Too busy to post

Socialists are used to working hard to build support for their ideas but the past week has taken things to a new level.

I was up at 4am yesterday to help leaflet the postal workers at the sorting office in Cardiff. We got good support and no wonder: postal workers were facing a vicious assault on the right of their union, the CWU, even to be involved in negoiation! They've won some concessions but management are still out to drive down wages and conditions as low as they can. They just don't get it that the best way to make the postal service more efficient is to kick the profiteering private companies out of the industry, renationalise the sector and run things democratically with the workforce represented in management.

Next we leafletted two of the big council workplaces in Cardiff. Already 350 jobs have been cut and another 650 are predicted to go - 10% of the workforce, leaving those left behind with higher workloads and those who've left with the unappetising prospect of finding another job in the context of the largest number of people not in work since records began.

Then on to the Cardiff University Student Union hustings, where socialist policies beat the policies of job cuts, public service cuts and privatisation pushed by the main parties hands down. I put sitting Liberal Democrat MP Jenny Willott on the spot, asking why is it that her party couldn't find the £3.5 billion needed to abolish tuition fees but supported handing the banks back to the profiteers in the private sector once they've become profitable again. Liberal Democrat leaders ditched their pledge to abolish fees and then backtracked when they realised this would look unpopular. The new line is that they would abolish fees in 6 years, but there's another election between now and then, and there could well be another recession! We can't afford to abolish fees now, claim the Lib Dems, but young people can't afford to wait until it's acceptable to the big business interests the main parties serve - we need an end to fees now! coincidentally, fees could be abolished if the war in Iraq and Afghanistan - costly in lives and money - were ended today. But the Lib Dems don't support bringing the troops home today either...

Support Union Members' Democratic Right to Take Action to Defend Jobs

Socialist Party members who support TUSC were campaigning today in Clifton Street and Albany Road to scrap the anti trade union laws after another disgraceful decision banning workers from exercising their right to take industrial action. With no political party representing us, trade unions are the only thing standing between those who depend on public services and the main parties who plan to go further even than Thatcher did in slashing them to ribbons.

Hot on the heels of the second BA strike, postponed from its original date on the whim of a millionaire judge, RMT signallers and maintenance workers were due to take action next week to fight against their employers' plan to cut jobs. Network Rail wants to axe 1500 maintenance workers and are ripping up agreements with signal workers as a step towards cutting their jobs and worsening their working conditions. The result could easily be another Paddington, Hatfield or Potters' Bar.

But the courts have stepped in again. Unions are bound by so many requirements that defending services and jobs by taking industrial action legally is becoming impossible.



This year is the thirtieth anniversary of the first of Thatcher's anti-trade union laws and the fact that almost half that period has been spent under a Labour government demonstrates the character of that party today and the urgent need for a "Taff Vale Two" - a move by the trade unions to help found a party that represents ordinary working class people and trade unionists.

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat Assembly Members demonstrated the contempt their party has for trade unions by making a point of crossing PCS picketlines at the National Assembly. Centreforum, A Liberal Democrat think-tank, has effectively called for the expulsion of trade unions from national negotiations over pay, earning the condemnation of Unison, my trade union. And Plaid Cymru members in Caerphilly have embarrassed leaders of their party by withdrawing facilities for trade union reps in the Council in order to try and weaken their campaign against cutbacks.

It's often said that the trade union movement, without a political voice, is fighting with one hand tied behind its back. But, unless it bursts out of the legal constraints binding it today, it will face its toughest fight in living memory with both hands bound.

Bring the Soldiers Home to Decent Jobs and Education

We were in Canton this morning campaigning to bring the troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq. I noticed that a lot of people from Ely and other outlying areas of West Cardiff were keen to sign the petition. The recession and the job losses are dealing areas like Ely a hard while they're still suffering from previous ones. A lot of ordinary, young, working class people in areas like these and the valleys see the armed forces as their only route to getting access to training, education and something approaching decent: they're economic conscripts that are dying for the sake of politicians' prestige and the big business profits behind them. The Youth Fight for Jobs campaign is demanding decent jobs and real education for young people in Britain, without the need to get ordered around and shot at to get hold of either.

The British government spent an incredible £4.5 billion on the war in these two countries. This figure would pay the tuition fees of every student in the UK, with a cool billion to spare.

Also went to the National Assembly today to attend a protest of staff and students on childcare courses which are under threat of being savagely cut back. Proposals would cut the teaching time by two thirds and leave students much less prepared to look after children. One student from Llanelli explained to me that she will be the last-but-one student on the full-length course and that those who come after her could have to look after children much younger than those with which they have experience.

We leafletted the Cardiff University Unison AGM later in the day and spoke to Graham Francis, the branch secretary there, and other members about the cutbacks University management is planning. Interestingly, when LEARN, the adult education department in CU was threatened, the gap between its funding and its expenditure was almost exactly the same figure - around a quarter of a million - as the salary of David Grant, the vice-chancellor. Public universities should be under the control and management of ordinary people: they should discuss and set salaries for staff and also decide what the priorities of universities should be - not big business.