Workers' Weekly Internet Edition Year 2014 Volume 44 Number 31


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More than 1,000 rallied in Westminster on Saturday, October 11, as part of a Europe-wide protest against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The TTIP is designed to aid the free flow of finance capital, and ride roughshod over countries’ sovereignty and negate the public authority of those countries in favour of the rule of international finance capital.

Tens of thousands of people held mass rallies all over Europe on Saturday against TTIP and its aims. Talks on TTIP started last February and have been mostly held behind closed doors. The government of Britain is backing this neo-liberal deal, claiming it could add billions to the economy by reducing regulations and other barriers to trade. In reality, it is a neo-liberal arrangement for the unfettered dictate of the monopolies. Not least, it would open up public services, including schools and hospitals, to privatisation under the direction of the health monopolies, particularly those of the United States, under the guise of “harmonisation” of regulations. In particular, it would aim to make irreversible this privatisation, which is not to say that the state would be by-passed. In fact, the role of the state as the agent of the monopolies would be enhanced by means of TTIP.

Tens of thousands of people held mass rallies all over Europe Under TTIP, the monopolies would be empowered by means of the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) to sue publicly-owned bodies if they thought there was an “indirect expropriation” of future profits. Explaining how this could happen, technology writer Glyn Moody told RT (Russia Today) that such companies with a stake in the NHS could sue the government. “This clause would kick in and the companies that have taken these parts of the NHS will say then: ‘Hang on, you’re taking our future profits. We are going to sue you for billions of euro,’”he said. “That is exactly what will happen with the NHS,” Moody said. “So basically privatisation will be locked in. You couldn`t reverse it or rather you could reverse it, but you’d end up paying billions or possibly tens of billions of euro if you did so.”

The point is that ISDS disputes are adjudicated by ad hoc arbitration panels which operate outside and above the judicial system of the host countries. The arbitration panels are made up from a small group of commercial lawyers, but their decisions are given the force of law through the international treaties that create them.

The effect of empowering investor protection tribunals is to weaken the ability of the public authority at any level to impose restrictions on the activities of investors within its jurisdiction. They have been used under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and in bilateral investment agreements. Investor protection agreements have been a key element in the neo-liberal
globalisation of trade since the 1980s. They are part of the neo-liberal offensive aimed at depriving people of having any say about important issues so that international monopolies can operate freely throughout the world as they see fit.

Protests against TTIP on October 11 took place in 22 countries across Europe – marches, rallies and other public events – in over 1,000 locations in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic and Scandinavian countries.

According to the international organisation ATTAC, the decentralised Day of Actions united an unprecedented number of civil society groups and individuals, social movements, trade unions and rights defenders.

The main aim of the wave of protests is to put an end to the negotiations on three major trade agreements: the EU-US deal (TTIP), the EU-Canada deal (the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA) and the trade in services deal (TiSA).

In London, British historian and investigative journalist Andy Worthington told RT’s Harry Fear that people have reasons not to trust politicians who have been reassuring them since the 1980s, yet “handing over more and more power to corporations”.

The leaders of Canada and the EU signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) this September, which is yet to be finalised. It will remove over 99 percent of tariffs between the two economies by 2016, reported RT.

The Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) is planned to liberalise the trade of services such as banking and transport between 23 parties, initiated by the US. Its draft version was released this June by WikiLeaks, which was followed by rising criticism.

Trade unions also have warned that the TTIP deal would make privatisation of services irreversible if it allowed corporations to make decisions over public policy makers or the general public. Speaking at the TUC in Liverpool on September 10, Unite Assistant General Secretary Gail Cartmail urged Congress delegates to oppose TTIP and rally support amongst working people to demand that David Cameron keep Britain’s health services out of the TTIP agreement. “It is clear this government thought they could do this deal in secret – a deal that would mean the irreversible sell-off of our NHS to America,”Cartmail said. “Wall Street financiers like Blackrock and Invesco are already heavily invested in the NHS – over 70 percent of new contracts are now in private hands. Over £11 billion of our money in the hands of casino capitalists,”she added.

