which have also been plagued by seven typhoons and cyclones that claimed 221 lives.

However, continued heavy rainfall during the National Day holiday has caused the biggest flood in a decade along the lower reaches of the Weihe River and the middle reaches of the Hanjiang River in Shaanxi and Hubei provinces.

Sections of the rivers running through Shaanxi in northwest China overflowed, forcing 359,000 people to be evacuated. More than 4.6 million people in 61 counties were affected by floods and mud slides, which ruined 79,800 hectares of crops and destroyed 39,200 houses.

India and Bangladesh

Floods in the monsoon season are normal in the sub-continent, but this year have been particularly severe, with hundreds killed in Bihar and Mumbai. In Bangladesh two-thirds of the country was submerged and 164 people died in flooding this year. The monsoon rain is getting heavier because of warming oceans, but the human impact on the poor is made worse by poverty, the caste system and state corruption and indifference.

In Bihar more than 2 million people were forced out of their homes and overwhelmingly it was women who had to take the responsibility for finding food, firewood and shelter for themselves and their children. A high proportion of the worst affected were Dalits – so-called ‘untouchables’.

According to the Dalit campaign for Human Rights, relief was least likely to reach the low-caste villagers: "The relative neglect of low-caste villagers was a reflection of how, even at a moment of shared hardship, the rules of caste dictate how Indian society operates, he added. The culture of discrimination which runs through Indian society intensifies in times of crisis."

Aid distribution is often done in town centers, where well-off, upper-caste groups are more likely to live. Those who are geographically marginalized in low-lying, remote villages, far from the national highways, find that supplies dwindle by the time they arrive in town, if they are able to make the journey.

A heart rending account of the misery suffered by in Bihar State came last week with the story of an upper-caste police officer accused of drowning two lower-caste girls in the river after they stole firewood from his orchard.

Dry tinder has become a precious commodity in Bihar, vital to survival in the damp post-flood period. According to a villager who complained to the police, when the police officer found Chandani Kumari, 6, and Kamali Kumari, 13, taking wood from his property, he threw them into a fast-moving river. Neither of the girls could swim.

The officer was suspended and a compensation payment of 100,000 rupees, or $2,400, was given to the girls' parents S.L. Das, the local police superintendent, said, adding that he believed the girls were chased, not thrown, into the river.

In Bangladesh flooding relief put big pressure of the national budget. The World Bank has insisted that to improve national finances the government must put up the price of heating fuel – and thereby deal a cruel blow to the vast majority of poor families who depend on it for heating and cooking.

The Bihar experience shows how wrong flood-control strategies, unscrupulous politicians, unresponsive bureaucracy and corruption have left thousands displaced and economically ruined. Since Independence, successive Bihar governments have sold embankments as an answer to floods, despite warnings that these earthen structures only exacerbate the problem.

The reason behind this pro-embankment policy is easy to understand: it helps perpetuate the well-oiled politician-technocrat-contractor nexus. Cuts and kickbacks are the order of the day, as politicians get a rake off from the construction company friends, who receive large amounts of aid money for rebuilding the embankment levees, which again make the problem worse.

Mexico

In 1998 the Mexican state of Tabasco was inundated and in late October this year it happened again. The worsening of tropical storms in Central America and the Caribbean is the direct result of sea warming in the Gulf of Mexico. In addition 16 rivers overran their banks in the rebel state of Chiapas. The effects of this flooding are still ongoing as this article is written. According to the BBC (4 November):

"Beyond Mexico's borders the effects of the tropical depression have been felt in other Central American states. Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador have already suffered from three weeks of heavy downpours."

In total more than 50 people have been killed and 100,000 have been forced to evacuate. Some large areas are facing epidemics and food shortages. Millions of dollars worth of crops across the region have been ruined and outbreaks of malaria, cholera and dengue fever have been reported in some of the worst hit areas The floods completely wiped out crops in the region, and a farm association estimated losses at 480 million dollars.

Health officials have meanwhile started to fret about looming health risks from open sewage and the spread of disease-carrying mosquitoes. Dengue, cholera and diarrhea outbreaks now are very real possibilities.

What has really animated the state and national government is that the hungry people of Villhermosa, capital of Tabasco have started to loot supermarkets to get food. Thousands of desperate and hungry people cannot be allowed to breach property laws for the mere purpose of getting something to eat!

Firestorms

Many parts of the Greek countryside burnt with savage ferocity this summer as temperatures reached 460 C, and more than 60 people were killed in cut-off villages. Even if some of these fires were started by arsonists, they widespread effect can only be explained by global warming.

The ecology of Greece is changing permanently. An arid country is threatened with becoming a desert if Mediterranean countries continue to experience routine temperatures above 40o in the summer.

Brush fires are normal events in California, part of the natural cycle, but events like this year’s fires are not. According to American writer Mike Davis:

"The Los Angeles Times had an article that said climate change wasn’t a factor in the fires. This is probably balderdash. Everything that’s happening, including the dramatic number of mega-fires in the rest of the West, accords with the simulations generated in the climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Not only are extreme events becoming more common, but it’s possible that the base climate of the Southwest and most of the rest of the West is itself changing."

Davis also points out how an alliance of Republican politicians and property developers have been responsible for continued house building in the fire-prone backlands, despite repeated warnings about fire dangers. He also showed how the media had highlighted the danger to the houses of celebrities like John Travolta and Sting, rather than the much worse plight of poor people in areas like San Diego.

Capitalism Collides with Nature

There have always been floods and forest fires. But the intensity and widespread nature of these events is vivid evidence of the impact of climate change. No one can now possibly believe that climate change is a victimless crime; thousands of people are dying each year from its effects, many thousands more are being made ill, being made eco-refugees or losing their livelihoods.

Each of the floods and fires referred to above has its own unique causes. But behind each one of them is increasing global temperatures, and in particular rising sea temperatures. It’s rising sea temperatures off West Africa which start many of the tropical storms that end up as hurricanes in the Bay of Mexico; it’s the warming of the same seas that triggered the floods in central Africa this year. Sea warming is worsening the monsoons affecting the sub-continent and South East Asia.

In each case it’s the poor, living in flimsy houses in marginal areas near dangerous dams, levees or mountainsides that are the victims of the flash floods and the mudslides. In each case it’s the poor who are the victims when disaster relief money is siphoned off by the rich and corrupt officials. And it’s the poor who have no back-up resources when their fields and crops are damaged, their homes are destroyed.

Climate change is not a danger, it’s a reality. Its effects are hitting the poor now, and the rich and powerful are making things worse. Whether it’s war, earthquake or climate change, the poor pay the price.

Capitalist productivism, the incessant production of more and more useless commodities, is responsible for this crisis. Solving the crisis means ending the system.

Cardiff RESPECT will be supporting the global day of action on Climate Change on December 8th and joining people demonstrating at the American Embassy in London. For transport from Cardiff email: CardiffCCC@hotmail.co.uk

Support Constance Nzenu's Anti-Deportation Campaign

The rich are allowed to move to which ever country will give them the biggest tax break but poor and working class people face demonisation and harrassment. Cardiff RESPECT says: No deportations!

