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All materials published and promoted by L Smith, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU
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New beginnings for Southark Respect |
On 12 February around 80 people attended a lively public meeting called by Lambeth and Southwark Respect Renewal at Elephant & Castle. The theme of the meeting was �The Economy Brown Built�, particularly focussed on the current economic crisis and the government�s attempt to hold down pay and pensions while prices, particularly fuel prices, let rip.
Margot Lindsay, a local housing and pensioner activist and a Respect candidate for Southwark Council in 2006, began the meeting.
She gave a dramatic demonstration of the effect of fuel policy on pensioners by starting her speech wrapped up in several different layers of jumpers, and removing them to show how she, and many others on fixed incomes who cannot afford to heat their homes properly, are forced to keep warm.
She noted that considerable numbers of pensioners are forced to live in one room during the winter as they cannot afford to heat their homes properly. She also noted that numerous diseases are caused, or exacerbated, by exposure to cold, and that increasing fuel poverty is one of the indicators of just how people in Britain, not just pensioners, are being deprived of the means of life.
In Norway, which Margot visits regularly, cold-related illnesses and death are almost unheard of despite a much colder climate, whereas in Britain there are thousands of death from cold each winter.
The next speaker was John Mulrenan, a long-time trade unionist and former UNISON branch secretary in Southwark and a Respect candidate in the 2004 Euro-elections in London. He noted that there was a simple solution to New Labour’s claims that it ‘cannot afford’ to pay decent public sector wages, or to pay decent pensions so that people did not have to suffer and even die because of escalating fuel costs – “Take from the rich and give to the poor”.
But of course, New Labour today was committed to the very opposite of that, and had basically embraced the market on everything. He took us through the saga of how in Southwark, Labour’s mania for privatisation a few years ago had led it to hand over control of education to WS Atkins – a road building company.
He noted how after ten years of Labour government, public services were actually getting worse because of the mania for privatisation, and the wages of public sector workers were massively under attack. Labour governments in the past had often not been impressive and had not acted in the interests of the working people that elected them, but this Labour government was in a whole different category, doing thing that even Margaret Thatcher would never have dared.
Gary from EDGE (East Dulwich for a Good Education) was then called as a guest speaker, expanding on the saga of how Southwark Council is allowing Lord Harris, the carpet seller, to act as sponsor of a new City Academy in East Dulwich, building a new privatised City Academy for 900 pupils in a tiny space that should only really hold at most about 300.
This grotesque proposal, which is being pushed through with only a sham consultation, has generated large-scale opposition in Southwark. The council seeks to ‘solve’ its problem of shortages of school places locally on the cheap by cramming large number of pupils into an overcrowded, privatised facility with no play space, managed by a profiteer with no interest in education, only in making money and acquiring prestige.
In fact, now run by a Lib Dem-Tory coalition, Southwark Council is implementing Blair/Brown’s privatised ‘City Academy’ scheme with gusto; only two secondary schools in Southwark today are not academies.
But the main speaker of course was George Galloway. He gave a wide-ranging speech, covering many subjects from fuel poverty and attacks on living standards, to the Iraq war, from Labour’s vile scapegoating of Muslims to the relative worth of past Labour governments.
His main theme, however, is that while we have a government that claims to be ‘Labour’ in power, the British people in fact no longer have a genuine Labour Party to vote for. He noted that in the past, Labour governments such as Harold Wilson’s, despite their timidity and subservience, had actually nationalised industries, not privatised them.
That Labour governments, instead of eagerly participating in US military adventures such as Iraq, had kept British troops out of similar wars in Vietnam. How Harold Wilson had banned the spooks from bugging MPs, whereas under New Labour a government minister such as Sadiq Khan had been bugged while talking to an imprisoned constituent with the obvious knowledge of fellow Labour ministers.
And how it was inconceivable that a Labour minister in past governments could make a vile, Goebbels-like speech such as that from Phil Woolas, branding Muslims as ‘inbreeds’ – if they had they would have been sacked.
There were a broad spectrum of different people in the audience, including trade unionists straight from a lobby of Southwark Council, former Labour Party members, ex-SWP members and supporters, people from the Socialist Party, local residents who had come to the meeting as a result of estate leafleting that local Respect supporters had done, and some who heard about the meeting because it was mentioned on TalkSport radio.
All looking at the possibility of building a working class political alternative to Labour. There was also representation from other parts of South London, in particular Lewisham, where the real Respect project is just being reborn with the formation of a new branch, as well as Wandsworth.
We had an open discussion period at the end of the meeting, which mainly consisted of questions to the panel on a variety of topics, though it did also offer the chance for a supporter of one of the smallest and most eccentric left fragments to predict the imminent collapse of capitalism and call for revolution now.
As a result of this meeting, Respect locally gained dozens of new names, some of who signed up on the spot. We are having a follow-up branch meeting on 27 February in Walworth/Camberwell area – ring Ian on 07941 936087 for more details.
We'll have video of the speeches uploaded in the next few days. Please check back! |
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