WE DO NEED EDUCATION - Accredited reps help build organised workplaces

This is taken from CLOCKING OFF newsletter of the Yorkshire and Humberside TUC

If you’re unsure about becoming a union rep than it may help to know that TUC Education provides training for more than 57,000 workplace, health and safety and learning representatives each year. It’s legally recognised that reps need paid release for union training, and you can be assured of a warm welcome on accredited courses that will equip you with the skills to represent your fellow workplace members.

The Health and Safety Stage 1 Certificate is a 12-day course that provides a thorough grounding in health and safety issues and gives new reps from a multitude of workplaces an opportunity to discuss issues around health and safety at work.

Elected CWU rep Colin Coxey, who has worked at the Royal Mail for 17 years, completed the course earlier this year. Having done very little training since leaving school he admits, “It can be intimidating coming back into the classroom. You find though that others are in the same boat and that the tutors themselves were once students on the courses and can identify with your experiences.” 

In addition says fellow student, Paul Grant, an elected RMT safety rep at Northern Rail, “you quickly learn that other reps have the same issues and you soon get to know, and share ideas, with each other through the group exercises that form such a big part of the course.”

Both men agreed that the facilities were first-class at the Faculty of Trade Union Studies, which forms part of the Horsforth site at Leeds City College. The latest I.T facilities have helped give Paul the “skills to type and save letters, whilst I can now follow a web trail to find information that I can pass on to members and use in meetings with management.”

The latter are now taking place more regularly after the knowledge learnt on the courses’ mock workplace inspections were utilised back at Paul’s workplace as he pushes to make sure management create a safe workplace. He’s especially keen to get the heating system fixed in the staff locker room and canteen, but is also finding that “now I’ve done the course members are raising other issues that concern them. I know to keep them informed as I try to progress matters.”

Meantime, says Colin “discovering my legal rights as a rep has led to a safety committee being established with reps from different shifts all involved.” Good news, therefore, not only for the 40 drivers he represents at the Royal Mail’s Distribution Centre in Normanton, but all 250 who work there.

“I am glad that Paul and Colin have found the course useful. Twelve days, in which they get to know their role in the workplace, and develop the skills to effectively carry it out, is just a starter,” says tutor Paul Wyatt, a former coachbuilder for two decades who is now curriculum area manager for the trade union studies department at Leeds.

For more details on the courses – held in Leeds, Bradford, Castleford, Sheffield, Northern College Barnsley, Hull - ring 0113 242 9296 or email eyorkshire@tuc.org.uk

See also www.unionlearn.org.uk/extraUL/Education/TUEDbrochures/Yorks.pdf

OSBORNE UNDER ATTACK BY ECONOMIST WHO PREDICTED THE CRISIS

OSBORNE UNDER ATTACK BY ECONOMIST WHO PREDICTED THE CRISIS

An economist who predicted the financial crisis used her speech at the Yorkshire and Humber TUC AGM to attack Chancellor George Osborne for failing to learn the lessons of history.

Ann Pettifor, who led the Jubilee 2000 campaign aimed at cancelling approximately $100 billion of debts of 42 of the poorest nations, also unveiled figures showing that when government’s cut spending, debt rises, thus destroying the basis for the coalition government’s current austerity drive that is hitting so many sections of society.

As Director of Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME), Pettifor is happy to defend the political legacy of John Maynard Keynes, whose policies did much to revive the world economy in the 1930s and after the Second World War. She condemns economists who fail to see that in addition to arguing for governments to borrow and spend money to boost economic activity that Keynes “urged the need to properly regulate the financial monetary system.”

It was this failure, by governments worldwide, to do so that led Pettifor to write her book The Coming First World Debt Crisis in 2006 that showed clearly the unsustainable structure and dynamics of the global debt-based financial systems, how Third World countries were already enslaved by it and how, unless there was swift and decisive action, developed economies would be next. As we now know, Pettifor was right.

Which surely should be enough to get George Osborne to read her paper, co-written with Professor Victoria Chick, titled The Economic Consequences of Mr Osborne. Utilising statistics from the Office of National Statistics this shows, outside the two World Wars, when much of what was produced was unproductive, that when government’s spend the debt and government deficits fall. Conversely when governments spend less the debt and deficit rises.

She accuses the government of deliberately confusing the public by “pretending the economy should be run like a private household, such that individuals cut back on their spending when in debt. We have a nationalised Bank of England that can create money and Osborne did that recently when he creatively eased £50 billion into the economy, which incidentally also proved that we are not at the mercy of capital markets or foreign bankers.”

