Counterfire broadsheet Nov 2013: A movement rises

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BY CHRIS NINEHAM

From the mainstream media, you would think that the need for savage welfare cuts is a given. Anyone suggesting a fairer policy is dismissed as eccentric. Even Ed Miliband’s mild proposals to scrap the bedroom tax and cap fuel bills whipped up a storm of establishment outrage. How dare he suggest that a government could step in to limit pro� ts?   

But, from Russell Brand to Owen Jones, everyone who speaks out against austerity gets a great response from the public. Despite all the propaganda, 60 percent now want the bedroom tax scrapped, 65 percent want more money spent on the NHS instead of cuts, and millions continue to oppose the whole austerity project.

In the last few months that alternative view has started to � nd its voice. Unreported in the mainstream, since the June launch of the People’s Assembly dozens of local Assemblies have sprung up in towns and cities up and down the country, bringing together all sections of society under attack. Health workers, the disabled, students,

A movement risesbene� t claimants and trade unionists have come together with many others to stop the best things in our society being sold o� to the highest bidder.

At least 80 assemblies have been organised, from Bangor to Birmingham, and from Newcastle to Norwich. � e turnout at the assemblies is

universally impressive. Pretty much everywhere the atmosphere is electric as activists get con� dence and energy from coming together and linking up campaigns.

� e Assembly movement � ts the situation. � e tiny numbers of super rich in what they laughingly call ‘boomtime Britain’ are trying to divide us. � ey play o� private sector from public sector, employed from unemployed,

‘e� cient’ councils from ‘ine� cient’. � ey try and stigmatise immigrants, the disabled and what they sickeningly call ‘welfare scroungers’. But the truth is they are systematically pushing through the cuts at a national level in an e� ort to re-engineer society.

We have to create a movement strong enough to stop attacks like the privatisation of the post o� ce or the vicious assault on workers’ conditions at Grangemouth. � at is why we need to stick together and � ght together. � e Assembly movement made the day of civil disobedience possible. It helped turn out a magni� cent demonstration at the Tory Party Conference in September. � ese kinds of mass protests give people like the teachers and college workers the con� dence to strike against the cuts. It was mass pressure that forced Miliband to make his � rst gestures against corporate power.

But this is only the beginning. � e movement is spreading, there are plans for another national demonstration in the early spring and early next year the People’s Assembly will reconvene nationally to plan the next steps. � e People’s Assembly needs you to get involved to help create a movement that is broad and militant enough to break the back of austerity. For more information go to thepeoplesassembly.org.uk.

FROM RUSSELL BRAND TO OWEN JONES, SPEAKING OUT

AGAINST AUSTERITY GETS SUPPORT FROM

THE PUBLIC

© Marienna Pope-Weidemann

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BRISTOLEverything you wanted to know about socialism but were afraid to ask With Lindsey GermanMonday, 25 November, 7pm Venue TBC

DONCASTERHow to end war and austerityMonday, 11 November, 7pm Women’s Centre21 Cleveland StreetDoncaster DN1 3EH

KINGS LYNNHow to end war and austerityWednesday, 13 November 6.30pm 38 Bridge Street Kings Lynn PE30 5AB

LIVERPOOLWhat does socialism mean? Tuesday, 12 November, 6pm Liverpool Guild Of Students160 Mount Pleasant Liverpool L3 5TR

Public Events...

Counterfire: who we are and what we doOn International Women’s Day 2010 we launched a new political organisation called Counter� re.

Its � rst publication was A Feminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, written by Lindsey German, the convenor of Stop the War Coalition, in collaboration with activist and author Nina Power.

A lot has happened since then. We took as our starting point the idea that a le� -wing organisation must be an integral part of the struggles of working people and the mass movements that have characterised resistance to capitalism in the last decade and more. Too much of the far le� is keen to di� erentiate itself ideologically and organisationally from mass activity, and is shrinking not growing, obsessed with its own internal debates.

Counter� re set out on a di� erent path, eliminating unnecessary barriers between our socialist politics and the thousands of activists being drawn into opposition to austerity and war.

Building movementsWe sought to sustain the anti-war movement. And we have helped to do so right up and through the success of stopping Cameron bombarding Syria with cruise missiles. We have contributed to launching the No Glory campaign to combat the Tories’ o� cial ‘celebration’ of World War One due next year.

We were at the heart of the student movement when it exploded in 2010 and Counter� re’s Clare Solomon, then president of the University of London Union, was one of its most e� ective spokespeople.

Counter� re was also a key component in launching the Coalition of Resistance and,

t h rou g h t h a t coalition, the People’s Assembly, which has become the undisputed, essential vehicle for a united resistance to austerity. Even the TUC recognised the e� ectiveness of bringing anti-cuts activists and the unions together when it voted to support the Assembly a� er the 4,500-strong founding

conference in June. Indeed there are now more than 80 People’s Assemblies

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LIVERPOOLWhat does socialism mean? Tuesday, 12 November, 6pm Liverpool Guild Of Students160 Mount Pleasant Liverpool L3 5TR

LONDONSeeing Red: A festival of subversive cinemaSaturday and Sunday 16-17 November, 11-7pm KLT, SOAS, Thornaugh StreetLondon WC1H OXG

LONDONEverything you ever wanted to know about socialism but were afraid to askWeds, 27 Nov, 6pm, Rm G3, SOAS, Thornaugh StreetLondon, WC1H OXG

NEWCASTLEBooklaunch: Sylvia Pankhurst, Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge ofEmpire, with Kate ConnellyTuesday, 26 November, 6pm Blackwells Bookshop 141 Percy St, NE1 7RS

a c r o s s t h e

country, from Pontypridd to Kings Lynn, and

from Glasgow to Brighton. Counter� re members were centrally involved in establishing the People’s Assembly, both nationally and locally.

