Labour’s Minimum Wage Proposals are Typically Timid

The announcement by Ed Miliband, the Labour party leader, of his party’s manifesto commitment for the 2015 general election to raise the minimum wage to £8 per hour by 2020 lacks ambition and is all too familiar of Labour these days.

The right wing press has been quick to condemn the proposal as a ‘tax on jobs’, but these are the same people who said much the same thing about having a minimum wage at all, and in the end the sky didn’t fall in.

Indeed the proposal is so modest that over on Labour List where the idea was trumpeted to great a fanfare, you only need to read the comments section to see just how underwhelmed Labour’s activists are with this pitiful offer.

Compare it instead to the Green party proposal to immediately raise the minimum wage to £7.65 per hour (and in London £8.80), and then to £10 per hour by 2020. I wouldn’t even claim that this all that radical, even Boris Johnson agrees with the immediate £8.80 per hour for London.

What this does is to remind anyone with even a vaguely progressive outlook that Labour is scared of its own shadow (rather like their refusal to renationalise the railways, another popular policy amongst the voters), and despite hopes in some quarters that Labour was moving to the left with Ed Miliband as leader.

If you want left wing policies, and most opinion polls show there is a lot of support for them, then your best bet is to vote Green. Even if we don’t win many seats, a large Green vote will pull Labour to the left.

One of the main lessons of the Scottish referendum is that there is an appetite for breaking with the neo liberal orthodoxy that has blighted us for more than thirty years now.  

Photos from today's People's Climate March - London

I would say maybe 20,000 people were on the People's Climate today. A very diverse bunch the marchers were too. There were many home made placards in evidence, and in some ways reminded me of the big anti-war march of 2003.

There have been marches all over the world today in advance of the climate talks in New York on Tuesday next week.

Time is running out, we need real action now.

After the Scottish Independence Referendum – Where do we go from here?

Well, the Scots rejected independence on Thursday 55% to 45%, which is a larger margin than I imagined. With barely time to pause for breath and take in the result, the race for party political advantage has already begun, under cover of devising a new settlement for Scotland.

Some Scots seem to be expecting a stitch up by Westminster, with nothing substantive being offered, indeed calls from the Prime Minister and the Conservative party are for any new powers for Scotland to matched by ones for England (and Wales and Northern Ireland too, although they get less of a mention, a kind of afterthought).

This was of course predictable, as the Tories have long complained about Scottish MPs voting on English matters, whilst English MPs have no say in Scotland on devolved matters. This is the so called ‘West Lothian question’. The Tories can see that they could make life impossible for a future UK Labour government, having legislation blocked in England by English Tory MPs. Personally, I think this is the least important part of our governance, and a purely cynical move by the Tories.  

I think Scotland will get its extra powers although how significant they will be is open to debate. But it is not clear what the rest of the UK will get out of this situation, with only vague and often conflicting ideas coming from the Westminster parties.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP, has called for a People’s Convention to be formed to look into the issues surrounding how we are governed, and Ed Miliband has now supported this call. The Lib Dems are calling for a more ‘federal’ system of government and the Tory response above is driven by having at least one eye on UKIP, who will surely make the most of the moment by cranking up English nationalism.

Mark Ferguson writing on Labour List suggests regional assemblies, but crucially to replace MPs at Westminster and to have real powers, rather than the extra politicians with little power model, floated by the last Labour government.  He may be onto something.

I have called on these pages for more financial powers for England’s cities, and that plan has been gathering momentum from even before Scotland took centre stage recently.

What I think is clear, is we must not allow the momentum created by the Scottish vote to be lost or dissipated by it being kicked into the long grass. We should examine, root and branch, how we want to be governed, including matters like an elected House of Lords, voting systems for all levels of government, the lobbying and the influence of big business on government.

For above all, this has to be about democracy. The yes camp in Scotland broke out of its usual nationalist parameters and enthused the largely politically disengaged people of the poorer areas. One of my favourite lines from Tony Benn is that ‘Hitler said democracy inevitably leads to Marxism’.

I’ll leave you with that thought.  

An open letter from Caroline Lucas MP to the three party leaders

Dear Party Leaders,

Whatever the outcome of today’s referendum about the future governance of Scotland, there seems to be a strong consensus that nothing will ever quite be the same again. People in Scotland have been granted their right to be heard and have used the opportunity to imagine all kinds of positive futures.