Pettifor wants to see “the deficit cut by increasing investment in sound projects such as public transport, schools and the NHS” and she believes that even the senior executives of some of Britain’s biggest companies – especially in construction - are coming round to her way of thinking. Thousands of building workers sitting idly on the unemployment register would clearly also agree.

She condemns the government for focusing on public debt, which at 62% of Gross Domestic Product is a quarter of what it was at the end of the Second World War, and ignoring “the huge volume of private debt at 500%, composed of financial, household and corporate debt and which, as it will never be re-paid, will have to be written down and needs doing so in an orderly fashion through the Financial Services Authority.”

With bad debts on their balance sheets Pettifor believes the banks “are in no position to lend money.” As a result “the restructuring needed under quantitative easing must include the creation of a public investment bank.” The question now is, are you listening George Osborne or will you continue to send Britain headlong into another economic crisis? 

For more information and to download the Economic Consequences of Mr Osborne go to:- http://www.primeeconomics.org/

Bury playwright fights deportation through play

A Bury playwright facing deportation to Cameroon has used her latest play to highlight human rights abuses in the Central African state. On Friday 20 April Down with the Dictator will be performed for the first time in the north, a day when Lydia Besong and her husband Bernard Batey will also have their appeal hearing at the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal in Manchester.

Cast for the play

The pair fled Cameroon late on 17 December 2006 and after journeying to Britain have been fighting a battle ever since not to be returned. As members of the Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC) they had been peacefully agitating for independence for southern Cameroon. They allege that as a result they were arrested, imprisoned and tortured by prison guards, including one who is accused of raping Lydia.

However when they presented their evidence to the Border and Immigration Agency (now UKBA) they were refused asylum. According to Kath Grant, press officer for Manchester-based human rights organisation RAPAR: “this was because of a Catch 22 situation in which it was said their documents couldn’t be trusted because of the serious levels of political corruption in Cameroon and yet it was also safe to be returned there!”

It is now hoped that “new information” will help Lydia and Bernard to convince the UKBA of their case. They have some well-known names supporting their application including author Michael Morpurgo, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC and actress Juliet Stevenson.

Since 1982, power in Cameroon has rested firmly in the authoritarian grip of President Paul Biya, whose Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement was the only legal political party until 1990. The main opposition party since then, the Social Democratic Front has claimed that state organised voter intimidation prevented its leader John Fru Ndi from winning the 1992 presidential election.

The US-based non-governmental organisation ranks Cameroon as “not free” in terms of civil liberties and political right and last year Amnesty International reported ‘the government continued to curtail the SCNC activities, a non-violent secessionist group, whose members faced arrest and imprisonment.” Other political and civil society groups were also subject to “official sanction.” After altering the constitution limiting his term of office, Biya was again re-elected in an election, in which reporters from foreign newspapers queried the high turnout officially recorded.

Katherine Rogers from Community Arts North West, which along with dance company Afrocats is staging the play, said “it uses Lydia’s own experience and knowledge to lift the lid on politics in Cameroon, a country which most people here know little about. After its first showing in Bristol the audience remarked about how well acted it was. It’s hard hitting and realistic.”

Down with the Dictator is on at Bury Met on 20 April with further performances at Zion Arts Centre and Holy Innocent’s Church, Fallowfield on April 28 and May 5 respectively. £5 entry/£3 concessions.

SUPPORTERS WILL ALSO HOLD A VIGIL OUTSIDE TRIBUNAL OFFICES – 9.30am Friday, April 20^th, Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, Moseley Street, Manchester 

Agrochemical companies found guilty

The independent Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) that examines community complaints of human rights abuses has recently examined the operations of the six biggest Agrochemical companies in the world.

Syngenta, Bayer, Monsanto, Dow, DuPont and BASF have a combined 72% share of the global pesticide market worth $44 billion in 2009. In addition Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta control 53% of the global seed market worth $27.4 billion, enabling them to control the green economy.

With the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimating that 355,000 people (split roughly 2/3rds in developing countries and 1/3^rd in developed) die each year from poisoning from exposure to pesticides the PPT, which was established back in 1979, provided an opportunity for hundreds of peasant farmers, agricultural workers and activists to meet in Bangalore in early December for a conference organised by PAN. (Pesticides Action Network)

It was an appropriate time to meet, as it was the 37^th anniversary of the 1984 Bhopal tragedy in India, in which the release of 40,000 tonnes of lethal gas instantly killed 8,000 people and left many thousands to suffer – and die – in the future. The company responsible, Union Carbine Corporation, was taken over in 2000 by Dow Chemical, one of the main sponsors of the London Olympic Games. The $470 million in compensation agreed as a payout to victims and/or their families represents – at best – a few pounds for each and there’s no chance of any of the senior people responsible for this crime ever doing any time in prison. Mind you, just to make sure, that campaigning activists would find it doubly difficult to get justice it has, in February 2012, been revealed by Wikileaks that Dow employed US-based security think-tank Stratfor to spy on them.

