Socialist Resistance Forum: Marxism, Anarchism and the State

Speaker: Alex Miller

Tuesday 21st July 7.30pm, Bennetts Bar, Bennetts Hill, Birmingham City Centre

In a sense, Anarchists and Marxists share the same goal: a society in which there is no independent state power standing over and above the free association of working people. So what is the difference between Marxist and Anarchist views of the state?

In this forum, we’ll approach this question by examining Lenin’s views, as expressed in one of the classics of Marxist literature, The State and Revolution. In The Communist Manifesto (1847-8) Marx and Engels wrote:

• “The bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of modern industry and the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”

Later, in the same work, they continue:

• “The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e. of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.”

According to the Manifesto, then, in the course of a social revolution, the state is transformed from “a committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie” into the ‘proletariat organized as the ruling class”. Writing 25 years later, in the Preface to the 1872 German edition of the Manifesto, Marx and Engels, though arguing that “the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever”, single out the passages on the state as somewhat out of date:

• “In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry in the last 25 years, and of the accompanying improved and extended party organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution [of 1848], and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat first held political  power for two whole months, this program has in some details become antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.”

A year or so earlier, in a letter to Kugelmann, Marx had written:

• “The next attempt at the French Revolution must be: not, as in the past, to transfer the bureaucratic and military machinery from one hand to the other, but to break it up.”

In his The State and Revolution, written on the eve of the October 1917 Revolution while he was in hiding in Finland, Lenin looks at the evolution of Marx’s views on the state, and discusses a number of crucial questions: What is the “dictatorship of the proletariat”? What exactly does Engels mean when he writes of “the withering away of the state”? How has the right-wing of the international socialist movement perverted Marx’s ideas on the state and socialism? How does Marxism differ from Anarchism? In this forum, we’ll look at Lenin’s answers to these questions, questions that are all the more crucial for us in an era in which it daily becomes more and more evident that state intervention under capitalism serves the interests of capital rather than the interests of ordinary people.

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Socialist Resistance Forum: Socialists and the Capitalist Recession

Speaker: Andy Kilmister

Tuesday 16th June 7.30pm, Bennetts Bar, Bennetts Hill, Birmingham City Centre

“…..the commercial crises….. by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of over-production.”

Karl Marx 1848

The last few weeks have seen an increasing number of media reports of the `green shoots of economic recovery’ coupled with statements by financial analysts that the worst of the recession may soon be over – or may indeed already have passed.

Socialist Resistance has never taken the view that the current crisis is just about the weaknesses of the banks following the sub-prime debacle in the USA.

The financial turbulence that became apparent in August 2007 and then worsened dramatically in the autumn of 2008 is just one aspect of a broader process. This process involves the unravelling of many of the institutional frame-works that have governed the international economy since the mid -1980s and have laid the basis for neo-liberal politics. Economic growth in the last three decades has depended not just on rising debt but also on cheap commodity prices and ecological devastation within a context of global capital flows and imperialist exploitation. All of this is now thrown into question.

But the retreat of the most immediate threats of financial collapse and the temporary stabilisation of the banking sector does mark the end of a particular phase of the crisis and provides an opportunity for socialists to analyse the turmoil of the last year and to discuss likely developments in the future. We hope our new book Socialists and the Capitalist Recession will be a good basis for doing this.

In understanding what is happening to the economy at present Marx’s theories of crisis provide an invaluable starting point. The key dilemmas and tensions which lie at the centre of the current recession can be traced back to the themes highlighted by Marx over a century ago. This talk will look at three of them:

• Where will the demand come from to ensure economic growth and prevent mass unemployment, after the collapse of the housing bubble and debt-fuelled consumption? In societies like the USA and Britain, with massive inequalities and stagnating wages, how can ordinary people continue to afford to maintain consumption? What will be the impact of the current rise in government borrowing and the threat of higher taxes and public expenditure cuts to come?

• Are we heading for an era of global economic instability? Will increased demand from countries like China and India make up for slower growth in the USA and Europe? Will the dollar and euro maintain their values? What lies behind the fall in the pound?

• What is happening to profitability both in the financial and industrial sectors? Who is gaining and who is losing from the crisis and who will bear the future costs? How can capitalism deal with the mass of speculative investment left over from the boom?

Of course the outcome of the current crisis will not depend only on the background of global economic developments or on the strategies of employers and governments. More important than these will be the responses of workers and ordinary people to the attacks on living standards which the recession will bring. But in building campaigns and struggles to withstand these attacks we need to analyse what is happening in the economy and make predictions about what is coming next. This talk is intended to contribute to just such a discussion.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Socialist Resistence Forum – A New Anti-Capitalist Party in France – the NPA

Speaker – Fred Leplat

Tuesday 19th May 7.30pm at Bennetts Bar, Bennetts Hill, Birmingham City Centre.

In early February, the 3,000 strong LCR (Revolutionary Communist League) dissolved itself and launched the NPA (New Anti-Capitalist Party) with 10,000 members and 450 branches across France. One of its best known members is Olivier Besancenot, a 32 year old postal worker and twice candidate in the Presidential elections.