Alongside the official Yes and No campaigns, we have seen the growth of genuine grassroots movements, giving everyone a voice. Across the nation, people previously disengaged from formal politics have been passionately debating what matters to them – all because they have a decision to make in which their individual vote really will influence the outcome.

For many of these people, voting had previously become merely an exercise in democracy rather than true democracy – casting a vote made little tangible difference to the outcome of elections, let alone their day to day lives.  The referendum has newly enfranchised them because every vote counts.  It’s also invited a whole new generation of young people to shape their own futures.

We have a unique opportunity, at this point in our history, to learn from what has happened during the referendum campaign. To recognise that behind the ever declining turn out in General Elections, especially amongst young people, the disillusionment and distrust, there is another story. One in which people are not disengaged from politics, simply from a political system that is not good at listening, that conspires to keep people relatively powerless and is designed to protect the interests of a small, self-interested and wealthy elite.

You did a brave and bold thing, ceding some of your power via a referendum.

You have also made promises, in the event of a No vote, to devolve more powers to Scotland – a welcome move that that has wider implications. The next steps must not be decided without full and proper consultation with everyone affected.

So I hope you will be braver still and demonstrate a genuine commitment to democracy by supporting calls for a People’s Constitutional Convention. A Convention to explore, discuss, debate and inspire. To tackle the democratic crisis that has left far too many people feeling unrepresented, neglected and alienated by Westminster.

A continuation of the conversation that has begun in Scotland – and England and Wales and Northern Ireland – about a fairer voting system, an elected House of Lords, job sharing for MPs, lowering the voting age, giving local communities and local authorities more power, including via local referenda and citizens initiatives, more regional government and total recall for elected politicians.

It’s an idea that’s already being championed the Electoral Reform Society, Open Democracy, Compass, Involve, Democratic Audit and the chairman of House of Commons’ Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, amongst others.

Above all, it would demonstrate a genuine commitment to real democracy and embody the principle that power flows upwards from the people, not down from a centralised state. Scotland has shown that this is the way to build engagement in the decisions that affect all of our lives – by respecting, trusting and listening. This is also the way to give people hope again.

I hope you will join me in supporting a People’s Constitutional Convention as the way forward.

Yours sincerely,
Caroline Lucas MP
Brighton Pavilion

First published at Left Foot Forward

Follow Caroline Lucas on Twitter

The apartheid of wealth State we're in

Preface by Swheatie of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group

The blog posting below is originally from Community Care magazine and the days of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. The matters of geographical social inequality raised in that piece have become more urgent as a consequence of the social cleansing that has arisen since the 2010 General Election brought in a cabinet of millionaires with no real electoral mandate for the policies that they have attempted to excuse with the backdrop of the crash of 2008 that really stemmed from the perils of investment bankers being rescued by the State.

The pull quote in the Bob Holman article is:

"The affluent elite tell the government about poverty. Those who endure it are shoved aside." 

These days, that shoving of poor people aside gives rise to the sharp rise in out-of-London-dispersal of poor people reported on yesterday in this blog. While the definition of 'affordable housing' laid down by investment banker-turned 'ennobled'-welfare reform minister David Freud and his ilk makes a mockery of social housing, the debt induced by linking definition of 'affordable' to "80% of [a deregulated housing market] rate" results in a steep rise in homelessness and out-of-London housing dispersals.

Yet with property developers and Central Government pulling Camden Council by the purse strings, we are in for further segregation of wealthy and poor people as this paragraph from a recent Camden New Journal item highlights:

The so-called “affordable” section of the development appears not to have the same entrance, amenity areas and roof terraces as the rest of the building. Even rubbish disposal seems to be segregated; tenants of the affordable flats are expected to take their own rubbish to the bins while the other flats will be provided with a rubbish chute. Moreover it seems that this section, together with the community space, will be directly over one of the most polluted and noisy traffic junctions in Camden. 

It can, ideally, be instructive for people to be 'up close and personal' with what they emit. I close this preface with a link to an item from 2011 about Jeremy Clarkson's sad discovery about such matters.

Poor must meet Gordon

by Bob Holman

Originally posted in Community Care magazine, 20 February 2008

Many of those committed to reducing poverty make the time to lobby the rich but have little contact with those at the sharp end Papers recently released show that Tony Blair had regular meetings with the ultra-rich. They lobbied the prime minister on tax breaks and pensions for themselves and their companies. No doubt they now meet Gordon Brown.