Endosulfan doesn’t kill people quite so quickly, but the insecticidal organochlorine pesticide produced by Bayer and sprayed on crops such as cashews, tea, coffee and cottons has been shown to lead to severe suffering by many communities unfortunate enough to live near the plantations that provide work for them. In Kasargod, Kerala, India spraying between 1976 and 2002 officially killed 500 people, and unofficially eight times as many. Endosulfan is now banned in Kerala, but allowed in other districts of India. As is also the case in China, where the authorities have ignored that 80 countries have now banned the product. So Bayer, who must be aware that their product kills people, continue to supply it to countries where governments must know it will kill their citizens. Profits rule at the expense of ordinary people’s welfare.

Here in Britain, the dangers of organophosphate (OP) sheep dip has been well documented by campaigners such as Brenda Sutcliffe – see article on archive site – who was delighted that her well-researched paper: Cause and effect – was submitted to the Bangalore conference.

Sutcliffe, who suffered, along with members of her family, when forced by government officials to use OP sheep dip in 1992 has estimated that as many as 2,000 shepherds have died as a result of using it – or similar products – in the last two decades. The result though has been a wall of indifference at all levels, including research institutions, government bodies and political parties and MPs, for Brenda and her supporters, who have also demonstrated that OP’s are likely to have been responsible for the many thousands of soldiers made ill by the first Gulf War.

The PPT verdict was that the six companies were ‘responsible for gross, widespread and systematic violations of the right to life, economic, social and cultural rights, as well as of civil and political rights, and women and children rights.’

As all six are based the US, Switzerland and Germany the PPT denounced these three states for failing to regulate, monitor and discipline them and criticised ‘the double standard approach’ in which banned products at home are allowed to be produced for use overseas, especially in the developing world.

States allowing the use of products on their land were criticised for not doing sufficient to protect human rights and bodies such as WHO and the Independent Labour Organisation were blamed for not recognising the urgent need for regulation and redress.

The Tribunal also made a series of recommendations including the establishment of an appropriate mechanism to investigate human rights abuses by major companies, national governments and states not to grant immunity to agrichemical companies from criminal liability and to amend the Rome Statute to include crimes against the environment. Sadly - as we witness a worldwide capitalist drive to push down wages and welfare benefits – none of this seems likely in the near future. But fair play to everyone involved.

1912 – the miners’ strike and Barnsley football club

1912 – the miners’ strike and Barnsley football club

In 1912 Barnsley won the FA Cup for the only time in their history. En route they beat the holders Bradford City 3-2 after a third replay in the quarter-final. The game was held at Bramall Lane, Sheffield and took place smack bang in the middle of the Miners’ strike that year. The following account, of how strikers got to the match, is taken from the Barnsley Independent of March 21^st 1912. Hopefully one or two on this list might like it, which is taken from a book I co-authored with the club historian David Wood a few years ago about the 1910-12 team.  Lifting the Cup – the story of battling Barnsley 1910-12.

Snow, slush, together with rain many times repeated were not sufficient to dampen the enthusiasm of hundreds of football fans who tramped over from the Barnsley district for sheer necessity propelled the use of ‘Shank’s mare’ as owing to the coal war the train service is almost hopelessly disorganised and from the same cause the bulk of these enthusiasts had not money with which to pay for a train service.

Soon after nine o’clock little groups of independent representatives of little groups of men and youths were to be found at Wentworth station plodding citywards. They had suffered an hours snowstorm, which had closed the roads and countryside in white, and looked wretched but resolute.

Gradually the struggling procession increased, the enthusiasts coming along in ones, twos and threes and occasional in dozens. But they followed each other in quick procession, and after several hours added animation to the sloppy turnpike which otherwise would have been almost deserted. Many of the travellers, a number of the them ‘pitlads’ had neither overcoat or ‘mack’, they made no mystery of the fact they were already wet through and accordingly it was anything but a triumphal procession - but to turn back? They scorned the suggestion. When opportunity offered some of the more active spirits tried to rouse the spirits by singing for ‘good old Bairnsla!’ But for the most part they plodded and plodded with the skies seeming to frown all the while, mentally counting for the last milestone which would bring them into the great city. All their energy was concentrated on ‘getting there’ since a good proportion of them were making their first acquaintance with the road. One group lightened the monotony of the journey with a noisy clatter of rattles, whilst other men got inspiration from a melancholy corner and band bells.

Trampers from Bradford.