Constance arrived in the UK in April 2005. Her asylum claim has been rejected and she is now facing imminent removal to Cameroon, the country from which she fled.

Constance left Cameroon because she was being forced into an arranged marriage that she did not want to engage in. Constance was living a happy life in Cameroon; she had completed her second degree in Law and was about to enroll for her PhD until the direction of her life was taken out of her hands.

Her father had made an arrangement with his friend for Constance to marry him in exchange for a large amount of money. Constance was not consulted in this matter. The man she was being forced to marry was from a different tribe. He is a Muslim. Constance is a Christian. She would be his third wife.

The condition on which Constance was to enter into this marriage was that she would undergo Female Genital Mutilation, which is widespread among Muslim communities in Cameroon.

Nationally, the United Nations estimates that about 20 percent of women in Cameroon are victims of circumcision, which can be carried out at any stage: at birth, during early childhood, in the course of adolescence, just before marriage or after the birth of the first child.
http://medilinkz.org/news/news2.asp?NewsID=1660

USA Report on Human Rights Practices:

Cameroon 2006

“Cameroon law does not prohibit female genital mutilation (FGM), Internal migration contributed to the spread of FGM to different parts of the country. The majority of FGM procedures were clitorectomies. The severest form of FGM, infibulation, was performed in the Kajifu region of the Southwest Province. FGM usually was practiced on infants and preadolescent girls. Public health centers in areas where FGM is frequently practiced counseled women about the harmful consequences of FGM; however, the government did not prosecute any persons charged with performing FGM. The Association of Women Against Violence continued to conduct a program in Maroua to assist victims of FGM and their families and to educate local populations. During the year breast ironing emerged as another form of violence against women, practiced in an effort to protect prematurely well-developed young girls from predatory older men. NGOs were leading public awareness campaigns to combat this practice.”

Constance refused to enter into this marriage and the matter was taken to court by the ‘fiancé.’ Constance similarly refused to go to the court hearing because she knew, from her education in Law in Cameroon, that the outcome of the case would be in the man’s favour.

Constance then left her family where she had been living, a search warrant was issued and the police became involved. Her Father also put an announcement out in a national newspaper offering a reward for anyone who returned her to the family because if the marriage didn’t go ahead they would owe the ‘fiancé’ the dowry money and be shamed within the community.

If Constance is forced to return to Cameroon she faces an uncertain and unhappy future: there will be recriminations from the police, the court, the ‘fiancé’ and her family, all because she refused to engage in the arranged marriage and the consequences of this marriage.

Constance would like to be free of persecution in Wales where she now lives; allowed to remain in Britain and become a European citizen in order to be able to work her way up in life and bring up her British born child in a Human Rights friendly environment.

‘Friends of Constance and Andrea’ are now campaigning to keep them in Cardiff.

Constance Nzeneu is an asset to the Cardiff community where she has lived for 2 years and three months. Her son Andreas was born here. Andreas’s father is German. He works in between Germany and the UK, and they have an ongoing relationship.

In the years she has lived in Cardiff, Constance has actively participated in the community and has made many friends here. She is an active member of the Heath Evangelical Church and Refugee Voice Wales and she has volunteered for Displaced People In Action and Black African Women Stepping Out. All these organisations have valued her contribution highly.

For more information about how you can help Constance, see here

Will It Take A Ban On Flying To Stop Climate Change

Stopping global warming means cutting air travel. As part of the debate within RESPECT and the movement, Jonathan Neale looks at how this could be done without targeting the poor.

Tackling climate change means cutting carbon emissions drastically. We have to start now – that’s clear. But there’s confusion over what to do about air travel.

Half of global carbon emissions come from seven sources – heating buildings, air conditioning, cars, trucks, petroleum refineries, cement plants and steel plants.

Air travel may seem less important right now. Planes are responsible for 3 percent of carbon emissions globally and 6 percent in Britain.

But air travel puts other, more powerful and rarer greenhouse gases directly into the stratosphere. It’s the fastest growing carbon source.

It’s true that planes now use 70 percent less fuel per mile than they did 40 years ago, and further design changes are possible. But that alone won’t be enough.

One common answer starts by saying cheap flights are the problem – so tax them heavily, and fewer people will fly.

Sounds good. But then only the rich would fly. This is the problem with all green taxes.

There is always another solution that is fairer and cuts more emissions.

For instance, you can tax cars and roads heavily. Then only the rich will drive, and ordinary workers will hate environmentalists.

A better solution is to ban cars in cities and provide excellent public transport. Then you have beautiful cities where parks replace most roads.

Again, if you tax energy and make it expensive to heat houses, the poor and the elderly will freeze. And most people will hate environmentalists every time they open their bill.

But if the government gives grants to insulate every house, we can cut energy use from heating by more than half.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California is building one million solar roofs. We could build ten million in Britain.

The way to stop global warming is almost always not to cut what we have, but to do things differently. So it is with air travel. Here are some social justice solutions that will work:

First, ban all flights in Europe. But don’t make people give up their holidays. Instead have subsidised trains that prebook until they’re full, like cheap flights.

We would need new train lines. Very fast trains emit too much carbon. But ordinary 125 mph trains as we have in Britain now could go from London to Istanbul in 24 hours and to Delhi in 48.

Those trains will have to be publicly owned. Privately owned railways invest less, cut the number of trains and raise the ticket prices.

What about longer flights? One answer is to ban expensive flights, not cheap ones. Luxury transatlantic seats create four to five times as much carbon.

But much more important, much long haul travel is done by business people. There are not so many of them, but each makes many flights.

The solution is rationing. Let people have one long flight a year. But don’t let them sell that ration – they use it or lose it. The business people can teleconference.

With new railways, that means more travel, more holidays, and less carbon emissions. And if we cover the world with wind farms and solar power, we can run the railways on almost carbon free electricity.

These kinds of massive public works that create jobs and improve people’s standard of living is what will stop climate change.

Otherwise, activists lay themselves open to the right. Look what Tony Blair said about air travel.

He claimed his hands were tied because ordinary people wanted their holidays, and would never stand for airport cuts.

Blair was lying. New Labour builds new airports because the City of London wants business travellers.

Blair posed as the working people’s champion because he could smell the weakness in green taxes – they’re unfair.

We have to build a global mass movement to stop climate change. Time is short, and nothing less will work.

We can’t build that movement by asking ordinary people to sacrifice when the rich don’t.

In almost every area where we have to act on climate change, there is a choice. The conservative answer is to keep the economy the same. Then we have to cut living standards.

The radical answer is to change the way the economy is organised, so we can have both growth and fairness.

None of this means we wait for the new railways before we shut down runways.

We have to fight for both, now.