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For Your Information

For the information of our readers, we reproduce below Composite Motion 3 on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) which was passed unanimously:

Congress 2014 Composite resolution – Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)

Congress is extremely concerned about the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade treaty, a wide-ranging trade deal giving unprecedented power and influence to transnational corporations that would become the benchmark for all future trade agreements, currently being negotiated between the EU and the USA and recognises the threat posed. While there may be economic benefits in reducing trade tariffs and reviewing regulation for certain industrial sectors, Congress believes that the primary purpose of TTIP is to extend corporate investor rights.

A key element of the TTIP is the introduction of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause, which would act as a tribunal/arbitration. The ISDS could see millions of pounds paid out to those big private sector corporations should NHS services be brought back into the public sector in the future.

As with all trade agreements, TTIP is being negotiated mainly in secret. The current negotiations lack transparency and proper democratic oversight.

TTIP would:

a) allow corporations to sue sovereign states, elected governments and other authorities legislating in the public interest where this curtails their ability to maximise their profits, by recourse to an Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism;

b) threaten the future of our NHS and other key public services;

c) risk job losses, despite unsubstantiated claims to the contrary;

d) potentially undermine labour standards, pay, conditions and trade union rights as the US refuses to ratify core ILO conventions and operates anti-union “right to work” policies in half of its states;

e) reverse years of European progress on environmental standards, food safety and control of dangerous chemicals, given US refusal to accept stricter EU regulation of substances long banned in the EU; and

f) deprive EU member states of billions of pounds in lost tariff revenue.

Key concerns are:

i) the threat to our National Health Service and sections of the public sector that may be opened up to the private sector leaving a future Labour government with no legal right to take back into public ownership (including previously publicly owned transport and utilities) and that could lead to a far more widespread fragmentation of NHS services, putting them into the hands of big private sector corporations;

ii) the quasi-judicial process on the Investor-State Dispute Settlement under which multinational corporations may sue, in secret courts, nation states whose laws or actions are deemed incompatible with free trade;

iii) opening up European markets to US Frankenstein foods – hormone enriched beef, chlorinated poultry and genetically modified cereals and salmon;

iv) the mutual recognition of regulatory standards which will lead to a race to the bottom and the creation of a Transatlantic Regulatory Council which will give privileged access to multinational corporations; and

v) the impact on creators’ intellectual property rights.

Congress notes that free trade agreements rarely, if ever, benefit working people and are pushed by corporations who use them as a means to maximise profits and further their own interests.

The idea of transatlantic trade may well be supported by those that would profit from it, but for our health services based on values, principles and sustainability it could be a financial disaster, adding another nail in the NHS coffin. The TUC and a number of other organisations have been campaigning to exempt the NHS from the negotiations and Congress now calls on the General Council to keep the pressure on and raise the profile of the calamitous affects the TTIP could have on the NHS.

Congress remains unconvinced by official claims of job creation arising out of TTIP, and considers that the dangers to public services, workers’ rights and environmental standards outweigh any potential benefits. Congress remains unconvinced about the likelihood of a binding labour rights chapter based on ILO Core Conventions.

Congress has similar concerns over current negotiations for the proposed Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) and the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA).

Congress believes that on the current path we will be presented with a fait accompli in the form of an inadequate, unacceptable agreement that we have had no chance of influencing or amending and where time will make it difficult to mobilise opposition.

Congress resolves that the TUC should:

1) oppose Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanisms and a ratchet clause;

2) call for the exclusion of all public services, including education and health, public procurement, public utilities and public transport (whether in public or private ownership) from the negotiations;

3) demand no levelling down in relation to consumer, worker or environmental protection;

4) insist on genuine consultation with civil society organisations, including trade unions;

5) work with like-minded organisations, including the ETUC, in opposing all detrimental aspects of TTIP and in campaigning for alternative EU trade and investment policies; and

6) welcome the decision of the EU Foreign Affairs Council on Trade to exclude the audio-visual sector from the initial TTIP agenda, and lobby the UK government to oppose its future inclusion, in order to preserve the European Cultural Exception and the unique national nature of arts and entertainment activity within Europe.

