Alliance Tyneside challenge
Byers beware!
Socialists in the North East are challenging Tony Blair’s lieutenant Stephen Byers in the coming General Election. The Tyneside Socialist Alliance have selected PETER BURNETT, secretary of Newcastle Trades Council, and International Socialist Group member to fight for the Industry Supremo’s North Tyneside seat.
Peter is also a well known anti-racist campaigner who recently organised a march of several hundred through the streets of Newcastle for asylum rights.
Explaining to Socialist Outlook why he was so keen to stand against Byers, Peter pointed out that many Labour voters in the North East were bitterly disillusioned by the performance of the Blair government.
"Instead of tackling the urgent problems in the region, new Labour has pursued the same free market policies that impoverished the region in the first place.
"By selecting me, the Socialist Alliance has given me the opportunity to fight against Byers, who has been absolutely key in promoting these capitalist strategies."
In North Tyneside the key issues will be jobs, quality of life and the environment. All have worsened in 4 years of a Labour government.
Income per head in the North East is 23% below the national average, with results that can be seen in the wasteland of housing estates, boarded up property and broken pavements in derelict shopping centres.
The Socialist Alliance will focus on the disasters of Byers’ ‘regional policy’, which involves scandalously handing out thousands of millions of pounds to big companies while keeping wages low, work flexible and the anti-union laws in place to "encourage inward investment".
"Grants of more £50 million were given to Siemens, roads were laid, and a new Metro station built to encourage the German giant to stay," says Peter.
"But 12 months after the Queen had opened their North Tyneside works Siemens had mothballed the site, with a loss of thousands of jobs across the region."
The Nissan scandal reveals the other side of the same coin.
"Byers gave the ailing Japanese multinational £40 million in a rescue package designed to keep the firm in the area. The price however was a new work regime with productivity increases of 30%. The result – exhausted and stressed out workers and the break-up of families."
Moreover the arrogant decision of Nissan to pay its suppliers in devalued Euro has forced contractors across the region to shed workers to compete with European firms.
In the same week that the press were praising the rescue over 100 jobs were lost on trading estates.
Peter also pointed out that in a new White paper on Regional Regeneration, Byers offers more of the same:
"Free market, social partnership and hot air. Tax Free zones are promised and an increase in the budget of the development agency which will fund various clusters of firms which unite bosses trade union bureaucrats and Labour councils in endless talk of a "sunrise revolution" and a new cultural renaissance".
Tyneside Socialist Alliance is internationalist, Peter argues. "We will expose the fraud of ‘ethical foreign policy’, in which Byers is deeply implicated. He is currently considering whether to provide $200 million in support for Balfour Beatty, the firm responsible for the Hatfield Rail crash, to build the Ilisu dam in Turkish Kurdistan."
The dam breaks all the guidelines of the World Commission on Dams. It will affect 78,000 people, displace thousands, and ruin archaeological heritage sites.
It threatens Turkey’s relations with countries downstream such as Syria, increasing the possibility of water wars and the certainty of thousands more refugees.
All these issues raise a fundamental question which needs to be discussed by socialists in the North East.
"How is it that such right wing politicians as Blair and Byers come to dominate the politics of a region so overwhelmingly working class, with a history of poverty and unemployment, in which the bankruptcy of capitalism is so obvious revealed?"
The answer which unites today’s scandals with those of the past lies in the strength of the trade union bureaucracy, especially the GMB.
Union leaders are the king- makers in North East politics, subordinating the great strength of the working class to the rotten politics of right wing Labour.
"The Socialist Alliance will be a voice for democracy in the Labour movement – a democratic alternative to secret deals between government multinationals union bosses."