Cardiff RESPECT will be supporting the UK demonstration for action on climate change on December 6th in London. For transport from Cardiff, e-mail: CardiffCCC@hotmail.co.uk

More info here

Let Us Respect Our Mother Earth

"The world is suffering from a fever due to climate change, and the disease is the capitalist development model." - Evo Morales

Nowhere is neoliberalism rejected as powerfully as on the continent of Latin America where the word "people power" really has a meaning. What is tremendously exciting about these democratic socialist movements is that some of them are putting ecology and sustainability at the heart of their revolutions

This is the text of an extraordinary letter sent by Evo Morales, President of Bolivia to the United Nations.

Sister and brother Presidents and Heads of States of the United Nations:

The world is suffering from a fever due to climate change, and the disease is the capitalist development model. Whilst over 10,000 years the variation in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels on the planet was approximately 10%, during the last 200 years of industrial development, carbon emissions have increased by 30%. Since 1860, Europe and North America have contributed 70% of the emissions of CO2. 2005 was the hottest year in the last one thousand years on this planet.

Different investigations have demonstrated that out of the 40,170 living species that have been studied, 16,119 are in danger of extinction. One out of eight birds could disappear forever. One out of four mammals is under threat. One out of every three reptiles could cease to exist. Eight out of ten crustaceans and three out of four insects are at risk of extinction. We are living through the sixth crisis of the extinction of living species in the history of the planet and, on this occasion, the rate of extinction is 100 times more accelerated than in geological times.

Faced with this bleak future, transnational interests are proposing to continue as before, and paint the machine green, which is to say, continue with growth and irrational consumerism and inequality, generating more and more profits, without realising that we are currently consuming in one year what the planet produces in one year and three months. Faced with this reality, the solution can not be an environmental make over.

I read in the World Bank report that in order to mitigate the impacts of climate change we need to end subsidies on hydrocarbons, put a price on water and promote private investment in the clean energy sector. Once again they want to apply market recipes and privatisation in order to carry out business as usual, and with it, the same illnesses that these policies produce. The same occurs in the case of biofuels, given that to produce one litre of ethanol you require 12 litres of water. In the same way, to process one ton of agrifuels you need, on average, one hectare of land.

Faced with this situation, we – the indigenous peoples and humble and honest inhabitants of this planet – believe that the time has come to put a stop to this, in order to rediscover our roots, with respect for Mother Earth; with the Pachamama as we call it in the Andes. Today, the indigenous peoples of Latin America and the world have been called upon by history to convert ourselves into the vanguard of the struggle to defend nature and life.

I am convinced that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, recently approved after so many years of struggle, needs to pass from paper to reality so that our knowledge and our participation can help to construct a new future of hope for all. Who else but the indigenous people, can point out the path for humanity in order to preserve nature, natural resources and the territories that we have inhabited from ancient times.

We need a profound change of direction, at the world wide level, so as to stop being the condemned of the earth. The countries of the north need to reduce their carbon emissions by between 60% and 80% if we want to avoid a temperature rise of more than 2º in what is left of this century, which would provoke global warming of catastrophic proportions for life and nature.

We need to create a World Environment Organisation which is binding, and which can discipline the World Trade Organisation, which is propelling us towards barbarism. We can no longer continue to talk of growth in Gross National Product without taking into consideration the destruction and wastage of natural resources. We need to adopt an indicator that allows us to consider, in a combined way, the Human Development Index and the Ecological Footprint in order to measure our environmental situation.

We need to apply harsh taxes on the super concentration of wealth, and adopt effective mechanisms for its equitable redistribution. It is not possible that three families can have an income superior to the combined GDP of the 48 poorest countries. We can not talk of equity and social justice whilst this situation continues.

The United States and Europe consume, on average, 8.4 times more that the world average. It is necessary for them to reduce their level of consumption and recognise that all of us are guests on this same land; of the same Pachamama.

I know that change is not easy when an extremely powerful sector has to renounce their extraordinary profits for the planet to survive. In my own country I suffer, with my head held high, this permanent sabotage because we are ending privileges so that everyone can “Live Well” and not better than our counterparts. I know that change in the world is much more difficult than in my country, but I have absolute confidence in human beings, in their capacity to reason, to learn from mistakes, to recuperate their roots, and to change in order to forge a just, diverse, inclusive, equilibrated world in harmony with nature.

Evo Morales Ayma
President of the Republic of Bolivia
September 24, 2007

Translated by Federico Fuentes, Bolivia Rising

Know Thy Enemy

KNOW THY ENEMY
Christopher Logue

Know thy enemy:
he does not care what colour you are
provided you work for him
and yet you do!

he does not care how much you earn
provided you earn more for him
and yet you do!

he does not care who lives in the room at the top
provided he owns the building
and yet you strive!

he will let you write against him
provided you do not act against him
and yet you write!

he sings the praises of humanity
but knows machines cost more than men.
Bargain with him, he laughs,
and beats you at it;
challenge him, and he kills.
Sooner than loose the things he owns
he will destroy the world.
SMASH CAPITAL NOW!

But as you hasten to be free
And build your commonwealth
Do not forget the enemy
Who lies within yourself.

The Real Struggle Takes Place On The Streets of Burma

Revolt from below, not intervention from the West, is the key to overthrowing Burma's military junta, writes Giles Ji Ungpakorn

The mainstream media concentrates on the pronouncements of foreign governments and the supposed role of the United Nations in stopping the bloodshed perpetrated by the Burmese military junta.

But the real struggle is on the streets and in the cities across Burma. The idea that the Chinese government, responsible for the Tiananmen Square massacre, will somehow restrain the Burmese ­military is laughable.

As for the West, it has a long history of supporting military juntas in South East Asia and never lifted a finger to stop massacres in Indonesia or the Philippines.

In fact the recent demonstrations in Burma arise out of a realisation by the country's democracy activists that they cannot rely on Western powers or anyone else to bring about a change – they have to act themselves.

The last great uprising in Burma was the so called 8888 movement that started on 8 August 1988. It was initiated by student protests over economic issues but soon developed into demands for democracy (see below).

For years after the defeat of that uprising, demoralised activists had hoped the US would pressurise the Burmese junta into releasing opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and negotiating a road map to democracy.

But lessons have since been learnt. Earlier this year a loose network of activists decided to start open protests in the form of "prayer marches" at temples. This was followed by the large demonstrations of monks after fuel price rises of 500 percent.

Thousands of ordinary people gained confidence and joined the monks' protests. Hundreds of politicised young men have become monks in recent years, partly due to the fact that the junta closed down or restricted entry to colleges and universities.

The temples were safer places for people to gather and talk, much like the mosques during Iran's 1979 revolution or the Catholic church in Communist Poland before the uprising there.

The pro-democracy movement today has more experience than in 1988. Twenty years ago it was prepared to allow Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), to lead the movement.

Today there are more debates about the way forward. While everyone agrees that Suu Kyi and all political prisoners should be freed immediately, the radicals are wary of leaving the leadership of the movement in the hands of the NLD.

While many of the current activists trace their roots back to 1988, thousands of young people on the protests are too young to have taken part back then. This means that a whole new generation of people have become radicalised.

There are signs that they are prepared to resist the army with great courage and sacrifices. And democracy can only be achieved by overthrowing the junta.