Congress therefore resolves that the trade union movement should now call for the TTIP negotiations to be halted and adopt a clear position of outright opposition to TTIP, and the other trade agreements currently being negotiated, whilst continuing to monitor progress and press for improvements to promote decent jobs and growth and safeguard labour, consumer, environmental and health and safety standards through lobbying, campaigning and negotiating, in alliance with the ETUC and AFLCIO.

Congress agrees that all pending and future trade agreements entered into by the EU should be subject to a vigorous and transparent regime of scrutiny and consultation, ensuring that they are of benefit and acceptable to the millions of people affected by their content, in all countries covered by the agreement.

Destabilisation – US Weapon in Energy War

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya *, Russia Today OpEd, October 8, 2014

The US is doing its best to estrange the EU from Russia to get the upper hand in a free trade deal, and also, to manipulate European countries into buying America’s relatively more expensive natural gas.

TTIP and Ukraine

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a Euro-Atlantic free trade agreement that is the subject of ongoing negotiations between the US and the EU. The deadline for finalising the TTIP free trade agreement is in 2015. Its goal is to create what is referred to as the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA) and to cement the European Union with the United States as one supranational trading bloc.

These trade negations have been passing under the public’s radar, because they have been taking place very discreetly behind closed doors. The very TTIP’s name is designed to conceal, and was selected by policy and trade mandarins, because of their fears a public backlash could erupt against the negotiations, as it did in the case of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) talks in 2001. Like the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which was signed in Ottawa between Canada and the EU on September 26, wordsmiths calculatingly picked the name TTIP to try to hide the fact that it is a free trade agreement.

Washington is doing its best to disrupt trade ties between its EU partners and the Russian Federation in order to get greater leverage in the TTIP negotiations. Its strategy is to economically weaken its European partners by getting them to cut ties with Moscow through anti-Russia sanctions that will directly hurt their economies too. Washington calculates that this will force a weakened EU to maximise the economic concessions to the US in the TTIP talks.

Geopolitically, this is a story about Euro-Atlantic (read Euro-US) integration versus Eurasian (read Euro-Asian) integration. It seeks to reduce Russian influence in the EU and any risks of the strengthening of trade ties between Russia and the EU by trying to marginalise the Russians in Europe. TTIP negotiations have intensified because the US wants to amalgamate the EU with North America, because it fears that countries like Germany could start considering a Eurasian alternative involving Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in the post-Soviet space.

The crisis in Ukraine precisely serves the US’s dual purpose to weaken both the EU and Russia. It seeks not only to expand NATO and encircle Russia, but also to damage EU-Russia ties. Ukraine is literally being exploited and used by the US to create a rift between Moscow and the EU and to portray Russia as a bogyman and threat to European security.

Petro-Politics: US LNG vs Gazprom

The US has also been fighting an energy war that involves controlling energy reserves, the pipelines and strategic corridors that energy is transported through. US involvement, commitments, and concerns in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Iraq, the Levant, the Persian Gulf, and Ukraine have all been part of this energy war.

Shale gas and hydraulic fracturing of gas is part of this equation too. Fracking is transforming the US, which has the fourth largest shale gas reserves in the world, into a natural gas exporter. Washington plans to begin exporting gas from North America in 2015 and 2016.

At the same time, the US has been using North American integration to strengthening its hold on Canadian energy resources. Canada is one of the largest producers of natural gas, largest possessors of proven oil reserves, largest producers of crude oil, and possesses the largest shale gas reserves, and, on the whole, one of the top energy producers in the world.

In the context of US energy exports, Washington wants to compete against and even sideline Russia in the natural gas market. For that reason the US has been lobbying the EU and Turkey to stop buying gas from Russia’s energy giant Gazprom and, instead, to begin importing it from the US. The objective of pushing Russia out of energy markets has been part of a long-term US strategy that has been heavily discussed in the Washington Beltway before the US even invaded Iraq in 2003.