In the unions our supporters have been � ghting to make action by teachers and college lecturers as e� ective as it can be.

Our Unite members were standing shoulder to shoulder with the electricians in their signal battle with construction bosses. A Counter� re member, lorry driver Richard Allday, won his election to the Unite executive joining Bryan Simpson from our sister organisation in Scotland.

Dangerous timesBut Counter� re is about ideas as well as action. Our website set a new benchmark in the online presentation of socialist ideas, combining written material with video reporting, attracting a readership magni� ed by the early adoption of a social media strategy. Our analysis of austerity from Counter� re editor Ady Cousins and New Economics Foundation senior economist James Meadway has been second to none. Our accounts of the Arab Revolutions and of imperialism in the Middle East have been reproduced on websites around the globe, from Russia to Spain, from Greece to Chile.

But we’ve never restricted ourselves to an online presence. Our frequent free broadsheet given out at protests and meetings across the country has been much emulated by other le� -wing organisations and campaigns. A� er all, when mainstream, paid-for tabloids are declining while free papers like the Metro are widely read, we reasoned, why doesn’t the le� develop its own free-sheet strategy. It’s worked so well we are now planning to produce it more frequently and with more pages.

Neither have we neglected the development of radical ideas. We’ve been at the heart of the most successful new le� -wing festival in recent years - the Dangerous Ideas festival - which has brought hundreds of new activists into closer contact with the le� . And we’ve worked closely at these festivals with Tariq Ali, Jeremy Corbyn MP, the Guardian’s Seumas Milne, Owen Jones, Tony Benn and many others to make sure that the full

vitality of le� ideas can be presented to the widest audience.

Explaining crisisCounter� re members have produced the largest body of new Marxist theory available from any le� organisation in Britain in the last few years. � is ranges from the widely read Strategy and Tactics, a statement of Counter� re’s aims, through books such as Capitalism and Class Consciousness: the ideas of Georg Lukacs, Timelines: a political history of the modern world, � e People Demand: a short history of the Arab Revolutions, to the best-selling A People’s History of London. We have also contributed the best account of the 2010 student rebellion for Verso’s Springtime.

In the last few months Counter� re members have published How a Century of War Changed the Lives of Women, � e People v. Tony Blair, and the book of the enormously popular Counter� re series, A Marxist History of the World, which is now being enlarged for its Spanish edition. � at was part of an ongoing collaboration with Pluto Press. A new book on radical su� ragette Sylvia Pankhurst, by Counter� re’s Kate Connelly, has just been published by Pluto to widespread acclaim.

In the pipeline are a book on class and another on anti-capitalism and fashion. We believe all this makes Counter� re the most outward looking, dynamic and thoughtful organisation on the le� .

We are growing – join usAll this has meant Counter� re has grown. We now have groups forming in Bristol, York, Nottingham, Manchester and Liverpool, as well as existing organisation in other cities, towns and universities. If you like the sound of Counter� re and want to help us grow, please join online, over the page or contact us at info@counter� re.org.

For more events go to www.counterfi re.org/events

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The Great British Sell-off

BY PAUL HARTLEY

� e coalition government’s privatisation programme has been more comprehensive and more brutal than even Margaret � atcher’s. From the NHS to the police, the private sector has been granted unprecedented access to public services that were previously thought untouchable. And the worst may be yet to come.

� e privatisation of the Royal Mail, a pro� table company, shows that the government intends to be even more audacious as the next general election approaches. Even at the height of the privatisation frenzy of the 1980s � atcher said she was not prepared to see the Queen’s head privatised. Cameron’s government was willing to slaughter her sacred cow for £3.3 billion – a little less than twice the annual earnings of a top hedge fund manager.

Broken promiseCameron’s promise that the NHS would be safe in his hands is in tatters. Regulations passed in April allow any quali� ed provider to run health services under the NHS logo. Service by service, from mental health in Bristol to social care in Cambridgeshire, the NHS is being broken up and sold o� . Last year, £4.5 billion of contracts were put out on the market, and the numbers are rising.

Britain already leads the way in prison privatisation, and houses a larger proportion of its prison population in private prisons than even the US. � e Ministry of Justice is now selling o� the probation service and legal aid, with the

likelihood that G4S will run both, and police forces are being pushed to outsource everything from investigations to patrolling.

Staggering scale� e scale of the great British sell-o� is staggering. It includes the government’s manic desperation to dump its shares in RBS and Lloyds, even at a massive loss, Michael Gove’s plans to sell o� academies outright, and the privatisation of the East Coast Mainline. Under the guise of a de� cit reduction programme the government has been creating facts on the ground – privatisations that cannot be reversed when the economic forecast

looks more temperate. By simultaneously pushing privatisation and austerity, the government intends nothing less than a wholesale restructuring of the UK economy along US lines.

Many of the services formerly carried out by the state are now run by companies such as G4S and Serco that are unaccountable to the public and are run only for the bene� t of their shareholders. Morsel by morsel, they are picking the country’s bones clean. But privatisation has created social stresses throughout the country, and movements opposed to the government’s programme are now coming together to resist the great British sell-o� .

© Marienna Pope-Weidemann