This will involve fighting back – and also winning over ordinary soldiers to the side of the people.

The movement needs to deal with the long running ethnic conflict in Burma. Non-Burmese make up more than half the population and have never been happy with a unified state.

Many groups have been in a state of constant armed struggle against the central government since independence in 1948.

It is encouraging to see that the Karen National Union, one of the key national minority groups, has come out very clearly on the side of the pro-democracy movement, urging Burmese soldiers to turn their guns on their officers.

The democracy movement should respond to this act of solidarity by backing self-determination for Burma's ethnic minorities.

In the past Burma's independence leaders were less than enthusiastic about granting autonomy to different ethnic groups. Suu Kyi herself has been unclear on this issue and is not fully trusted by non-Burmese.

Burma's working class will also play a crucial role. We know very little about how well organised workers in Burma are – obviously there are no open trade unions – but in 1988 they managed to pull off a general strike.

The country has significant concentrations of workers in textiles and oil. There are also large concentrations of Burmese workers just over the border in towns like Mae Sot in Thailand. These refugee workers are organised and have links to workers inside Burma.

It is possible for a mass movement to take on a repressive military dictatorship and win – it happened in the Philippines against Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, in Thailand against General Suchinda Kraprayoon in May 1992 and in Indonesia against President Suharto in 1998.

The movement can use tactics such as strikes, cat-and-mouse demonstrations, or fraternising with lower ranking soldiers to encourage them to break from their officers. These are all dangerous – but ultimately only the Burmese people have the power to bring down the regime.

The defeated revolt of 1988

On the morning of 8 August 1988 a general strike started in the Rangoon docks and spread to government offices across the city.

All sections of society, including monks, marched to demand the end to military rule.

Despite the brutality of the regime – which opened fire on demonstrators killing around 3,000 of them – the movement showed signs of winning. Ne Win, the old military dictator, was forced to resign and the junta promised elections.

But instead of pushing forward with the struggle and toppling the military completely, the movement was deflated. Aung San Suu Kyi told demonstrators to disperse, arguing that they should trust the army and not push it too far.

The energies of the democracy movement were channelled into electoral politics. In 1990 Suu Kyi's NLD party won 392 seats out of a total 485, but the junta refused to accept the result.

A new dictatorship was installed and Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest – but the Burmese movement had already been weakened and could not intervene to help.

Our Bus Service is not for Sale!

“While I understand a minority shareholding would be involved, I believe this would be the thin edge of the wedge and will open the door to full privatisation of Cardiff Bus which will gradually reduce the service to customers.

Any private company would expect a return of at least 15 per cent on turnover.

The only way that can be met is through increased fares and/or a large reduction in marginal services which Cardiff Bus operates as a sort of dividend for the owners, the people of Cardiff: This looks like a fire sale to deal with a short-term financial position." - Steve Pantak, Chairman of Cardiff Bus

The corporate take-over of Cardiff continues unabated. The neo-Liberal democrats cuts and privatisation agenda reveals that they are "yellow Tories". First school cuts, then the Library cuts, now a brutal attempt at privatising the local bus network.

Cardiff Council is currently talking about selling off a 40% slice of the Cardiff Bus Company - this could pave the way for total privatisation of one of the few remaining Bus services in the country still in public ownership under the municipal control of local government.

A Bus service run for profit could see price rises and vital services cut.

RESPECT defends the idea that local bus services should be publicly owned and democratically accountable to local government. This is the only basis on which an integrated, low carbon transport network can be built. We campaign for free or cheap public transport available to all workers as an alternative to car-mageddon.

The fruits of bus privatisation have already been seen across the UK. In the early 80s when the Tories privatised and derregulated public transport, they said it would increase competition, drive down prices and the travelling public would benefit. Instead workers have faced increased prices, fewer services, a lack of accountability, and incessant cuts and timetable changes.

The long-term fruits of privatisation and de-regulation have been private bus monopolies seizing control of the market throughout the country by driving out smaller operators.

In order to satisfy private operators’ endless thirst for increased profits, they have to constantly cut or remove the less profitable services. These are often the routes that provide a social service, linking isolated local communities and providing a lifeline for many people, especially the elderly.

For corporations run for profit this is of no concern, often declining passenger numbers are then used as an excuse for further rounds of cuts. The knock-on effects are considerable with many vulnerable people left isolated in their communities.

But there is another fundamental issue. When bus services are in public ownership it is much easier to challenge cuts in services, price rises, and provision, but once they are privatised there is no longer consultation or accountability. The bottom line is that the Bus Companies are free to do whatever they want with only their profit margins to worry about.

RESPECT campaigns for the extension of democracy in our society. Decisions on the provision and implementation of local services such as public transport must be made by people accountable to the communities they represent. Therefore we will be building a mass campaign to defend our public services:

Our Bus Service is Not For Sale

Heathrow Climate Camp 2007

Report by Joe Redmond, Cardiff RESPECT member (Adamsdown Branch) and Unison Workplace Environmental Representative.

Contrary to press scare stories about environmental extremists threatening to cause mass disruption to Europe’s busiest airport on a weekend in August, the 1,500 people deposited on an overgrown “sports field” adjacent to Heathrow’s northern runway had united to draw attention to government’s continued hypocrisy on the issues surrounding climate change and it’s reluctance to impose restrictions on the aviation industry.

While mainstream politicians pay lip service to tackling CO2 emissions, people from all walks of life, including myself, arrived at the climate camp to register their disgust, to meet with like-minded individuals and talk with local people whose lifelong homes were to be destroyed by the planned third runway that would double the amount of already suffocating air traffic overhead.

Police presence was ridiculously overwhelming; officers outnumbered climate campers two to one and BAA – the company which owns and runs Heathrow – roped in extra security staff, fearful of the day of mass protest planned for Sunday 21st August.

Following the embarrassing failure of BAA to secure a wide-ranging injunction to stop the camp taking place, police were authorised to invoke terror laws to stop and search, detain without charge and film campers from the ground and by helicopter above.

If the aim was to discredit eco-protestors as a bunch of cranks and anarchists it was spectacularly unsuccessful, with mainstream media giving the event acres of coverage denied to much larger recent protests such as the 100,000 strong London march against renewing the Trident nuclear “defence” system. Discussions on the issues surrounding climate change were once again on the front page of national newspapers as well as being the lead story on evening news bulletins.

Villagers from nearby Sipson, which would be levelled to make room for the new runway, visited the camp throughout the week to show their appreciation and support bringing fresh local produce, homemade samosas and flasks of coffee.

Local residents joined men, women and children from the camp on a march towards Harmondsworth, which will also be decimated by Heathrow’s planned expansion until we were circled by a ring of police in riot vans determined not to let us reach our destination – a rally in a garden centre at which local MP John McDonnell was due to speak. Armed with drums, guitars and an accordion we kept our spirits up by singing for over an hour.