American gas, however, is much more expensive than the Russian since it has to be fracked, liquefied, and transported at much higher costs. The American liquefied natural gas (LNG) does not have any chance of competing against Russian gas exports to Europe under fair circumstances and in a genuinely free market.

The so-called free market, however, is not-so-free. There has always been political manipulation taking place to give an advantage to the corporations and conglomerates that certain governments wait on.

Instead of competing fairly in the EU energy market, the US has been working hard to eliminate Russia as a competitor by getting Brussels to simply cut its energy ties with Gazprom and the Russian energy sector. This is precisely why the US has pushed the EU member states to impose sanctions against Russia and this way put legal restrictions and barriers to buying Russian gas.

Energy war and Ukraine: The Empire of “frack” and shale gas

People targeting fracking financiers In context of the energy war, a Polish LNG terminal has been setup in the Baltic port of Swinoujscie with plans to receive its first deliveries of natural gas from North America by the end of June 2015.

Poland and Ukraine are both seen as important possessions for the US in its quest to dominate the gas trade. The two countries that have the second and fourth largest shale gas deposits – if you exclude Russia, their respective reserves are the first and second largest in Europe. The US has plans to control the large untapped shale gas reserves in both countries.

Major US oil companies Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Marathon Oil – which operate in Iraqi Kurdistan and is a shareholder of post-Jamahiriya Libya’s Waha Oil Company – have all got huge stakes in exploring and developing Polish shale gas.

Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich’s government had signed a deal with the Anglo-Dutch energy giant Royal Dutch Shell to explore and drill for natural gas in East Ukraine in January 2013 with zero taxes. Another agreement was signed in November 2013 between Yanukovich’s government and Chevron to also explore and develop the energy reserves in West Ukraine. Just a year earlier, in 2012, Kiev also awarded a gas contract off the Crimean coast to a consortium led by ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell to develop the Skifska gas field.

The Skifska gas field is not the only field off the Crimean coast that US oil and gas corporations were interested in. Next to it Skifska are located the Foroska, Prykerchenska, and Tavriya fields. While Prykerchenska field was awarded to the US offshore company Vanco Prykerchenska Ltd. and Foroska was under the management of Chornomornaftogaz, the Foroska and Tarivya fields were both the subjects of continuing discussions.

In part, US hostilities towards the rebels in East Ukraine are tied to protecting the shale gas concessions that American energy corporations have received from Kiev. Andrey Purgin, the Deputy Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, has even stated that the same US tactics that were used in Iraq, which include the calculated destruction of civilian infrastructure, are being applied in Eastern Ukraine. These US operations are run via proxy “soldiers of fortune” or mercenaries and “hired guns”. According to a May 2014 report by Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper, the ill-famed US private security firm Academi, which had renamed itself from Blackwater and Xe Services owing to its awful record in Iraq, was unleashed on Donetsk and Lugansk.

Energy war and Syria: Mediterranean lockout?

The situation in Syria, where the US has deliberately been destroying energy infrastructure under the mantra of fighting the ISIL, can also be viewed from the same prism of petro-politics. The natural gas off the Levantine coastline that encompasses Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Gaza hold immense reserves of natural gas. Here too the US is working to push out Russia and to control the gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Since 2000, Russian engineering construction company Stroytransgaz has been active in Syria and received contracts to build two gas refineries in the Homs area and to construct the Syrian portion of the Arab Gas Pipeline that connects Lebanon and Syria to Jordan and Egypt. Another Russian energy company, Soyuzneftegaz, got a tender from Damascus to operate on its eastern border with Iraq in 2004. In 2007, the Syria Gas Company (SGC) and Stroytransgaz agreed to jointly work on developing the natural gas reserves discovered in the fields of Homs. Amidst the crisis in Syria, Soyuzneftegaz signed an important offshore exploration agreement with Damascus on December 25, 2013.

Moreover, it just so happens that the crisis in Syria erupted during negations between Syria, Iraq, and Iran to build a gas pipeline from the world’s largest natural gas field to the Syrian coast. Damascus signed the agreement with Iraq and Iran on June 25, 2011. Until the contract was cancelled in 2009, Stroytransgaz was even supposed to connect the pipeline between the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and the Syrian port of Baniyas.