The creation of the NPA is linked to the global economical crisis: capitalism is sinking into a very deep and historical crisis which is not just a  financial crisis or a simple failure of the neoliberal regulation. Ordinary people are threatened to be the victims of a crisis caused by the banks and the corporations. Mass redundancies, high cost of living, and the destruction of public services are the first steps of this attack. A fight-back has started with a one-day general strike in France on the 29 January with 2million in the street, followed by an even bigger turn-out on the 19 March.

Despite the threat of redundancies, there is a growing mood to resist. Company bosses threatening closures and job losses risk being locked up in their offices by workers such as at 3M/Post-it. This is not unpopular as only 7% condemn this action while 40% believe it to be entirely justified!! And the broadly victorious six-week general strike against the high cost of living the French Caribbean island of Martinique has provided ideas about how to win.

The NPA will be on the frontline of mobilisations, strikes and demonstrations and for the regrouping of the Left. The NPA proposes an emergency program to stop workers from being made to pay for the crisis which includes the nationalisation of companies creating redundancies , a 300 Euro increase in all wages and pensions, a minimum wage of 1500 Euro a month, the abolition of the VAT and a rent freeze.

In order to encourage the resistance and promote such this anti-capitalist program, the NPA makes it clear that there needs to be a political perspective that is not linked to the Socialist Party, which is a similar party to New Labour. The NPA has proposed a common front to the Communist Party and the Party de Gauche (Left Party – a recent split from the SP) to fight together the forthcoming European and French regional elections, as well as to promote the resistance to the neo-liberal attacks.

The creation of the New Anti-capitalist Party is a significant stage in a long process that began with an appeal in August 2007 by the former LCR for the regrouping of all anti-capitalist activists whatever their past political traditions. For French revolutionary and anti-capitalist activists, building the NPA as a broad party is a genuine challenge. Of course, the NPA is in no sense a model for other countries, but it is an experience which is of great interest to socialists in Britain and which deserves our support.

Part 1

Part 1

Socialist Resistance Forum – A Workers Alternative to the Crisis

Speaker – Jerry Hicks – UNITE and RESPECT member

Tuesday 21st April 7.30pm at Bennetts Bar, Bennetts Hill, Birmingham City Centre.

The election campaign for the General Secretary of UNITE was able to reach out and touch and win the hearts and minds of tens thousands of union members who returned a magnificent vote. It was absolutely a left campaign calling for people before profit, public ownership not privatisation, and a green campaign. As a grassroots rank and file member with no access to the union’s resources, and pressing the case single-handed for an election to take place, coming second with nearly 40,000 votes, well ahead of the other two candidates, both full time officials, was a magnificent achievement. Jerry’s message was clearly and proudly taken into workplaces and homes, across every industry and in every part of the country and inspired, motivated and gave hope to the many thousands who heard it and responded to it. The result is a clear vindication of the relevance of the election and appeal of left policies.

New Labour

Amongst the many questions during the election, one that kept being screamed out was “Why does UNITE keep throwing tens of £millions at the Labour Party?”.

Lindsey

During the election the rumbling volcano of anger in the construction industry erupted, with the unofficial strikes at the Lindsey oil refinery; a very clear example of the frustration within the membership. As the construction workers ratcheted up their demands for action, the inadequacy of the union leaders became even more obvious. The Lindsey strike was unofficial – because after three terms of a Labour government the Tory anti-union laws are still in place: but within five days, the members achieved more than they had in five months of delaying tactics from national leaders.

Cowley

And at Cowley’s BMW plant, the management sacked four shifts, 850 temporary staff – at an hour’s notice, with no redundancy pay. When the management left the building after making the announcement, furious members pelted the union reps with tomatoes, seeing the union as part of the problem instead of the solution. How could it get to this? How is it that after three terms of a Labour government, workers, some who had worked for BMW for 4 years, can still be treated like that? Everyone who was a part of this campaign got something positive from it. We were all so close to making history. It has given us a glimpse of what is possible. Apart from the disappointment of not actually winning the election, a great disappointment has been the failure of sections of the left to recognise and grasp this opportunity for what undoubtedly would have been an historic breakthrough.

Fighting Unions Needed

Now, more than ever before, we don’t just need a “campaigning union” we need a fighting union, one that instils a confidence in members to resist employers’ attacks. The bureaucracy will hang on in there until we build a movement strong enough to move them. But if you fight hard enough, with enough confidence, all things are possible.

A Workers’ Alternative

Jerry’s campaign has highlighted the need for a trade union movement that breaks from the priorities of big business, so beloved by New Labour and the other main parties. Policies championed by RESPECT, and now the “People’s Charter” offer a different way forwards. Socialist Resistance would put it more succinctly; we need a complete break from capitalism itself and start pioneering a similar road as that chosen by several Latin American countries; a move towards socialism.

