The CWU conference held at the beanning of June. marked a shift to the left by the rank and file workers. growing insecurity of BT workers who are facing the uns or touc lolsouor. with the beginnings of falling profit rates.
In response, BT management is trying to subcontract nies. 50,000 jobs are potentiaily threatened with the moves towards rationaliThe Post Office is facing the beginnings of serious inroads of finance capital, in Stephen Byers (Trade and Industry secretary) announced when speaking at the CWU conference, that Royal Mail would be able to borrow casn tram money markets. This, combined commissioners to open competition to post over 50g ureaters wv.vw postd jobs.
There is now a serious eraily to break the strikes of Martin ustl wwiad.
The conference agreed to continue the fight against privatisation of the post, and to hold the Labour ment to account if it did this. The resolution was as follows: -*This Conference instructs the incoming National Executive Council that the threat of privatisation in full or in part of the Postal Industry remains a real one. Conference therefore re-iterates its policy to oppose priindustry "Conference further agrees Politely ignored: Byers Labour govemment impleStanley (postal industry regulator) caused uproar on the conference floor when on then all support for the Labour Party, financial and private companies would be moral, will be wihdrawn brought in to deliver the forthwith."
This went to a card vote post.
If the postal regulators do with 148,356 votes for the not oull back. this could ead resolution and 107,178 against. The 1,400 deleto a major showdown between the postal section gates also voted overwheimof the CWU and the employ- ngy against a rise in the ers. po tical lew. which would Leading official John have raised more than Keggle narrowty avoided a E200,000 for the Labour , over a deal Anicn dave dosal worers n Election - a further reflection of the growing anger within £38 increase in their basic weekly wages, accomapnied govemment policies.
As Pete Boswell branch secretary of Oxford branch increase would effectively endorse the 75p a week rise in pensions and £1000 a year tuition fees.
General Secretary Derek Hodgson and the CWU's leadership had recommended a lew increase, and the decisive no vote followed the speech by Stephen Byers, which had been received politely.
Hodgson started to rant. "You gave him a round of applause, and the minute he turns his back you say you don't believe him!"
The CWU was the first increase the levy and the swi weh dicoi Delegates also rapped the his action against a branch, which had backed Ken Livingstone's campaign for London mayor and the London Socia st Alllance. Northy/North west said to the rules, not the general treasurer 'Milbank tendency' to dump its plans to neutralise the influence of unions and ordiparty. NEC member Dorothy umett condemned the ment and sald that the union would not stand for any watering down of union influence in the party".
• There was also militancy among telecom members. UPSL, a Girobank subsidiary Unisys is proposing to bring in performance related pay. Grace Mitchell (NEC member) threatened strike action Telecom members also voted to oppose performance related pay within Bil The Conference overwhcining rejected the use of selfthe executive were censured for agreeing to conduct trials of the scheme without consulting the union's member.
A resolution was unanimously passed rejecting payment by cerrormance Branches on the telecom side of the union understand how management are trying to bring in performance and want nothing to do with it. dents, not the SWF; wanted to ensure that in going weren't just building support for one or other organisation Weyman Bennett Tottenham was the LSA cancandidate he must be accountabie to the LSA. not the SWP Anything else will hamper our growth.
Common project It should not be a matter of hiding one's politics but of ball inis makes pre SP.s position on the long-term creation of a new mass party of toe working class hollow at times They rightly attack the SWP for failing to develop a strategy that goes beyond seeing themselves as the "party". But at every practical step they balk at any move that centrate on building themselves as their first objective. to develop, if we are to move new mass party, an objective which the ISG shares with the organic development of the LSA to continue. in that way the stance or the SWP, for all its faults, for overview, tively in the direction of the paper positions taken by the
Some Chinese are roelcome, apparenily, but nor others (Guardian May 17). (right) Jack Straw on an excursion to meet black people in Brick Lane Outlook Soon after the horrendous deaths of an agonising end in a scaled lorry from the conuncal, ovo pcopic marcaca in London to demand rights for asy.
Many more have attended a series of local meetings up and down the backlash from media and politiIt as bara to smagine grcater hypocrisy than that of the politiclans who shed crocodile tears for the 58 victims of the recent tragedy, while proceeding to call for tighter straw said the coisode showa be a warning" to any other potential It is precisely the existence of these brutal, racist laws which has created the booming human traffic, offering vast profits promise to smuggle desperate people through illegally.
With the issue now constantly in the headlines as Labour and the Tories each strive to seem more local campaigns are developing in some areas and existing ones being regenerated in others.
All this is vital, because what we the right to asylum since the eneva convention was agreed it Home Secretary Jack Straw has gone so far as explicitly to pronose at the EU Interior and Justice Ministers meeting in Lisbon caritself should go, attempting to cloak his reactionary stance in the parnetic drafted before mass air travel and was therefore not relevant today. The reality is of course more sinisDavid Since Social In a world in which the free movement of capital is seen as sacred, the free movement of labour is something different entirely. Human beings, according to the to more when this is in the interests of prolits so alongside the immigration clamp-down, bosses world for people with skills which are in short supply, or for which capital feels it is paying coo much. These skilled workers res out to conic over here and shore up company profIn reality most people who leave their country of origin flee to other poor countries -that is where the greatest cither a short or long term basis.
Those places already BE PUYCE Bank and the IMF somehow manage to find resources to deal with what may be a sudden influx of people fleeing war or natural disasIf these refugees receive any financial or material support from international agencies at all, it only for the brief time that the media is present and is far from sufficient to cover what is spent - let alone what is needed. But you would never know any of this from what the Western media say.
This situation has been further exacerbated by tougher immigra. tion restrictions imposed by wealthy nations. The crackdown in Fortress Burope is mirrored by higher barriers in the United State, In February this year, junior Home Office Minister Barbara Roche was party to a scandalous development Lome which African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACPs) were bribed into signing an agreement which will force them into accepting "stateless persons, anyone deemed to have entered the European Union illegally.
Ostensibly the convention centred on the signing of an £8.S billion trade agreement between the Buropcan Union and the ACPs - but clauses had been smuggled into the text without consultation with tac ACPs who felt they had no choice the widespread problems of SUA but to agree to it.
None of this had been debated in the European Parliament or in any of the national states. Nor has it been debated since These developments highlight the importance of campaigning on these issues on an such as the September conference on Barbed Wire Europe called by the Close Campsfield campaign (see page 6) are so important.
To fight Straw's challenge to the Geneva convention, we must recognise that it is a part of a broader onslaught.
Other issucs raised. We need to fight against the outrageous place such as the voucher system which keep asvlum seekers penniless and dependent, and the government's dereloping plans to dis. perse taem around the country We need to support the existing campaigns against action when plans come through -as is very likely - to open new ones or expand existing centres.
The UK's Immigration Service has announced plans to speed un the deportation of asylum scekers impose a brutal penalty on after their applications are rejected. It aims to remove nearly 60.000 people a year by 2004, compared to 12,000 this year. total of deportations is expected to rise to 30,000 between 2001 and 2002, and to swo tae sonowing ycar, tach to 57,000 by 2004.
key part of the new plan change would see more detention centres built converted There currently around 1,000 detention spaces in the UK for asylum seekers but officials are proposing that 4,000 be We of course reject the fallacious distinction made by the Home Office between detention centres like and so-called Oakington in Cambridgeshire.
All those who are held in centres. whatever their tric, are actainco under the 1971 Immigration Act and have the same lack of rights.
On all these issues and more the mobilisations of the past few weeks need to be developed and extended as a matter of urgency.