A group of activists set up camp overnight on the tarmac outside BAA’s offices and Monday morning workers were told to go home by bosses who were unable to get through the blockade. Recruiters scoured the main camp in the early hours of the morning for reinforcements and some of those who had been woken up by the first roar of jet engines at 5a.m. were compelled to join in.

The camp communications tent offered text message updates on the movement of police and protesters, working overtime to inform us that two teenage girls had climbed to the roof of BAA’s offices and unfurled a banner saying “Make Planes History”, or that a group of people had chained themselves to the cargo terminal used for holding foods imported by UK supermarkets. Hilariously, one message told how a riderless police horse had been sighted circling a field next to the camp, pursued breathlessly by a horseless police officer.

During the week leading up to the day of action such luminaries as Mark Lynas and George Monbiot delivered lectures and workshops on the worsening climate crisis and the need to build a society less reliant on the unstable petrocarbon-economy. Comedian Rob Newman, who performed on Saturday evening, deemed the event “an historic occasion” and the rapturous applause gained by his comments showed we were determined to take our experiences away and continue to build local campaigns and make our voices heard.

Cardiff RESPECT calls for

* Unilateral reduction of CO2 emissions in the UK of 90% by 2030, with similar reductions in other developed countries. We demand that the Welsh Assembly set binding annual targets to cut emissions. We call for an international treaty that goes way beyond Kyoto to cap global carbon emissions.

* International rationing of air-travel. Halt airport expansion, restrict binge flying. Nationalise the airlines. We oppose the expansion of Cardiff Airport and opening of an Anglesey/Cardiff air-route. End the £9 billion tax break to the aviation industry and spend the money on more sustainable forms of public transport.

* Stop car-mageddon: Free, or cheap, integrated publicly owned transport systems. End New Labour's road building programme and spend the £30 billion on public transport. Nationalisation of rail, road freight and bus companies.

* Cancel all third-world debt. There is no point calling on impoverished countries to tackle climate change if they are saddled with debt.

* Massive investment in renewable energy. Keep Wales nuclear free. We oppose the building of new nuclear power plants in Wales supported by the leader's of both New Labour and Plaid Cymru.

* Scrap weapons of mass destruction and use the resources for sustainable development and renewable energy.

*End the productivist throwaway society: production for use not profit.

* Sustainable town planning: redesigned cities to eliminate unnecessary journeys and conserve energy.

* All new buildings to be zero-carbon; provide insulation, energy conservation etc. to all homes to make them energy efficient and therefore lower fuel bills for working class people. We call for sustanable council housing in Wales

.* Localised food production and opposition to "Supermarket Britain".

* No GM crops for food or fuel.

* No to incinerators. High quality facilities to maximise recycling. The aim should be the full recycling of waste. We oppose the LibDems plans for a Cardiff incinerator. In Neath, Respect activists launched the Crymlyn Burrows Stop the Incinerator Campaign

.* End the destruction of the rainforests.

* Defend the rights of climate change refugees and migrants. Protect those hit by drought, desertification, floods, crop failure and extreme weather conditions.

* Renationalise water and protect water reserves. End the pollution of the rivers and water ways.

After the Flood

Last week, thousands of flood victims joined a march called by Tewksbury Council. The government has now provided a £6.2 million recovery package for England.

In Wales, the New Labour/Plaid coalition has yet to provide any help for the forgotten Welsh flood victms.

Adam Johannes from Roath RESPECT argues that climate change activists and socialists in Wales need to fight for the Assembly government to intervene as part of the struggle for a very different kind of society.

Nye Bevan famously said that "socialism is the language of priorities". If this is the case, then the New Labour/Plaid Cymru coalition that mis-run the Welsh Assembly are very far from socialism.

In the Vale of Glamorgan, £16 billion is being spent - not on schools, hospitals, socially useful jobs, or to eliminate child poverty - but rather to oil the wheels of the British war machine.

The priorities of the two ruling parties in Wales are clear: Billions can be found to set up a Military Academy to train the latest recruits to the "war on terror", but not a penny for a flood hit community in the same area: At home and abroad, our rulers wage war on the poor.

We shouldn't be surprised. It's no secret that Rhodri Morgan and George W Bush are the only world leaders that still refuse to take climate change seriously.

Only a few months ago, the First Minister of Wales even suggested that climate change could boost tourism! He rabidly opposes the Assembly setting binding targets to cut carbon emissions and has failed to visit communities in Wales hit by flooding. Perhaps, Mr Morgan should go to Barry and tell the people who have had their homes destroyed by floods that climate change is good for tourism . . .

Climate, Class & Inequality

Climate change will result in increasingly volatile and extreme weather: Heatwaves, floods, droughts can be expected. This will effect everyone - but not equally. We have already seen that the first and worst victims will be poor and working class people.

In New Orleans, the rich whites were evacuated while the poor - black and white - were left to fend for themselves.

In August 2003, a heat wave engulfed Europe. It resulted in 15,000 deaths in France alone. Half of the people who died lived in old people's homes, few of which have air conditioning. The deaths were overwhelmingly poor and working class people.

In our own country, thousands die of hypothermia each winter: More pensioners die in the UK - the 4th richest economy in the world - than in Siberia. The reason they die is because they cannot afford to adequately heat their home. The reason they cannot afford to adequately heat their home is because Labour and the Tories have attacked pensions and dismantled the Welfare State.

No More Oil Wars!

Our pensioners suffer from fuel poverty while our government sends young working class men abroad to kill in a war for oil. In Iraq, the occupied country - a country with the second biggest oil reserves in the Middle East - ordinary people don't have enough fuel for their homes or cars. In Britain, the occupying country, pensioners die because they can't afford fuel to hear their homes. Who, then, is profiting from Iraqi oil?

The mystery is explained when we grasp that the war is about the richest 10% of our population extending their profits and power.

Is it not the same people who make British workers work the longest hours for the worst pay in the Western World who concocted this "war on terror"? Is it not the same corporations, oil companies, and vested interests that lobbied for the war on Iraq that now bribe the US government to block global action on climate change?

Floods - Who will Pay for the Damage?

It is clear that the floods were also the result of government policies of building housing on flood plains, of poor draining, of flood defences cut back because the government cares about profits not people. Yet, in many cases working people are expected to pay for the damage themselves. In Barry, some families whose houses are uninhabitable don't have house insurance.

Behind the TV images lie many untold stories of desperation, wrecked lives, and despair.

Cardiff RESPECT argues that the government must provide grants for all families effected by the floods in Wales and England to rebuild their lives, these grants should be funded by a special windfall tax on Britain's millionaires, but we also recognise that until we build a credible left wing alternative to New Labour and Plaid, we cannot force the government to do anything. So effective solidarity with the flood victims naturally leads to the necessity of creating a mass organisation in England and Wales to deliver it.

Re-nationalise the Water!

It was once assumed that public utilities like water and electricity should be publicly owned by not-for-profit bodies that were democratically accountable, but Thatcher sold our water and electricity to private corporations to make money, and Blair and Brown refused to re-nationalise them.

The pursuit of profits by the rich and powerful often means that they cut corners when it comes to health and safety. In Gloucestershire, the local water company built water treatment works on the edge of a flood plain and had inadequate flood defences.