The video of the meeting:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Marxist Perspective

Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Marxist Perspective

Animal Farm: A Fairy Story
By George Orwell
Centenary Edition, Penguin Books, 2003
120 pages, £7.99

Nineteen Eighty-Four
By George Orwell
Penguin Classics, 2000
326 pages, £6.99

Review by Alex Miller

This essay is the result of a re-reading of George Orwell’s two most famous novels. Both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four have acquired the status of textbooks, and are routinely used in schools to demonstrate to children the inherent dangers of social revolution. It is time for a reappraisal.

The “Centenary Edition” of George Orwell’s Animal Farm contains a preface written by Orwell for the first edition (Secker and Warburg 1945) but never published, together with a preface that he wrote specially for a translation for displaced Ukrainians living under British and US administration after World War II.

If we are to take Orwell at his word in the first of these prefaces, Animal Farm is intended as a critique of the Stalinist Soviet regime “from the left”. He explicitly dissociates himself from conservative critiques, which he describes as “manifestly dishonest, out of date, and actuated by sordid motives”.

This is laudable: a left-wing critique of Stalinism was desperately needed in Britain at a time when the prestige of Stalin’s regime was at its apogee, and almost all of the left was turning a blind eye to the regime’s crimes.

No doubt the attempt manifests a degree of intellectual courage on Orwell’s part. But his work has largely been hijacked by the very conservatives he distanced himself from. The Centenary Edition of Animal Farm, for example, displays ringing endorsements from The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express, the Evening Standard, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator.

It is unfair to blame an author for the (mis) use of his work after his death, so let’s ask: how successful was Orwell’s attempt to provide a critique of Stalinism “from the left”? Orwell believed that the Bolshevik revolution had degenerated into something at least as bad as Tsarism, and much abuse has been heaped on Orwell by those on the left who refused to believe that the revolution had indeed degenerated under Stalin. However, we can surely now leave that sort of criticism of Orwell safely behind. It is still common to hear contemporary apologists for Stalinism accuse Orwell of being in the pay of the British intelligence services. In this review we will eschew such an ad homenim approach and instead attempt to appraise Animal Farm (and Nineteen Eight-Four) purely on their merits.

A prerequisite of a left-wing critique of the degeneration of the revolution is the provision of an accurate account of its causes. We can make some progress on this question by considering some of the features that Marx took to be essential for the success of a socialist revolution. Two years prior to the composition of the Communist Manifesto Marx wrote: “A development of the productive forces is the absolutely necessary practical premise [of Communism], because without it want is generalized, and with want the struggle for necessities begins again, and that means that all the old crap must revive” (quoted in Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (Dover Books 2004), p.43). In other words, Marx thought that a successful socialist revolution would require the high level of development of material resources made possible by advanced capitalism as well as the most important productive force of all: the highly developed skills and productively applicable knowledge of the proletariat.

This allows us to identify two prominent causes of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution: one the one hand the scarcity of material resources and the low level of industrial and technological development in Russia, and on the other the severe weakening — indeed, near annihilation — of the already numerically small working class, mainly as a result of the civil war that followed the invasion of Bolshevik Russia in 1918-21 by a coalition of several imperialist countries, including Britain and the US.

Thus, although it survived the catastrophic destruction of the civil war, Bolshevik Russia lacked two of the key characteristics identified by Karl Marx as necessary for a successful transition from capitalism to socialism: a very high level of capitalist development (making possible an abundance of material resources), plus a numerically strong working class with a high level of cultural, political and technical development. Without these, the field was open for the formation of bureaucratic strata whose dominance of the USSR was crystallised in Stalin’s dictatorship and the defeat of the Left Opposition within the Bolshevik Party.

Animal Farm completely fails to reflect these key causes of the revolution’s degeneration. In the story, the rebellion of the animals leaves them with a material abundance of food: there is milk galore and a generous harvest of windfall apples, both of which are simply purloined by the cunning and selfish pigs, led by Napoleon (Joseph Stalin) and the soon-to-be-ousted Snowball (Leon Trotsky). In addition, only one animal — a sheep — dies as a result of the “civil war”, an attempt by the deposed farmer Mr Jones and his human friends to retake the farm.

Thus, in Orwell’s story the Rebellion degenerates despite conditions of material abundance and an “animal class” left largely intact by human aggression. Orwell seems to be saying that unless ruled by humans, the mass of animals will inevitably succumb to the tyrannical rule of the cunning and selfish among themselves. Transposed to the human domain, the moral of Orwell’s story is clear: without the capitalist class to govern them, the mass of workers will inevitably find themselves subject to the tyranny of the “brainworkers” among them.

Of course, the animals in the tale are far from the high level of political, cultural and technical development required for the success of a socialist revolution. But there’s the rub: Orwell’s animals, with the exception of the pigs, are, though hard working, loyal and trustworthy, devoid of all intelligence and completely unable to learn anything from experience. This extremely low estimate of the potentialities of the working class is part of Orwell’s conception of the possibilities open to socialists. The options are exhausted by Stalinist totalitarianism and the “social democratic” struggle for reforms within the confines of “western parliamentary democracy”.