Qatar and Turkey were hostile to the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline agreement since it sidelined them as a natural gas exporter and as an energy corridor. The possibility that the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline could be used to export gas to the EU as a lower-priced rival to US LNG also had to be viewed negatively in Washington.

What the fighting in Syria and Iraq has done is put this project on hold whereas regime change will nullify it.

Destabilisation as US Bargaining Tactic?

While the US has been stoking tensions in Europe to help it in the TTIP negations with Brussels, the Pentagon has been redeploying to the Middle East. The Pentagon-led buildup in the region is about anything but fight ISIL. In part, it may be tied to US nuclear negations with Iran. On top of other goals, the US-led military buildup could be intended to give Washington additional leverage against Tehran in the nuclear talks.

Creating instability looks to be part of a packaged approach. Whatever the case is, its creation appears to be used to support US negotiations and bargaining. This is very clear in the case of the tension in Ukraine, where Washington is using the crisis to its advantage in TTIP talks and to peddle its LNG to the EU by using sanctions to lockout Russian gas.

* Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a sociologist, award-winning author and geopolitical analyst.

On the Movement to Safeguard the Future of the NHS

Defending health services at Stafford These days, wherever one lives in the country, people are fighting to safeguard their health services.

The NHS in recent times has been transformed by successive governments into a battleground of their making. It is a battleground because, over recent years there was the creation of a “purchaser provider market” by the last Labour government which shattered the last vestiges of a collective approach and the coherence of a publicly provided NHS in England, Wales and northern Ireland (it was not introduced in Scotland by the Scottish government). It also dealt a huge blow to co-operation among health services turning them into competing “not for profit” and for profit health businesses. Then the Coalition government threw their grenade into the NHS with the Health and Social Care Act 2012, and the cut backs to all health budgets have been accelerated along with the drive for privatisation which is now wrecking health services at a rapid rate. Today, it can be seen as ending comprehensive health services at District General Hospitals and reducing availability of already scarce mental health and other community services. In this situation people in every community are fighting with every weapon at their disposal the ongoing systematic cut backs. So, that hardly a day goes by when people are not taking some kind of action, or activity, in defence of the NHS.

How concerned people are can be seen by the unprecedented opposition, which generally goes unreported by the monopoly media. For example, in September people were outraged that attempts are being made at the new West Cumberland Hospital at Whitehaven, due to be opened in December, to transfer some health procedures and services 40 miles away. This led to 4,000
4,000 people confronting NHS Trust at Whitehavenpeople confronting the Trust in the Whitehaven’s Rugby League ground on September 30. Over the summer the Support Stafford Hospital Campaign continued to organise a camp and festivals in their area following the two massive demonstrations last year where 40,000 and then 50,000 people demonstrated against the downgrading of Stafford Hospital services. It has been a similar picture in the rest of country. For example, the people of South, North, East and West London have ongoing campaigns against the increasing destruction of the NHS in London. Whilst Lewisham won an historic battle with the government against the closure of vital health services at their hospital last year with the backing of tens of thousands on the streets of Lewisham, the hospital has been merged with another Trust and community and other services are still under attack. Other campaigns to safeguard health services and hospitals are ongoing at Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Camden, Charing Cross, Ealing, Enfield, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith, Haringey, Ilford, Kingston, Lambeth, St Helier and Sutton, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, and Whittington.

These campaigns came together this summer when a number of women from Darlington, known as the “Darlo Mums”, and others marched from Jarrow to London in August to save the NHS and following the route of the march by unemployed shipyard workers in 1936. Their march was in response to the government’s passing of the Health and Social Care Act, Section 75 and Clause 119, which have led to the removal of the Secretary of State’s duty to provide
Tower Hamlets & Waltham Forrest national health services, and the rapid dismantling, privatisation and destruction of the NHS. The marchers were met by thousands, in Leeds, Nottingham and everywhere they went. On September 6, they were met by 20,000 people in London representing campaigns to save their health services across London and other parts of the country.