If a lobby for the rich meets in Downing Street why not one for the poor? I do not mean the leaders of national charities who have regular meetings with ministers. Odd that those on salaries of more than £100,000 a year, which help reinforce the idea of inequality, should take it upon themselves to be the poverty lobby.

Anyone who lives in a deprived area knows that many people on low incomes are intelligent and articulate about their plight. In 1998, I encouraged some residents in Easterhouse, Glasgow to write. They did not need to be taught to think or analyse. They did need help in finding a publisher. When the book came out as Faith in the Poor, it soon ran to a second edition.

 

One problem is that people in poverty are segregated from the powerful. When I joined the Labour Party in the 1960s, some MPs still lived in council estates, cheap housing areas and pit towns. Not now. As the research of Danny Dorling, professor at Sheffield University, shows, Britain is an increasingly segregated society.

Poverty lobby

The affluent – MPs, leaders of think tanks, government advisers, other senior public figures and all who make up the chattering classes – are geographically and socially distanced from those who struggle to survive. Consequently, it is almost impossible for them to have close friendships with and to act jointly with those who experience inequality. It is the powerful, affluent elite who tell the government and the media about poverty while those who endure it are shoved aside.

The poverty lobby should now campaign on the issue: “listen to poor people rather than us”. If the government agrees to breakfast with those on low incomes, how could it be organised? I don’t know. I do know that organisations such as ATD Fourth World run community and service user groups made up of single parents, pensioners, those on disability benefit, asylum seekers and many more. Their representatives would be a start.

The agenda? That is for them to decide. I do believe that they would demonstrate to politicians that poverty is not because of an underclass or fecklessness or defective personalities but is something imposed by the powerful – the kind of people who make up the ultra rich lobby.

Bob Holman is an author and voluntary neighbourhood worker in Glasgow

- See more here

Review - Naomi Klein's latest book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate

This Changes Everything is not just a book; none of Naomi Klein's books have been. It’s also a film and it comes out just days before massive climate change demonstrations in cities around the world, to coincide with a U.N. meeting on climate change in New York.

In Klein's words the book is: ‘a revolutionary call to bring about the transformative changes required to confront the crisis. In doing so proving that the climate crisis cannot be solved without closing the inequality gap and deepening democracy at every level.’

From No Logo (2000), which became one of the leading books of the anti-globalisation movement to Shock Doctrine (2007), showing how neo-liberalism needs crisis to grow and to justify austerity, Klein's books have been game changers: spawning movements, inspiring countless banners and putting very succinctly what less eloquent folk were trying to say.

For many of us involved in the climate justice movement the premise of what Klein is saying is nothing new. Pursuing a neo-liberal economic agenda is in direct confrontation with the measures needed to tackle climate change. More than one South American president has given spine-tingling, earth-shattering speeches about capitalism and climate change, leaving listeners in awe. Even the UK's bonny Prince Charlie has suggested that one would need to reform capitalism in order to deal with climate change.

Overthrow, destroy, dismantle, reform, restructure, transform. . . whatever adjective you want to use, depending on your political leanings – one thing is for sure, no more tweaking the system. It is time to be change or be changed.

What This Changes Everything does is to make watertight the case for transformation away from a capitalist system. It explains in no uncertain terms what capitalism does, why it is wrong and why the rules of the game have changed. In Chapter 2, highlighting the anti-capitalists’ arch enemy the WTO, Klein demonstrates through case studies how the pursuit of free trade has meant that, time after time, initiatives to kick-start local renewable business have been thwarted by free trade policies. She tears apart the green billionaires, supposed saviours who have invested their billions in trying to kick-start a green economy while continuing to expand their fossil fuel guzzling businesses. Richard Branson has a number of pages dedicated to him and he does not come off well. Geo engineering, climate deniers, big green NGOs invested in oil and gas all get the same treatment. Completely shredded by the shrewd, well-researched and succinct Naomi Klein. 

The key question, then, is: what is holding us back from these transformative changes and a transition to zero carbon economies? It’s not technological solutions; we have them and they work, but we are not ‘stopping the fire, we are dousing it with gasoline’ because doing the things that are necessary to lower emissions is fundamentally in conflict with capitalism; ’We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe are extremely threatening to a minority elite that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process and most of our major media outlets.’