The flipside of Orwell’s elitist and patronising attitude towards working people is his highly distorted picture of the nature of British capitalism. In the first preface to Animal Farm, he writes of “the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilisation” and states that “tolerance and decency are deeply rooted in England [sic]”. That would be the “intellectual liberty” afforded — not so long before Orwell’s time — to the Tolpuddle Martyrs and other ordinary workers, imprisoned, banished or simply murdered by the British state for daring to organise trade unions, or the “tolerance and decency” that callously sent millions of young people to the slaughterhouse of World War I — not to mention the horrors of imperial rule within the British Isles and overseas.

The intellectual liberty, tolerance and decency of British imperialism are the real Orwellian fantasy: insofar as those qualities have roots in Britain, they are the product of generations of struggle by the working people that Orwell snobbishly portrays as bovine dunces. It’s not hard to see why Orwell is the darling of the ruling-class newspapers mentioned above. He may genuinely have attempted to provide a critique of Stalin’s USSR “from the left”, but all that he actually produced — in Animal Farm at least — was a banal piece of ruling-class propaganda.

Animal Farm thus fails utterly as a critique of Stalinism “from the left”. We will now attempt a similar evaluation of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It has always been regarded as an attack on Russian “Communism” and by extension an attack on any form of communist revolution. Isaac Deutscher, for instance, recounts that when he bought a copy of the book in New York shortly after its publication in 1949 the bookseller said to him: “Have you read this book? You must read it, sir. Then you will know why we must drop the atom bomb on the Bolshies” (Heretics and Renegades (Jonathan Cape 1969), p.50). Does it fare better than Animal Farm as a critique of Stalinism “from the left”?

The action of Nineteen Eighty-Four takes place in London (capital of “Airstrip One”) some 40 years after a “socialist revolution”: the ideology of the society is known as “Ingsoc” (“English socialism”), the banners of the ruling party (“The Party”) are scarlet, Party members address each other as “comrade”, and Party literature describes a horrible time before the Revolution when the country was ruled by top-hatted toffs known as “capitalists”. The leader of The Party, whose portrait is omni-present, and who has godlike status, is “Big Brother”, whose physical appearance is remarkably similar to that of Joseph Stalin. The most hated figure is Emmanuel Goldstein, leader of the secret terrorist and anti-Party organization known as “The Brotherhood”. Goldstein’s physical appearance is remarkably similar to that of Leon Trotsky (whose real name, “Bronstein”, surely determined Orwell’s choice of name for Big Brother’s would-be nemesis).

The details of the story of Winston and Julia, the two main characters, needn’t concern us here (though it should be said that it is quite gripping). For our purposes, the main facts are that the Revolution – which apparently started out with high ideals, has degenerated into something similar to, but much worse than, Stalinism. The social composition of the country is revealing. 2% belong to the “Inner Party”, a privileged layer of top-level bureaucrats, and13% belong to the “Outer Party”, a much less privileged layer of minor bureaucrats and administrators: whereas the members of the Inner Party have access to wine, real coffee, and live in plush serviced apartments, the members of the Outer Party live in shoddy accommodation, drink only synthetic “Victory Gin”, and are plagued by shortages of minor goods such as razor blades and shoelaces. Below the Party members come the “proles”, who make up the remaining 85% of the population.

The Ingsoc society is unimaginably totalitarian. Every aspect of the lives of the members of the Outer Party are subject to surveillance by ubiquitous “telecreens”: two-way television sets that are so sophisticated that they can detect changes of heartbeat rhythms in the dark. Any sign of deviation from the principles of Ingsoc is likely to result in the “vaporization” of the person concerned by the “Thought Police”, whose job it is to root out and punish even the remotest hint of unorthodoxy. There is a daily ceremony called the “two minutes hate”, in which Party members whip themselves up into a frenzy of hate against Goldstein, and history is continually falsified: Winston’s job, in the Ministry of Truth, is the systematic rewriting of newspaper articles from the archives in order to delete references to the victims of the Thought Police.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, then, we have another example of a revolution that has degenerated, this time in spite of taking place in an advanced capitalist country with a numerically preponderant proletariat. Now, given that technology has developed to the extent that a large section of the society is under 24 hour surveillance, one would expect the “proles” to manifest a high degree of intelligence and technical skill: after all, who designs, builds and maintains the telescreens that make possible the intricate surveillance operation? (The Inner and Outer Party members don’t, as they have mainly bureaucratic and administrative functions: although some of the Outer Party, such as Julia, have minor technical roles, this doesn’t affect the point we’re making). In Orwell’s story, however, the “proles”, like the beasts in Animal Farm, are completely stupid, and devoid of even the most rudimentary intelligence. They have “debased” cockney accents, are described at one point as “helpless, like the animals”, at another as constituting “an impenetrable wall of flesh”, and at another a working-class mother is described as having ‘powerful mare-like buttocks”.

Thus, Orwell’s elitist and patronizing attitude towards the working class in Animal Farm reappears in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the headline message is the same: a socialist revolution, even if it were to happen in an advanced capitalist country, would be bound to degenerate because of the innate helplessness and lack of intelligence of the working class.