Today, the whole question coming to the fore is the need to take foreward this movement to safeguard the future of the NHS, while the ruling circles are gearing up to continue further in the same direction following the General Election next year. As can be seen by their recent statements the Labour Party is trying to seize the initiative in the movement to safeguard the NHS, to say leave it to them and vote Labour. But the Labour Party proposes no change in the direction to this austerity led agenda and their statements confirm that they will continue with the destructive market in health and the privatisation of health care will not be stopped. There is also the big lie that continues to be advanced by all the big parties that whilst they agree with austerity NHS budgets are “protected”, when in reality billions of pounds are slashed from struggling NHS hospitals and community services.

Today, this movement to safeguard the future of the NHS must continue to strive to seize the initiative. Battles are continuing to be fought to save services. Health campaigners are putting forward their own programmes and demands. For example, leading NHS campaigners have come together to produce an NHS Reinstatement Bill to stop and reverse NHS privatisation and are engaging with the campaigns on this draft bill in the run up to the general election next year. The NHA Party is campaigning to take the issues of safeguarding the NHS into the general election with its own candidates, and so on.

"Occupy Stafford Hospital" campaign at the
University Hospital of North Staffordshire Our view is that the movement has to go all out to deal a blow to this austerity agenda in the run up to election and back candidates that take a genuine stand against austerity and to safeguard the future of the NHS. But what are the blocks to progress for the movement? The movement should not limit itself to what was the best from the past, or limit the discussion to what Britain “can afford” on the NHS out of taxation. Where the save the NHS campaigns have forced governments, health authorities, commissioners, providers and so on, to “consult” or even on some occasions to back down and to give some decisions to people locally, this discussion is always limited to what the government or the local health bodies say is “affordable”. And today, with “austerity”, what they say was “affordable” last year they now say is not “affordable” this year and that there have to be cut backs and this is the only “choice” that is offered. This is the whole irrational approach to the NHS and mind-set of the “austerity” consensus in Westminster that they try to impose on health managers, doctors and nurses. It is the basis of the ongoing stripping out of core services like Accident Emergency, Maternity and surgical procedures from District General Hospitals, closing GP services and mental health services, and forcing people to travel large distances and wait longer for vital health care. It is this “austerity” and “affordable” agenda, made in Westminster, that has to be smashed by the movement to safeguard the future of the NHS so as to take the movement forward in the fight for the alternative.

In taking up the alternative it has to be recognised in the movement that this issue of “affordability” of health care is completely fraudulent. It presents the NHS as a “cost” and burden to the economy which has to be curtailed and contained. For the ruling circles this capital centred view is a given, which is that the economy gives first claim to the rich and it is their interests which are addressed first. The economy is not run for all those that live and work it and that they make the decisions. Taxation is based on the same precept that the working people pay, and the rich have first claim on the treasury and extract huge sums in usury (national debt interest!) to fund wars and other schemes that are in their interest. To say that the NHS is a “cost” or a “burden” cannot be justified even in their terms, because as so many people point out that they don’t think twice about the billions they spend on nuclear weapons, on war and so on.

But the reality is that far from being a “cost” and burden the NHS is a fundamental contributor of wealth, providing added value from the labour of the health workers to a socialised
St Richard's Hospitaleconomy of production and services. The NHS is overwhelmingly a human resourced organisation. It cannot be otherwise in order to provide health care – but this is presented as a negative thing by the capital centric outlook that sees labour as a “cost” and not the producer of wealth. Health workers produce added value to society on top of what they take home in wages. For the health services the NHS workers provide their added value to this socialised economy and to all in society. Yet, the capitalist monopolies do not contribute the amount that they gain from the transferred value of health workers to the industries and services that keep their employees healthy and producing their own added value to society. These monopolies expropriate all this added value for their own interests and do not contribute it to the socialised economy and its health and other services. Any new bill on health care should make these monopolies contribute to the National Health Service directly in proportion to the added value that is transferred to them by health workers. In other words, health workers are not a "cost" or "burden" but on the contrary add value to society for which the monopolies do not pay. The movement must advance this claim for the proper funding of the public purse for health care and fight just as hard on this as the movement fights against the monopolies having direct control of services for profit with privatisation, PFI, etc.