During the flooding disaster, they announced £300 million profits with shareholders given a special payment of £575 million, yet now they are saying that water bills must be increased to pay for the damage cause by the floods!

So working class people already faced with huge costs due to their communities being destroyed face the burden of increased water charges levied by corporations making record profits!

For the Planet - Against the State

Climate change - itself the bitter fruit of an economic system based on greed not need - is taking place in a world brutally divided between the rich and poor: Capitalism seemlessly transmutes natural distaster into human catastrophe.

Climate change is not just about weather, it is about inequality, how society is organised, housing, pensions and a host of other issues.

And solving climate change is not about "green taxes" and the fake solutions offered by the mainstream parties. It is about re-nationalising the railways and cheap bus-fares to make travelling by car unnessecary. It is about increasing public health by promoting walking and cycling. It is about a massive programme of house insulation that will mean that working class people will save money from lower fuel bills. It is about healthy locally grown food rather than processed food flown from abroad. It is about jobs that are close to where you work so you don't have to commute. It is about city gardens and sustainability. It is about supporting protests like the Climate Camp and the demonstrations called by Campaign against Climate Change, it is about raising the issue of climate chaos in your work-place, community and trade union branch.

RESPECT fights for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy as a move from war towards peace, but more fundamentally we argue for a break with the neoliberal model of George Bush, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Menzies Campbell, Ieuan Wyn Jones and Rhodri Morgan. We want to build a world based on the principle of People before Profit!

Feedback from Student RESPECT

To read RESPECT's vision of what the NUS should be, see here

NATIONAL UNION OF STUDENTS
NEC - MONDAY 13 AUGUST

Monday was an unusually tame meeting but one that still marked an important moment for NUS with a near unanimous vote to affiliate to the Stop the War Coalition.

Affiliation to Stop the War and support for the Communications Workers Union (CWU) was voted through less then an hour after the NEC accepted a priority campaign without any campaigning, and the most significant points need to be discussed more widely.

STOP THE WAR COALITION

Over the last few years NUS has done more and more work with the coalition. Both Gemma and Veronica King have spoken at recent demonstrations and Gemma is speaking at the relaunch of Stop the War’s student work on the 8th.

Stop the War has mobilised thousands of students repeatedly in numbers that no other campaign has reached and maintained a level of visibility and influence on far less money then the NUS spends in a month. Joint work around broad slogans between the NUS and StWc can and will be of huge benefit to both organisations.

NUS will be helping with a “Troops Out” tour featuring comedian Mark Steel and ex-SAS veteran Ben Griffen that will be among the biggest meetings to take place at any university this year. This year’s campaign will be discussed at the Stop the War activist meeting on the 8th with Tony Benn.

STOP THE WAR - REPORT OF STUDENT ORGANISING MEETING WITH TONY BENN, GEMMA TUMELTY & LINDSEY GERMAN

The only attempt to derail affiliation came from Sophie Buckland of Education not for Sale (ENS), the one organisation of the “left” not to call for an end to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

ENS attempted to exploit Wes’ cheap demagogy about the right of Israel to “defend” itself to derail the discussion and succeeded in passing an amendment marking out NUS as on the rightwing of the coalition.

The vote on the amendment was close with many abstaining and others pressured into voting for by the emotive (and dishonest) posturing of Labour Students and ENS, and the main thrust of the motion remains an overwhelmingly positive desire to put NUS at the heart of the anti-war movement.

EDUCATION

Wes attempted to sell the education priority campaign with the twisted logic that “it’s very easy to campaign but it’s far harder to have breakfasts and lunches with important people.”

The campaign will be formally launched on the 4th of September and loath though I am to spoil the surprise there are some things that need discussing now.

The concept of the campaign is based around two basic points:

1) We need to “keep our powder dry.” It is argued that it is unwise to run any public campaigns until 2009 because campaigning “puts students off” and furthermore that organisations like the NUS should model themselves on Amnesty International and call on our members for set piece actions every now and again (like turning on and off a tap.)

2) We can’t “pre-empt the review” by proposing what we believe in at this stage as that would stop the government listening to us. Instead we must brown nose officials and gather data to put forwards a pragmatic alternative later which will be considered as a serious option.

The fact that this is deeply flawed on many levels was raised only by the left on the NEC. The comparison between NUS and a lobby group like Amnesty is one of the most worrying aspects of the campaign. It is a marked difference from the idea of a union of students.

Our strength is based on the fact that we collectively organise students at the point where they engage with their education and the world around them.
To successfully develop that strength we need to be involving them in understanding our education system and attempting to change it. This has to be through a consistent series of activities and events to engage our members with our activists and the NUS.

It simply won’t work to expect people to suddenly engage en masse with NUS in 2009 unless we have done the hard work of building up a base.

The second point is the changing nature of universities themselves. It simply isn’t true that the “debate on HE” is actually very narrow and directed. Since New Labour’s theory of “the knowledge economy” the government has systematically accelerated the drive to subvert Universities to the interests of the neo-liberal economy.

It isn’t possible for NUS to tinker around the edges and expect a better deal for students - we need to fundamentally challenge the direction the government is moving in.

We need to be open about our principles to our members and potential supporters and politically win them to the need for a free and fair education.

SOLIDARITY WITH THE CWU - SUPPORT THE POSTAL STRIKE!

Almost unanimously the executive voted to show our solidarity with the post workers strike.

Scott Cuthbertson spoke well in favour of encouraging a sense of Trade Union solidarity amongst our members. The strike may currently be suspended but the prospects of wider public sector strikes to defend public services are very much on the horizon.

Other motions included unanimous support for the BMA’s organ donation campaign and work to lower the age of consent to 16 across the board.

Why Are Disabled People Oppressed?

Capitalist ideology views disabled people as “surplus to requirements”. We need to fight for a society that meets people’s needs rather than excluding them, writes Pat Stack from RESPECT

It’s important for socialists to understand the nature of the oppression that disabled people face. There is no question that disabled people are oppressed – but our oppression has somewhat different roots to that of women or ethnic minorities.

Disabled people face discrimination every day in terms of negative attitudes and exclusion from wider society. But in the past we have faced much more extreme forms of repression.

In Germany during the 1930s, the first victims of the Nazis were 100,000 disabled people – or “inferiors”, as they were called. People with physical and learning disabilities were butchered as a consequence of Hitler’s ideology of “racial purity”.

Their bodies didn’t fit, so he got rid of them – before moving on to the Jews, Gypsies, trade unionists and so on.

So the oppression of disabled people, either historically or today, is no less than that of other oppressed groups in society such as women or black people. But it doesn’t quite serve the same purpose – discrimination against disabled people arises from a slightly different economic motive.

Under capitalism, women are seen as a source of cheap labour (especially with regards to childcare) and a source for the reproduction of labour.

That is why capitalism has an interest in the continued oppression of women. It also has an interest in promoting racism as a means of weakening and dividing the working class, thereby driving down the costs of labour.