It is worth noting in passing that Marx himself, despite being an infinitely better writer and thinker than Orwell, had an entirely different attitude towards ordinary people. He wrote, for example:

When the communist artisans meet, they seem to be meeting for the purpose of propaganda, etc. But in the process they acquire a new need, the need for society, and what seemed to be a means has become an end in itself. One can see the most illuminating effects of this practical process if one watches a meeting of socialist French workers. Smoking, drinking and eating are no longer merely an excuse for meeting. The society, the entertainment, which is supposed to be for the purpose of meeting, is sufficient in itself: the brotherhood of Man is no idle phrase but the real truth, and the nobility of Man shines out at us from these faces brutalized by toil (quoted in Werner Blumenberg, Karl Marx: An Illustrated History, Verso 2000, p.47).

And there are deeper differences between Orwell and Marx. Orwell believes that power, independently of the specific social circumstances in which it is realized, is governed by a logic that inevitably leads to corruption and exploitation. In his view, even if the working-class successfully seizes power in an advanced capitalist country, corruption and exploitation will inevitably prevail. This idealist and anarchist philosophy is vastly inferior to Marx’s approach, according to which power can only be studied meaningfully as embodied in concrete social and economic structures. This point is well-made by Deutscher: “at heart Orwell was a simple-minded anarchist … To analyse a complicated social background, to try and unravel tangles of political motives, calculations, fears and suspicions, and to discern the compulsion of circumstances behind their action was beyond him. Generalisations about social forces, social trends, and historic inevitabilities made him bristle with suspicion … Yet his distrust of historical generalizations led him in the end to adopt and to cling to the oldest, the most banal, the most abstract, the most metaphysical, and the most barren of all generalizations: all their conspiracies and plots and purges had one source and one source only – ‘sadistic power hunger’. Thus he made his jump from workaday, rationalistic common sense to the mysticism of cruelty which inspires 1984” (Heretics and Renegades, pp.47-8).

Our conclusion is thus that given an understanding of the social and economic factors that led to the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, neither Animal Farm nor Nineteen Eighty-Four give us compelling reason to believe that a socialist revolution in an advanced capitalist society must inevitably deteriorate into Stalinism, or worse. Thus, despite whatever other literary merits they may possess, neither of Orwell’s most famous books constitutes an effective critique of Stalinism “from the left”.

Alex gave a talk on Orwell to the Birmingham Socialist Resistance Forum on 1st July. His talk was based on this essay.

Privatisation and Schools in Birmingham

Privatisation and schools in Birmingham

Richard Hatcher

Talk given at Birmingham Trades Council Public Sector meeting “Are we becoming Birmingham PLC?” 24 June 2008 alliance-against-birmingham-academies-logo

I’m going to talk about two issues – Building Schools for the Future and Academies – but we need to remember that they are part of a much wider outsourcing of lots of aspects of national education policy implementation and local authority and school functions, ranging from the National Literacy Strategy to school inspections to schools’ back office functions. The education market is a profitable sector of the British economy and a springboard for getting business overseas.

The CBI in its report The Business of Education Improvement (CBI 2005) identified two key new areas of profitable activity: the 2004 Children Act and Building Schools for the Future. Here I’m focusing on BSF but we need to remember that the Children Act also means big opportunities for the private sector as the local authority’s role is intended to be commissioning services rather than providing them.

Building Schools for the Future

All Birmingham secondary schools are to be rebuilt or refurbished in 6 phases. Phase 1 comprises 11 schools. 50% of the money is for new build, 35% for major refurbishment, and15% for minor works. Of course extra funding for school buildings is very welcome, but there are serious implications for the extension of private influence over the school system in Birmingham and the erosion of democratic control.

There are two issues. One is that 4 of the 11 schools will be funded through PFI (the other 7 through a Revenue Support Grant). The arguments against PFI are well known – it’s more expensive and commits the LA to long term repayments while the building is owned by the PFI consortium – and I won’t dwell on them here.

The second issue, and the most important, is that BSF is a vehicle for outsourcing of Council services. The Labour government’s policy is that Local Authorities should commission services from external providers, not provide them themselves. But the City Council has a choice. It has the legal powers to decide precisely how it wants the BSF programme to be used – it can restrict BSF to building new and improving existing secondary schools in the city, or it can use it as an opportunity to outsource services.

Opening the door to privatising services?

The BSF contract will be awarded later this year and we don’t know what the content of the bids is, but we can get an idea of the Council’s thinking from what it says on its BSF website:

‘The BSF programme is more than just new buildings, it includes changes to the way the curriculum is taught. Birmingham City Council has been looking for a group of businesses to work together to not only build/refurbish all the city’s secondary schools but to help transform teaching and learning.’

The Council’s invitation to tender was advertised in February 2007. In addition to the building work it invited bids to include the following (I quote):

vi) hard facilities management services;
(vii) soft facilities management services;
(viii) information communication and technology (”ICT”) services;
(ix) educational support services;
(x) education programme development services; and (xi) educational strategy services;

‘together with, as appropriate, other community facilities which may be integrated or co-located with such educational facilities and sites and which may include, for example, facilities for health, social care, leisure and facilities to support educational and lifelong learning outcomes’

So the threat to those services which are still provided in-house by the local authority is clear.