Health care is a right and it is one of the most important parts of building a modern economy and a modern society. This has yet to be accomplished. Establishing a public health care system in 1948 without establishing it as a right for all in the running of society, and making the people sovereign in the running of society and of their health care system has always left the NHS at the mercy of the private owners of the means of production and governments that represent them. It has always meant that people have had to fight to save their NHS services at every juncture in the 66-year history of the NHS.

The marginalisation of the people from decision-making and the claim that their public services are not affordable and have to be privatised have to be rejected as not a way to run a modern society. The dictate of the monopolies and parties that represent them must be more and more challenged and stopped and their whole direction against the public good blocked. The movement must assert that it is the right of all to health care and that this right must be guaranteed by society. Most importantly the working class movement, including the movement of health workers must take up this fight to empower the people to make the decisions in society. This will safeguard the future of the right to health care.

Opposition to Politics for the Public Interest under the Guise of “Together”

After the No vote in the Scottish referendum, in which the Labour Party played a central role in the establishment campaign, the unity of the Westminster cartel parties is now out in the open. This was reinforced in the subsequent overwhelming parliamentary vote for new military intervention in Iraq. Labour’s place as an integral part of the arrangements of the British state has become increasingly overt.

With the approach of the next year’s general election, the big parties are vying, but failing, to produce a champion for the ruling elite. Labour has been desperately failing to brand Ed Miliband as such a champion even though Cameron, Clegg and the present Coalition are so evidently racing down the “austerity” path of the anti-social offensive and the opponents of the rights of the people. For the past two years, Labour has been rebranding itself as One-Nation Labour, a phrase claimed from the Conservatives themselves. Behind the facade of progressive-sounding words, this represents a vision of further politicisation of the private interests of monopolies and marginalisation of the interests of the working class and of society in general.

The idea of One-Nation Labour reached its final form before the election in Labour leader Ed Miliband’s speech to the party’s annual conference on September 23, with its nauseating mantra of “together”.

Miliband presented Labour as sticking up for the common people, the “families like yours, who are treading water, working harder and harder just to stay afloat.” “Labour is the party of hard work fairly paid,” and so on.

While there is “prosperity in one part of Britain, amongst a small elite,” argued Miliband, this elite forms “a circle that is closed to most, blind to the concerns of people. Sending the message to everyone but a few: you’re on your own.” However, “we just can’t carry on with the belief that a country can succeed as a country with a tiny minority at the top doing well.” What is needed is the “a different idea for Britain”: “Together”.

The point is, while he recognises the existence of “the powerful and the privileged”, he obscures the existence of social classes with contending interests and politics. Rather, everyone in the nation is together and faced with the same issue, even if there is a scale of wealth and power.

On this basis, the main theme of the speech was to promote the illusion that it is possible to resolve any conflicting interests between the poles of this one nation, via a shift in values, replacing one “belief” with a “different idea”.

In reality, there simply cannot be a common set of national values in a society divided into such opposed classes as the working class and broad sections of people on the one hand and the monopolies on the other. The monopoly capital-centred view of togetherness means the workers giving up their claims on the economy and being mobilised behind the private aims of competing monopolies for domination of international markets. The workers’ view of togetherness means upholding public right, laying claim to the economy and restricting the power of the monopolies to plunder social programmes and the environment.

Miliband therefore asserted: “Together says that it is not just a few wealthy people who create the wealth of our country. It’s every working person.” This places the workers in the socialised economy and the private owners of monopoly capital on the same footing, as if the latter could be also called “working people”. It obscures that it is the efforts of the working class that create the social product, the majority of which is drained from the economy by the “few wealthy people” who do anything but “create the wealth of our country” in their inexorable drive to accumulate this wealth in their perpetual state of fierce, mutual competition. Rather, it promotes the illusion that the workers require the assistance of these individuals to provide the businesses in which they work.