Klein is hard on the left (and herself) for the lack of involvement in the climate issue and that's where the book becomes a call to action. ‘It's a painful irony', argues Klein, 'that while the right is forever casting climate change as a left-wing plot most leftists and liberals are still averting their eyes, having yet to grasp that the climate science is offering them the most powerful argument against capitalism since William Blake’s satanic mills blackened England's skies.’

This accusation feels a little unfair. In the UK particularly there is a rich tradition of environmentalism from places like the Centre for Alternative Technology, and its zero carbon Britain project, Climate Camps, Transition Movement, not to mention the numerous protests at UNFCCC meetings etc since 2000. But campaigning on climate change is very complicated – and somewhat reminiscent of The Life of Brian, with its multiple groups.  This book, with its galvanising call to action, might just scrub away those differences and bring a wide range of diverse groups together.

The most striking element of This Changes Everything is its central argument: that change is coming whether we like it or not. In September 2014 leading scientists from the World Meteorological Association said that surging greenhouse gases – now at record highs in the atmosphere – mean that ‘time is running out’. We are on track for a world that is 4 degrees warmer. And as Klein puts it, ’Even in the best case scenario a 4 degree temperature rise is calamitous and makes 2 degrees look like a utopian dream.‘

The response if we do nothing now will be ‘the big corporate, big military, big engineering responses to climate change – the world of a tiny group of big corporate winners and armies of locked out losers that we have imagined in virtually every fictional account of dystopic future.’

Chillingly, it looks like we are already some way down that road. To avoid that future we have to create a totally different economic system, one that does not run on fossil fuels, demand endless growth, or concentrate power in the hands of the 1 percent. It is a future based on community and humanity, a future where we get rid of the broken system and replace it with something fairer. This book is full of inspiring quotes and goose pimple inducing paragraphs that leave you feeling simultaneously hopeful, excited and a tiny bit overwhelmed. But the choice is fairly clear: ‘In the hot and stormy future we have already made inevitable through our past emissions, an unshakeable belief in the equal rights of all people and a capacity for deep compassion will be the only things standing between civilization and barbarism.’

See you in the streets.

Written by Kim Bryan first published at Red Pepper

West Hendon Estate Direct Action: First Small Victory

On Saturday 13 September, residents came out in force to assert their claim to be able to live in a peaceful, clean neighbourhood, without the noise and pollution impact of construction work on their doorstep. The neighbourhood was West Hendon estate on the bank of the Welsh Harp nature reserve. The contractor was Barratts Homes, determined to extend its real estate with prior permission of Barnet Council and with all the nods and winks that came before that.

Brent and Barnet Greens have been active on the campaign to preserve the habitat of Welsh Harp for several years, against the threat from overdevelopment on both sides of the council boundary and were visible at this protest. Discussion of the impact of this latest development on current tenants in social housing came to the fore last summer at a public meeting hosted at Brent Council (Brent Unites against Welsh Harp overdevelopment). Unfortunately, despite the approval from Barnet, Brent did not mount a judicial review and it was unlikely residents would be able to afford to do so.

I arrived bright and early as residents were still amassing and got talking to Glynis Walker about the impact of the construction work on her mother’s life and health (both pictured below). I decided to turn it into a short interview. Please listen now:

I lent my megaphone to another resident who was driven around the estate to drum up a bit more people power. We began obstructing the main gate to the construction site, as dozens of contractors started to arrive. Our spirits were up as we sang, “Aint gonna do no work today”.  A couple of vehicles were mounted up against the hoarding at the critical entrance and banners and placards were mounted around.

Site managers came to speak to us and we entered into a conversation about the impact of their construction on the neighbours and the prospect of worse to come with the demolition of a tower block on the opposite side of the street, with residents still living a stone’s throw away. We conveyed our mission not to allow construction trucks into the site and the managers were turned back. Minutes later we were joined by police asking who was in charge. They entered into a diffuse conversation with our flat heirarchy, followed by a visit to the site office. They returned to announce that they “would allow” our presence there so long as we did not impede emergency vehicles.

Minutes later, came the highlight of the action – a concrete truck performed a U-turn mid-way up the road. The small crowd was jubillant and time to take a group picture.

Further actions are planned – please follow on facebook or @ourwesthendon #ourwesthendon

First published at Shahrar Ali's blog