The BSF bidders

The final tenders from the two short-listed bidders were received in February this year and a decision will be made this year. The two bidders are Land Securities Trillium and RM (Research Machines, an IT company); and Catalyst Education (Birmingham) Ltd.
.
Land Securities is the UK’s biggest property company. This is what its website says:

‘In addition to LS Trillium’s 900 employees, a further 15,000 people help to ensure the smooth running of our customers’ workplaces, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. The most ‘visible’ services they provide include catering, cleaning and security. Less obvious, but equally vital services include gardening, porterage and engineering.

Whilst these 15,000 people generally wear the LS Trillium uniform, in fact they are employed by a series of specialist Service Partners organisations. We have long term contracts with these organisations to ensure we get the best value for money and highest possible service standards for our clients.’

In short, they have an army of subcontracted workers ready to take over Council services.

Catalyst Education (Birmingham) Ltd is a subsidiary of Catalyst Lend Lease and Bovis Lend Lease Ltd. Bovis Lend Lease is one of the world’s leading project management and construction companies.

‘The Catalyst business was founded by Bovis and the Bank of Scotland in the 1990s to bid for projects in Britain’s fast developing Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Public Private Partnership (PPP) markets, a government backed programme that encourages private sector businesses to fund, build and manage public sector assets.

Separate consortia are formed for each PFI bid, with Bovis Lend Lease providing the construction expertise and a financial institution, usually the Bank of Scotland, acting as investment partner. Many projects, particularly in healthcare, also involve a soft facilities management provider and another group company, Vita Lend Lease, maintains the completed buildings.

In 2005 Catalyst Lend Lease was founded to oversee the development of the business, manage future bids and oversee the asset management of Lend Lease’s PFI and PPP investments in the UK. In 2006, Catalyst Investment Holdings Ltd was formed by Bovis Lend Lease Holdings Ltd and the Bank of Scotland to hold and manage the two businesses’ equity investments in 11 PFI projects.’ (Bovis website)

The vehicle through which the BSF project is to be run is the ‘Local Education Partnership’. The LEP is a joint venture company controlled by the private contractors who are awarded the contract. The composition of a LEP is: private contractor(s) 80%, Partnership for Schools (PfS – the DFES agency) 10%, BCC 10%. The contract will be for a period of up to 20 years.

This BSF programme carries 3 big threats :

1. Loss of services
The private sector regards the LEP, and the BSF programme in general, as a means of positioning themselves to gain access to the provision of educational and children’s services, and to use it as a springboard to bid for other Council services, cherry-picking the ones that are profitable.

2. Loss of jobs, worsening conditions
If services are outsourced many jobs in the City Council will disappear. The record of privatisation in the public sector is that pay is cut and conditions of employment are worsened in order to ensure profits for private companies.

3. Loss of democracy
Councils will come and go but the BSF consortium will remain for up to 20 years – which is likely to mean permanently in place. The LEP is supposed to be answerable to the Council, but it brings the logic of business methods and profitability into the heart of local government, and with it the danger that the tail will wag the dog – the LEP will impose its own logic on the Council.

Time is running short and the trade union movement in Birmingham, let alone the users of services, are still largely unaware of the threat that BSF poses. We have three urgent tasks: to find out what the BSF contract says about outsourcing; to spread information as fast and as widely as possible; and to gear up for a campaign to defend services against privatisation through BSF.

Academies

The second form of privatisation I want to talk about is Academies. I think everyone here knows what they are – in short:

• state schools
• secondary or all-through
• under private school legislation
• funded directly by government
• outside LEA
• run by private sponsors
• not for profit
• sponsors pay up to £2 million (often much less)
• government funding of up to £35 million for building
• government pays all future costs
• sponsor owns the land and buildings
• sponsor appoints a majority of the school governing body
• appoints and promotes staff
• freedom over staff pay and conditions
• freedom to devise the curriculum

In Birmingham 6 existing schools are planed to be replaced by Academies, with sponsors as follows:

Shenley Court and Heartlands – Edutrust (a newly-formed charity led by Lord Bhatia, which has never run a school)
St Albans’s and Harborne Hill – Ark (a charity set up by hedge fund investors.They already run several Academies in London))
Sheldon Heath – King Edward VI Foundation (who run several private and grammar schools in the city)
College High – sponsor not announced yet

In addition there is a seventh proposed Academy – the Eastside Creative Media and Arts Academy, and the threat, announced by the government last week, to turn some of the 27 so-called ‘failing’ schools into Academies.

So the stakes are very high. Academies aren’t run for profit (though who knows what a future government might do) but they are privatisation in the sense of handing over a public asset to private control. They also have damaging effects on neighbouring schools (for example by skewing their intakes to get more middle-class pupils and excluding high numbers of pupils). They are a threat to the very existence of a coherent and publicly-accountable secondary school system in Birmingham.