Profitability

For disabled people, the root of our oppression is the fact that capitalism sees everything in terms of profit and profitability – and this colours how capitalists view disabled workers.

Most employers see disabled employees as a “problem” – something difficult, something different, something that will cost them more to employ. That isn’t to say that capitalists are incapable of realising that disabled people can be a source of cheap labour.

But the oppression starts from a different trajectory – the initial assumption is that disabled people are worthless under capitalism, rather than of great use within capitalism.

So the oppression of disabled people is a reflection of the way in which capitalism reduces everything to profit – effectively, capitalism says disabled people are surplus to requirements. This is especially true in periods of economic crisis – provision for disabled people is always one of the first things to be hit.

It’s important that we understand the roots of disabled people’s oppression, since that understanding also gives us clarity with regards to what we’re fighting against – and why we’re fighting against it.

The starting point for the disability movement is that you don’t deny that impairments exist, that people have impairments. But the impairment, in and of itself, does not deny people access to employment, social integration, general wellbeing and so on. Those things are denied because society denies them.

They are denied when society fails to provide the means to overcome that exclusion, when it fails to provide access and employment to disabled people, when it chooses to segregate disabled people unnecessarily.

That is the starting point – what we call the social model of disability. And despite the huge steps forward in terms of awareness of these issues, much exclusion still exists.

Moreover, much disability exists because of the kind of society we live in. Large numbers of people across the world are disabled because of the poverty they live in – because of undernourishment, environmental pollution, a lack health and safety provision at their place of work, or because of the carelessness of capitalism.

Unemployed

Discrimination in the job market is a fact of life for people with disabilities. If you’re disabled, you’re three times more likely to be unemployed and six times more likely to be turned down after submitting a job application than if you’re not disabled.

If you say you are disabled on your job application form, you are six times more likely not to be interviewed.

If you get an interview, you are six times more likely to be rejected for the job. And if we look at the question of wages, most disabled people are forced into poorly paid, low skilled jobs. That’s the reality of life for disabled people in the job market.

One approach to dealing with this discrimination is that of organisations such as Remploy – government aided factories that employ people with disabilities. These government workshops are by and large something that’s been fading out in recent years. Remploy in particular has been in the news because its factories are facing closure.

Traditionally what Remploy represented was the segregation of disabled workers – which is why large numbers of disability activists have long objected to the way Remploy is run.

Now Remploy workers are fighting to defend their jobs – but many disability charities have lined up with the government to say the factories should be closed.
While Remploy is something that socialists would want to see consigned to the past, the way to go about that is not by picking people off and forcibly throwing them into a job market that is hostile to them. We should fight for a job market where there is no longer any need for specialised workplaces to employ disabled workers.

The majority of disabled people earn lower wages, while living costs are frequently higher for disabled people. So it’s not surprising that something like two thirds of disabled people live below the poverty line.

Historically the notion was that if a person was disabled, and if nobody could look after them, then they should be put into an institution of some sort. Nowadays the emphasis is on making sure that appropriate care can be provided at home – which is a real advance in terms of society’s attitudes to disabled people.

More recently there have been further advances that question who controls that home care – the disabled person or the care agency.

If you’re a disabled person there is no reason why you shouldn’t prefer going to bed at 11pm rather than at 8pm because that suits somebody else. Your life shouldn’t be lived as if you are in a hospital the whole time.

These changes are real, but there are problems. There is much fine talk from the government about liberating the care environment, giving disabled people real freedom and choice and so on. But in reality you often find the exact opposite is happening. The problem is that the funding is not there, especially at local authority level.

I work for a disability charity. We have people who ask us for more care and more support.

They’ll say, “I’m on my own – I need somebody to come in at night because I need to go to the toilet at night. So I need somebody to come in for a couple of hours.”
Humiliated

The response to these requests is increasingly becoming either (a) “Don’t drink water before you go to sleep,” or (b) “We’ll provide you with incontinence pants.”
So either you’re totally humiliated or you’re lying there thirsty. The government talks about providing “liberation” but won’t provide the funds so that disabled people can make real choices.

In Camden, north London, where I live, there had been no charge for disabled home care – but this has changed recently. Anyone who has more than £30,000 in savings gets charged, as does anybody who receives disability living allowance.

So take a person whose sole income is income support and disability living allowance. Now local authorities are saying we want a big chunk of that disability living allowance back off you in order for us to provide you with care. You are effectively paying a disability tax.

I met the Tory councillor who introduced this change and he said, “This is New Labour policy – we’re just doing what the government says we should do.” Not many people realise you now basically have to pay for the “privilege” of being disabled.

We have to understand what is happening – and we have to understand that fighting for the rights of disabled people means fighting for a different kind of society, one where people’s needs are the priority rather than profits.

Welsh Soldier's death: Rhodri Morgan's silence

With another Welsh soldier dying in Iraq, anti-war campaigners have angrily accused Rhodri Morgan of failing to represent the people of Wales and are launching a mass campaign to demand that the Assembly Government and the new Labour/Plaid administration take a clear anti-war position and call on the UK government to pull the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Adam Johannes from Cardiff RESPECT said:

"Another Welsh soldier is coming home from Iraq in a pine-box, yet the Assembly remains silent on the war.

The Mayor of London and the First Minister of Scotland unequivocally oppose the war, yet the First Minister of Wales shamefully refuses to take a position on it.

With more Welsh soldiers fighting and - in some cases - tragically dying in Iraq and Afghanistan it is time for Rhodri Morgan to show some principles and represent the overwhelming majority of Welsh people who want an end to our involvement in foreign wars.

Wales has some of the poorest communities in the UK, yet billions that could have been spent on pensioners, hospitals and eliminating child poverty is being spent on the illegal wars that Rhodri Morgan refuses to oppose.

The Iraq War has now created twice as many refugees as the Darfur crisis. Up to a million people have died joining the million who perished due to the UN administered genocide of sanctions in the 1990s. Half the population live in absolute poverty, while even more are unemployed: You can almost imagine some well-meaning liberal calling for Western intervention - only this is Western intervention"

RESPECT VS. NEW LABOUR

The following debate took place between RESPECT and New Labour AM Jeff Cuthbert, during the Assembly elections, in the Western Mail; after First Minister Rhodri Morgan appealed to voters not to punish him because of New Labour’s role in Iraq -

Anti-War vote has a home on May 3rd

Rhodri Morgan was dead wrong when he suggested that voters who wanted to give Labour a bloody nose for the war in Iraq should wait until the next general election, rather than on May 3.

Perhaps he is still guilt ridden after his shambolic performance on Question Time last year, when he refused to make a commitment either way on the basis that the war "wasn't a Welsh issue".

He should try telling that to Reg Keys in North Wales, who lost a son in Iraq, or the numerous other Welsh families that have lost sons, daughters and loved ones in a needless war.

May 3 would be the ideal date for punishing Rhodri for impersonating a jellyfish on such a crucial issue. The only problem is that the mainstream parties are more interested in bartering for a place in a coalition government and will therefore sidestep any discussion of the war during the Assembly elections.