He asserted that “together says that we have a duty to look after each other when times are hard.” This is nothing other than the widely condemned notion that “we are all in it together.”

For example, to counter the “cost of living crisis”, “you need a government with a singular focus on tackling it. Key to this is transforming our economy so we create good jobs at decent wages. That requires a massive national effort. The principle of together: everybody playing their part.”

“It’s about businesses and trade unions engaging in cooperation not confrontation.”

In other words, the private interests of the monopolies are seen as at one with the interests of the workers and society in general.

“Together says it is not just the powerful few at the top whose voices should be heard, it’s the voice of everyone.” Here, Miliband obscures the politicisation of private interests.

In this respect, he spoke about what he called the “basic bargain of Britain”: “that all working people should share fairly in the growing wealth of the country. That means, as the economy grows, the wages of everyday working people grow at the same rate.”

“For government it means no vested interest, no old orthodoxies, no stale mindset, should stand in the way of restoring this basic bargain of Britain.” This means no return to Old Labour (the stale mindset), no social democracy, or worse, socialism (the old orthodoxies) and no accommodation of the trade unions (the vested interests). The workers should at most confine their demands to a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. They should certainly not develop their independent politics and views.

Instead: “It’s time we transferred power out of Whitehall. To our businesses, towns and cities, so that they can create the jobs, the prosperity, the wealth that they need.” This is the politicisation of private interests in the form of transferring power from government to businesses, presented as one-nation politics with the working class subordinating its interests to the private interests of the monopolies, allegedly the creators of prosperity.

In essence, Miliband’s One-Nation Labour is merely a continuation of Blair’s New Labour, which abandoned social democracy and openly declared itself the “party of business”. Miliband’s Labour Party even preserves the same backward aim of making Britain great again: “Together we build great businesses, the best in the world. Together we can make Britain prouder, stronger in the world.”

His speech was therefore imbued with the same national chauvinism and a refusal to abandon the values and programme of austerity.

“I’m determined that as Prime Minister, I promote our values all round the world and one of the things that that means friends is seeking a solution to a problem that we know in our hearts is one of the biggest problems our world faces and that is issues in the Middle East and Israel and Palestine.” Issues on which Labour has an illustrious record. “The next Labour government will fight to make sure that we fight for our values and for human rights all round the world.” The word “fight” can be taken literally.

This chauvinistic outlook underlies Labour’s position on the national question in Britain. “We are more than ever, four countries and one. England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Britain too,” he said. “Each nation making its contribution. We are not just better together, we are greater together.”

“All of those people who were proud to be Scottish and proud to be British. Just like there are so many people who are proud to be Welsh and proud to be British. And so too we can be proud to be English and proud to be British.” What kind of pride is this? Any talk of “British pride” in the context of British imperialism, promotion of its “values all round the world”, aiming at military might and success in the markets for the monopolies, is a thoroughly reactionary aim. Talk of “English pride” in the context of England as the dominating power in an archaic kingdom is equally reactionary and is no basis for unity of the people of Britain.

Try as he might, Miliband is unable to break with Blairism, but he is also unable to create the profile of a national leader. The speech is a complete rehash of Blair’s “Third Way” and national aim of making Britain great again in the conditions of the unity of the Westminster cartel parties increasingly exposed in the eyes of the electorate. This is a population which has reached the point of serious discussion, particularly apparent during the Scottish referendum, of how Britain in constituted, whom it serves and to what aim its economy is directed.

After five years of disastrous rule by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, the working class will certainly have to consider how to participate in the general election strategically and elect candidates that represent a block to the austerity and pro-war agenda. However, it should have no illusions about the Labour Party as a party of labour, or even as a party which stands against private interests in favour of the public good. Rather, the working class must continue to build its own Workers’ Opposition, which is able to resolve the problems of where sovereignty must lie, lay the foundations of an anti-war, pro-social government, and, with its own independent perspective and programme, politicise public interests and the general interests of society.

Tens of Thousands March in Britain and across Europe