Why should we oppose Academies? For three reasons:
1. They won’t raise standards
2. They undermine local democracy and accountability
3. They are a threat to teachers’ and other school workers’ pay and conditions.
I haven’t time to go into all these in any detail, but briefly…

1. Standards

The government’s own commissioned evaluation, the Academies 4th Annual Report (PricewaterhouseCoopers July 2007) said the following:

‘…across the 21 Academies that were open in 2006, 40 per cent of pupils achieved Key Stage 4 Level 2 (5+ A*-C)… When compared to other similar schools, the level of performance in Academies in 2006 was similar to the two comparison groups (both 41 per cent compared to the Academy average of 40 per cent)… (PWC 2007, p36)

What the report is saying here is that Academies performed no better than similar schools which are not Academies. This is in spite of all the hype, all the extra funding, all the expertise which sponsors were supposed to bring. In short, it completely undermines the government’s claim that Academies do better.

Those that did improve did so for two main reasons: they changed their intake to admit more middle-class pupils (who tend to do better in exams), and they entered pupils for easier exams. See the Anti-Academies Alliance website for more information.

2. Democracy

A community school governing body has one-third elected parents, and places by right for elected staff representatives. An Academy governing body has a majority of governors appointed by the sponsor. There is only one place by right for an elected parent, and none at all for a staff governor.

Academies are not part of the local authority (in spite of the pretence by BCC) so they are not accountable to councillors or through the ballot box.

Edutrust and Ark, as well as many other sponsors, want to set up chains of Academies (in effect rivalling LEAs), in which case the key decisions are not made by the governing body but by the central board of trustees or directors.

Finally, the so-called consultation process is completely undemocratic, because the case against Academies is not allowed to be put and because the decision to have an Academy has already been made behind closed doors.

3. Workers’ pay and conditions

Academies are set up under private school legislation, so they are not bound by national pay and conditions agreements – in fact they don’t even have to recognise unions at all. Ark has just admitted, contrary to what BCC has been promising, that it won’t pay teachers on the national scales, and moves up the scale are dependent on their own performance management system. Teachers at two schools in Bolton and one in Derby are currently involved in strike action over pay if their schools become Academies.

Furthermore, any agreements or promises the sponsors make today they can break tomorrow, and there is nothing parents, school workers, students or Birmingham voters can do about, even though we pay for it through our taxes.

The Eastside Creative and Media Arts Academy

This is a proposal for a regional Academy in Birmingham, based in Eastside, geared to the ‘creative industries’, and admitting students at age 14 and 16. The sponsors are Birmingham City University (formerly the University of Central England) and the Ormiston Trust, a local company involved in both sponsoring Academies (2 in Sandwell, 1 in Walsall, 1 in Essex) and in the project management of Academy proposals.

All our arguments against Academies apply to this one, but there is one feature of the Eastside Academy which is different from all other Academies – it is going to select all its students. 300 pupils will be selected for admission at age 14 and the rest at 16. It claims that it will select by ‘aptitude’, but all the evidence about forms of selection indicates that they turn out to be forms of social selection. You just have to ask yourself, who will be the students most likely to demonstrate ‘aptitude’ in the arts? It will be those who have had the private music lessons, who go to ballet classes, who belong to drama groups – and they will predominantly be those students from middle-class backgrounds. In Birmingham 33% of pupils are on free school meals. How likely is it that 33% of the Eastside entrants will be? How likely that young people from poor areas such as the King’s Norton estate, with 45% on FSM, will be fairly represented? Isn’t it much more likely that the Academy will be more like a new grammar school in the city, specialising in the arts?

The Eastside Academy will damage other schools, in two ways. First, it will undermine other schools and colleges specialising in the arts – schools which do not have the luxury of creaming off the most talented students.

Second, it serves to legitimise the principle of selection on other grounds, so that it can be applied throughout the school system under the rubric of ‘diversity and choice’. It is no accident that two days after the Eastside Academy plan was launched by Birmingham City Council on 13 December 2007, Tony Howell said that some children should have the option to leave the classroom at 14 to learn a trade (BBC News 16 December). The consequence would be an even more socially-segregated school system.

The threat to the 27 Birmingham schools

Ed Balls, the current Secretary of State for Education, Children and Young People, announced last week that 638 secondary schools in England in which 30% of pupils did not achieve 5 ‘good’ GCSEs including English and maths in 2007 may be turned into Academies, into Trusts (a sort of Academy-lite), or closed. This applies to 27 schools here in Birmingham, which represents 36% of the City’s secondary capacity.

These 27 schools serve the poorest areas of the city and have high levels of FSM, yet the majority of them are succeeding against the odds. 18 of the 27 Birmingham schools have Contextual Value Added scores above the 1000 threshold (including five of the currently proposed academies), demonstrating that pupils are making above-average progress. The large majority of the 27 also have favourable Ofsted reports which praise the schools for improving. But in spite of this they are to be dragooned into becoming academies, trusts, to be twinned with ‘better performing schools’, or simply closed. Apparently the government will decide on their fate, on the basis of unknown criteria, in the autumn term. £400 million will be allocated to ‘support’ the 638 schools, but most of it is to pay for them to become academies and trusts, not to support teachers in the classroom.

