To be just, their pensions should be the same and their holiday entitlements the same.

It will be good to have the tories in because they are the party of the payers, whereas labour are the party of the overclass – public sector workers. If there’s any class system in Britain anymore, this is it, and it’s labour that represent the privileged and the tories that represent the put upon.

Climate Change?

It is simply not possible for a few hundred Labour Party activists and a handful of left-wing MPs to render Labour a radical social democratic party with a real prospect of winning power in the absence of working class industrial and political identities that are widely understood by its members to stand in legitimate opposition to the interests of employers and their political representatives.

Such identities can be mobilised politically only if economic and cultural conditions are such that workers routinely view their class membership as key to realising their political aims. Historically, in countries like France, such identities emerged in the context of world wars and occupations that involved a widespread experience of common suffering strongly differentiated by class membership, and which discredited the claims of the ruling class to be solely able to defend and advance the national interest. In these conditions, parties such as the PCF took root and their class-based agitation found politically significant bases of support.

The experience in Britain was very different. Significant sections of the working class certainly developed strong traditions of militant oppositionalism in the workplace. But this very rarely translated into significant and sustained electoral support for political radicalism. In the context of the continued authority and legitimacy of bourgeois democracy and its related state institutions and ideologies, political radicalism was always a minority and marginal pursuit.

If ‘reclaiming’ the Labour Party to a non-existent tradition of radical social democracy in the midst of a very hostile environment is highly unlikely, the development of a mass political party that is explicitly and consistently anti-capitalist is almost unthinkable. The same historical circumstances and labourist political traditions that ensured the British working class were largely unwilling and unable to mount coherent political opposition to neoliberalism have also contributed to assigning revolutionary socialism a minor (if sometimes noble and interesting) place in British political history.

In short, the dissolution of British labourism in the face of neoliberalism and New Labour revisionism reflects the crisis of the left as it was and is – not the removal of ‘artificial’ barriers to a more radical form of ‘real’ class politics. There is no anti-capitalist political tradition of significance upon which the radical left today can build. As a consequence calls for a party based on class radicalism have been met, and will continue to be met, with a mixture of indifference, cynicism and incomprehension from the vast majority of workers.

Those who have bothered to read this far will not be surprised to hear that I have no solutions to offer. The organised left in Britain faces a bleak period ahead.

As in the 20th century, the prospects for socialism in the 21st century will depend largely on the collective experience of traumatic events that act to reveal both the deeply flawed nature of capitalism and the inability and unwillingness of the ruling classes to act in the service of our common humanity.

Brown can rot in whatever Calvinist Inferno he believes in. Or, the next best thing, spend a holiday in the smuggest, twee, over-rated, and ludicrously over-priced, reactionary Hell dimension just off the planet – Southwold.

Meanwhile, I see projections of current anti New Labour (Hey, what other “Labour” is there?) swing at the next election would leave only a “rump” of secure (really?) deadbeat self-regarding Labour MPs in …South Wales! Don’t hold your breath ~ times are a changing here too.

“WE have seen the future and it’s…Chris Bryant”

No wonder (Pope) Don Touhig is desperate to hang on to his expenses. No brown shoes for him at the rump’s future garden parties.

“Respect”, as they say in Tonypandy. Rarely.

Now that you can hardly find a pension scheme in the private sector, how much sympathy will there be for retaining public sector workers rights?

I’ll give you a clue. The number has a zero in it.’

Well, the unions have just agreed at Warwick to back Purnells draconinian welfare reforms which will see single parents pushed back to work, private companies harrassing claimants and disabled people facing benefit cuts and coercion.

with frinds and allies like that, who needs enemies!

One has to say there really are some very strange things happening in Uk politics, tbh, I am amazed and baffled, 10 years ago, surely they would have laughed at such propositions, or would they. One can note they in fact have never questioned the operation of the New Deal as a example. The unions have also not just stabbed the poor in the back, but the PCS and its workers who will see their jobs taken by the private sector.

Shades of the thirties, indeed

Why have they accepted it all, ffs its a neo-liberal dream. the unions will see wages driven down as a result, turkeys voting for Xmas?

its from the telegraph but there are various sourced. their is a link to the treasury records of the meeting.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1547173/Brown%27s-pension-grab-secret-is-revealed.html

“Gordon Brown was warned explicitly that he would cause the death of the final salary pension scheme and cost companies and individuals billions of pounds when he took the knife to the pension system in his first Budget.”

Yes, you are right that there is more to the story, longevity, stock markets, overtaxing provision over ‘x’amount by the major government.

But it is undeniable that the pension tax grab forced companies to close final salary schemes. Certainly forced them to close them to new employers.

Unions should have had him as soon as it became clear what it was doing to pensions.

Now that you can hardly find a pension scheme in the private sector, how much sympathy will there be for retaining public sector workers rights?

I’ll give you a clue. The number has a zero in it.

If you’re referring to the impact of the abolition of dividend tax credits then I am very confident you are wrong. Even the Tories’ former pensions adviser Stephen Yeo says it isn’t one of the major factors. Longevity, the 2000-2003 bear market and changes to accounting rules probably did the most damage to final salary schemes in the private sector. But ultimately it is the decision of those companies to close such schemes that led to the demise of DB (other companies have kept them open).

The Tories have openly stated their desire to reduce pension provision for public sector workers – they want to actively reduce benefits. I find this both wrong-headed – it’s exactly the sort of sharing of misery that socialists are usually accused of – and vindictive. The Tories still see electoral value in beating up public sector workers.

This is a clear dividing line for me, and just one of the reasons that I don’t buy the rubbish (from either Left or Right) that Labour are no better than the Tories.

RE the link with Labour. This year’s conference clearly showed only a narrow majority now who agree with this. However slowly, the tide is turning.

its very like it. And for very similar reasons.

The traditional supporters have been shat on.

The promises not fulfilled and the grievences unaddressed.

1931 : “The government faced the problems stemming from the impact of the Great Depression. On the one hand, international bankers insisted that strict budget limits be kept, on the other trade unions and, particularly, unemployed workers’ organizations carried on regular and massive protest actions, including a series of “hunger marches”.

People didn’t have enough money for food and a Labour government couldn’t do anything about. the money was spent. The USA refused to keep giving credit and Britain defaulted on its war debts.

“In the summer of 1931 it was gripped by a political and financial crisis as the value of the pound and its place on the Gold Standard came under threat over fears that the budget was unbalanced. During August 1931 the Cabinet struggled to produce budget amendments that were politically acceptable without causing mass resignations and a split in the party. The issue on which the split occurred was the vote of the cabinet to reduce benefit paid to unemployed people. On August 24, 1931 the government formally resigned.”

Or, more simply, they ran out of money.

They ran out of borrowing.

They ran out of gold.

And Tom P: how could a Tory attack on pensions be any worse than the total disaster the Labour government has made of pensions, for short term tax receipts? everyone is affected.

You must be aware of the fury of the CWU that the ‘Gov’ refuses to do anything about the pension black hole or changes to EXISTING and new workers rights.”its a Royal Mail matter”

Bollocks it is. Brown owns the mail. He could intervene whenever he likes. but he won’t.

Strike action last year led to nothing. Royal Mail completely beat the union, who now want to try negotiations again, because they know that there is no appetite for another failed strike.

All observed by Brown who wants the management of Royal to win, so reducing the pension commitments, allowing them to sell off Royal Mail.

Probably for a pound to TNT. Or is my information from the Union incorrect?

Yet CWU still gives funds to….

The Labour party??

“why don’t people join unions anymore?”

I wonder.