That is why it is so important that RESPECT is standing in the South Wales West and South Wales Central electoral lists.

RESPECT emerged from the anti- war movement, and stands against the neo-liberal policies of Blair and Brown.

We have played a key role in campaigns against racism and war and in defence of public services and council housing.Those who have voted with their feet and demonstrated against the war in South Wales can now vote at the ballot box for a party that believes the billions of pounds wasted on war should be invested in our hospitals, our schools and our communities.

DES MANNAY, Gwent RESPECT

This shabby tactic will not fool Wales - New Labour responds

I refer to the letter of April 11 from Des Mannay, of RESPECT. He criticises Rhodri Morgan for not stating a view on Iraq.

But it is Mr Mannay and not Rhodri that is at fault.When Rhodri speaks he does so as First Minister (that was certainly the case on Question Time).

It is unfair and unreasonable to hound him to state "personal" opinions.

Someone in Rhodri's position will always be judged as a public figure and not as an individual.

What Mr Mannay and his friends are trying to do is to shift the focus of this election campaign away from the true issues. By that I mean the areas of devolved government that the Assembly is responsible for.

Mr Mannay, and others that use the same tactic, are simply being opportunist.They do this because they know that the record of Welsh Labour is a good one. Our investment in education, healthcare and our communities is huge and has increased markedly over the past few years.

There is no evidence to support Mr Mannay's claim that spending in Wales has suffered because of UK Government actions.

But they do not want to debate the real issues so they switch to issues that they know are outside the scope of the Assembly. This is a shabby tactic and will not fool the people of Wales.

JEFF CUTHBERT, New Labour Assembly Member for Caerphilly

RESPECT stands with all those fighting for a better world

Labour AM Jeff Cuthbert states in his letter of April 13 that RESPECT are wrong to try to suggest that Rhodri Morgan should take a position on the Iraq War in public since it doesn't fall under his remit as First Minister.

The same could be said of Labour's elected Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, yet he is able to make the war a point of principle - why should things be different for Rhodri?

The fact is that this illegal war has diverted money that could be spent on public services to maintain an occupation that has seen the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of coalition troops.

Mr Cuthbert lauds the Assembly's investment in health and education, seemingly not realising that Labour's slavish devotion to market solutions to social issues has led to much of this investment being frittered away on overpaid management and consultancy. The result? Hospital cuts and massive waiting lists. An excess of school places becomes an excuse to close schools rather than use that excess to drastically cut class sizes.

Rhodri Morgan's slavish devotion to New Labour as opposed to working people has left him sitting idly by while the party is transformed into a party of sleaze, war and big business.

By contrast, RESPECT stands with all those fighting for a better world. This means supporting those who campaign against war and racism; and public service workers fighting to defend our essential services.

It also means supporting the council residents of Swansea who magnificently defeated the privatisation that the Assembly government and city council tried to force on it, or the kids who came out of Cantonian High School to protest against the cuts and closures that have become the hallmark of Labour in Cardiff and Westminster.

JONNY JONES, RESPECT Wales Steering Committee

RESPECT member becomes Children's Laureate!

Cardiff RESPECT congratulates Michael Rosen on becoming Children's Laureate. He received the award at a ceremony in London in June. Rosen is also well known as an author and broadcaster, presenting programmes such as "Word of Mouth" on Radio 4.

The position is awarded every two years to a writer or illustrator of children's books. Judges consider nominations from a range of organisations representing librarians, critics, writers, booksellers and children.

"I utterly resent and reject the notion that you can teach reading without books," he told journalists after his appointment.

"There is a huge push on to create an environment - in nurseries, and reception, and year ones and year twos - where books are secondary to the process of reading. This seems oxymoronic to me. We must, must have at the heart of learning to read the pleasure that is reading. Otherwise why bother? You could learn phonics, learn how to read and then put it behind you and watch telly - you're given no reason to read. There are many ways in which people learn how to read; the idea that there is one way is an outrageous fib.

It's taken a long time for my daughter to bring a picture book home from school because she's been bringing home the Oxford Reading Tree day after day, week after week. The idea that that's what the school provides to children in her class who might not encounter other books horrifies me. We don't care about lists of words. We care about the Gruffalo. So why aren't kids bringing home The Gruffalo?"

Rosen has stated that he will be working with Booktrust, the charity that administers the laureateship, to promote the use of picture books in schools.

The author of more than 140 books, Rosen is best known for his collections of humorous verse for children, and his other commitments during his two-year stint will emphasise verse.

Presenting his ideas under the provisional title Diverse Verse for All, Rosen said that he would like to develop some kind of website, similar to YouTube, where schools could share videos of children performing their poetry. Alongside it would be an online space for poetry discussion; and widening participation in poetry through libraries.

He also intends to create a touring show of performance poetry for kids, Poetry A-Z - "from Agard to Zephaniah," Rosen joked.

He stresses that poetry offers children "another way to deal with reality" and a "portable philosophy" to be carried around, even in just a couple of lines. "It's a great assistance in life," he added.

However, despite being fifth children's laureate, and the first poet to take the honour, Rosen had one confession to make. "I can't find a word to rhyme with laureate," he said, ruefully.

The children's laureateship was the brainchild of Michael Morpurgo and his friend - and then poet laureate - Ted Hughes, although it was not first endowed until 1999, after Hughes's death. The role, which lasts for two years, is awarded to a children's writer or illustrator, to celebrate immense achievement in their field.

RESPECT CALLS FOR -

* A fully comprehensive school system providing a common core curriculum for all until 18. End selection. Scrap SATs and other unnecessary tests.
* Education free at the point of use, from pre-school to FE, to
university and adult learning.
* A radical reduction in class size.
* A qualified teacher for every class.
* Better pay for teachers and other education workers.
* An end to specialist school status, to Academies and to Trust schools.
* Restoration of local decision-making powers over admissions and new schools to elected local authorities, not government-appointed bureaucrats.
* Free after-school clubs and play centres for all that need them.
* Full and part-time nursery and day-care places as a right, for all who want them.
* An end to charitable status and tax breaks for private schools.
* The abolition of tuition fees and student loans. Free education and a living grant for all further and higher education students.
* Free and life-long access for all to high quality vocational education and adult education.* A fully comprehensive school system providing a common core curriculum for all until 18. End selection. Scrap SATs and other unnecessary tests.
* Education free at the point of use, from pre-school to FE, to
university and adult learning.
* A radical reduction in class size.
* A qualified teacher for every class.
* Better pay for teachers and other education workers.
* An end to specialist school status, to Academies and to Trust schools.
* Restoration of local decision-making powers over admissions and new schools to elected local authorities, not government-appointed bureaucrats.
* Free after-school clubs and play centres for all that need them.
* Full and part-time nursery and day-care places as a right, for all who want them.
* An end to charitable status and tax breaks for private schools.
* The abolition of tuition fees and student loans. Free education and a living grant for all further and higher education students.
* Free and life-long access for all to high quality vocational education and adult education.