One party were fortunate in commandeering the goodwill of the drivers of a big brewery motor and perched on the top of numerous 36-gallon casks they made great sport of their foot sore comrades who tried to keep a brave heart in face of adversity. A number of the lucky passengers hailed from Bradford. As a matter of fact, many supporters from the woollen town tramped all the way, but half of the journey was done on the Wednesday. The Barnsley enthusiasts came from places as widely apart as Hemsworth, Ryhill, Staincross, Dodworth, Barnsley, Worsbro’, Hoyland and Wombwell.

Several hundred colliers in clogs must have passed me on the road during the four hours. Often they looked limp and stiff, and suggested a problem of ‘what about the return journey?’

There is not the least room for doubt that many of the enthusiasts had not more than the price of admission to the ground.

The Last Copper

This was strongly borne out by the fact that they were not able to avail themselves of the boon of a penny train ride when the outskirts of the city was reached. Many who had intended to make the trip abandoned it at the last minute owing to the weather.

A singular fact is that many of the trampers went by strange round about routes to get to the city. Some turned off at Harley and went via Rotherham; others for on to the Wortley road and travelled via Greneside and Wadsley Bridge, and more strange of all, at Ecclesfield not a few left the straight route to the city and went three miles out of their way through Southey and into the city via Owlerton.

A bloody good read THE BIG MEETING – A history of the Durham Miners’ Gala

A bloody good read

THE BIG MEETING – A history of the Durham Miners’ Gala

By Dave Temple

Former miner Dave Temple has done a fine job in bringing to life the spirit of the Durham Miners’ Gala, which was first organised in 1871.

Held on the second Saturday in July, last year’s (the 127^th) brought 130,000 people onto the cobbled streets of the historic City. Durham’s magnificent castle and cathedral always provides the perfect background for an impressive display of banners, that are accompanied by dozens of brass bands as marchers make their way to the Racecourse grounds next to River Wear to listen to speeches from distinguished trade union and labour movement figures.

Later, there’s a chance to relax, enjoy a few beers, have a chat with old friends and take a trip on the showground attractions. If you’ve never been before then you really have missed a treat.

Temple has tapped into the atmosphere and the sense of belonging felt by the many hundreds of thousands who have over the years taken part in the Gala. The first pioneers were after ‘a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work’ and over the years the miners had to fight tooth and nail with their employers and government’s of all political persuasions to get it. Being collectively organised was the key, and the struggle to achieve this was mirrored by the Gala speakers of the day, many of whom Temple does brilliantly to bring alive.

Nationalisation, once seen as providing permanent employment and improved pay and working conditions, may have been welcomed in 1947 but few were happy that the hated coal owners got massive payouts - totalling £165 million with the royalty owners getting a further £78 million - for handing over mines that lacked up-to-date technology. The burden of debt thus inherited by the NCB would be a drain on its resources for generations. Temple is thus left to chart the pit closures of the post war years - which peaked under Labour in the 1960s - that impacted harshly on Gala attendances.

Speaking at the 1980 Gala, Arthur Scargill warned that closure numbers were going to get even worse, but not even he realised by how much! For having successfully stood up to former Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath’s wage restraint policies, Margaret Thatcher’s Government was determined to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers and stockpiled coal and created a national police force before Ian McGregor, head of the National Coal Board, announced the decimation of mining communities across Britain.

All of which meant that the holding of the 1984 Gala was in the middle of a year long strike and for the first time it drew on the support of the wider trade union movement, who again marched in large numbers in 1992 when the Tories, under Michael Heseltine’s closure programme, provided the final nail in the coffin for an energy source that could still – with the development of clean coal technology – provide much of Britain’s energy needs. As such Durham no longer has any mines, but it still has a fighting trade union spirit and joining former miners at last year’s Gala were plenty of trade union members from different parts of the country.

Because as Unite general secretary Len McCluskie said from the speakers platform: ‘The Durham Miners’ Gala is the most important event in the whole of the labour movement and I salute the Durham Miners and their communities for continuing to give all of us so much inspiration.”

The Big Meeting is 244 pages long and is packed with photographs and illustrations.

It can be obtained through the Durham Miners’ Association at £17.50 soft back or £23.50 hard back. dmpress@aol.com

By Mark Metcalf. 

Football madness - four games in a day!

Friday April 6th and it's Groundhoppers day.

10.45am 

Eccleshill United 2 Dinnington 3 

 Eccleshill make it 1-1 from the penalty spot

GAME 2 at 13.45pm

Thackley 1 Long Eaton 1 

GAME THREE

At 16.45pm

Liversedge 0 Arnold Town 1

GAME FOUR

19.45pm

Brighouse Town 5 Barton Town Old Boys 1