This is a brutal attack on the school system in Birmingham, and in particular on working-class schools, which will throw the 27 schools into turmoil. Labour is ‘acting tough’ in order to shore up its failing school policies and impose more Academies and trusts. It attempts to be a ‘quick fix’ solution to the issue of raising standards of attainment in socially disadvantaged areas which contradicts everything we know about the process of improvement. It can only increase instability and anxiety in these schools, leading to demoralisation and problems of recruitment among students and staff.

AABA, the Alliance Against Birmingham Academies (which is supported by the NUT, NASUWT, ATL, Unison and GMB), has called for a collective response, rather than leaving each school to battle on in isolation, and a community response, in which every parent, every student, every citizen who is affected can participate. It has called on the Local Authority to arrange an initial meeting of governors, headteachers and teachers, school unions and parents’ organisations of the 27 schools as soon as possible.

So far the campaign against Academies in Birmingham has had only a limited response from teachers, parents and school workers, compared to campaigns elsewhere. This needs to change. We have been winning the battle of ideas – everyone in the country knows now how contentious the policy is – but we risk losing the struggle on the ground here in Birmingham. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of secondary schooling in Birmingham is at stake.

To contact the Alliance Against Birmingham Academies; phone 07842199352 or email no2academies@hotmail.co.uk

Birmingham Local Election Results

In the context of a national swing to the right and in the aftermath of a recent split which has drained time, energy and resources, the Birmingham local election results can be counted as reasonably successful. Respect has survived.

Within that overall positive framework there is cause for celebration and some disappointment. The victory in Sparkbrook saw the share of the vote increase slightly. It gives Respect all three councillors and provides a springboard for future gains in that area. It is the result of hard work by the two incumbent councillors in maintaining a presence throughout the year, delivering improvements for local residents and campaigning for real needs such as more school places. This was allied to the continuing resonance of Respect’s name and Salma Yaqoob’s high profile. In the end it all delivered a thumping 43% of the vote. As has been pointed out elsewhere, this was delivered despite diverting resources out of Sparkbrook to help in other areas, notably Springfield.

Springfield was worked very hard last year, but was a big casualty of the split. Work stopped and the dynamic ceased. To add to the problems, a boundary change brought in more unfavourable areas. This year the gauntlet was picked up by Salma Iqbal, who led a very positive campaign which drew in many new helpers, including from out of Birmingham. In a six week period of intense work, the damage was repaired, so that in the end the vote dropped marginally from 26% to 25%, but was essentially maintained. The leaflets featured local, all-Birmingham and international issues, combining attacks on Britain’s war – mongering abroad with supporting local residents’ opposition to the “red route”. Full support was given to the local Council workers’ dispute over equal pay.

The feedback on the doorstep was positive and encouraging and towards the end, the window posters started going up again. Such was the feeling as we went around; we must be honest and admit some of us thought Salma could win it. In that sense there is of course disappointment. Yet, Salma deserves a big vote of thanks for her tireless efforts. Without the abuse of the postal vote system, by New Labour in particular, she could have come very close.

Mushtaq again, almost single-handedly, led the campaign in Nechells. Yet with scarce resources he came second on 19%, only a slight drop on last year.

Abdul Aziz managed 20% in Aston, a drop from 28% last year. Socialist Resistance supporters who worked for him reported that he suffered from a lack of resources; there was more support out there for Respect than he could physically tap into. More focussed and detailed literature would have helped.

The bigger disappointment was in Kings Heath. This was another casualty of the split. The work in the area collapsed in the previous period, the Muslim vote was not mobilised this time and despite a well organised, well run campaign, where the candidate made an impressive mark at the hustings, for example, the damage had been done. There was also more of a leftist Labour opponent to contend with. On a positive note, new activists in that area have come forwards and there is now the project of building a new branch and starting some serious local work. A vote of 5% is the baseline for future development.

During the campaign there was a very successful rally in the town centre, combining local council workers, teachers and other public sector workers. The several thousand strong rally and demonstration was leafleted by Respect giving its full support to the strikes.

So, Respect’s vital foothold in the city has been maintained. It now has the responsibility and opportunity to move outwards and become more of an all-Birmingham organisation.

The unending attacks on Muslims, Council workers, the unemployed and other oppressed layers will need countering. The big challenge of the next General election also awaits.

On the electoral level there is life outside of Respect in Birmingham, but not a great deal of it. The Greens went up from 14% to 16% in their one targeted ward of Bournville. The Socialist Labour Party went down slightly in Handsworth Wood to 13% from 15% and Raghib Ahsan managed 11% in Lozells and East Handsworth, down from 20% last year.

The Tories gained six more seats and so the ruling Tory – Liberal Democratic coalition will remain in power. The BNP vote either fell slightly or was maintained.

The task of building a political alternative to the neo-liberal mainstream and the far right is as urgent as ever. That is the task of Respect. Socialist Resistance will play its part in helping make it happen.