Murdoch grows a conscience?

Today the Times had the unfathomable gumption to run the above cartoon – under the headline ‘Priorities’ – in a brazen attempt to divert attention from the phone-hacking scandal to the issue of famine in Somalia. What an incredulous and cynical piece of posturing by the Murdoch Empire!

Every day 25,000 people die of starvation or malnutrition. Every year six million children die of hunger. How many times has this been the lead story on Sky News? Or the front page of the Sun or the Times? How many times were these issues ignored in favour of inane stories obtained through ill-gotten means? Where were Rupert Murdoch’s ‘priorities’ then? What a convenient time to grow a conscience.

Time to hold Rupert Murdoch and the government to account

There is perhaps no greater argument against unfettered free markets and unregulated media monopolies than the ongoing phone-hacking fiasco engulfing Rupert Murdoch’s News International. Free markets and open media are heralded as central tenets of liberal democracy – but in the last few weeks we have seen the most grotesque flaunting of our democratic principles. Phone hacking, the utilisation of state surveillance, bribery of police, the blurring of lines between big business and government, and the concentration of media into the hands of a narrow elite are all more commonly associated with totalitarianism than democracy.

Today’s arrest of Rebekah Brooks shows that News International is rotten to the core (if anyone was in any doubt) and demonstrates that corporations cannot be trusted to remain ethical and aboveboard without stringent regulation. Just as investment banking should be held to account for the recent financial crash, so should media moguls be held responsible for their disregard of democratic principles. Furthermore, we should champion a diverse, transparent and plural media which scrutinises – rather than fraternises with – government.

The News of the World – and along with it hundreds of jobs – was sacrificed to protect Brooks – but now the tentacles of corruption delve so deep into News International that Brooks herself – Murdoch’s protégé – has become the sacrificial lamb. Brooks must be held to account for what she has done – but the buck doesn’t stop with her. Rupert Murdoch himself must be brought to justice whilst the government – inextricably linked to the Murdoch Empire – must answer for its illegitimate corporate sycophancy.

Left teach right a lesson in union bashing‏

I was saddened to read Alice Miles' latest New Statesman column – Teachers are striking for all the wrong reasons – resorting to the same trade union bashing and reactionary rhetoric of the right-wing media. Miles concludes:

The terrible achievements of the teachers’ unions, with their apparent belief that good and bad teachers should be treated the same in the name of equity, is that, in the name of “comprehensive” education, they have allowed the school system to be captured by parent choice, which causes segregation and inequality. How sadly unintelligent it is to strike for higher pay and pensions rights, rather than addressing real deficiencies.

Miles' argument is flawed on a number of fundamental levels and she demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the roles of trade unions.

Firstly, it is not the purpose of trade unions to differentiate between "good" and "bad" teachers. Their role is to represent their members equally and fairly.

Secondly, it is not only wrong but worryingly misleading and intellectually questionable to suggest that unions "in the name of "comprehensive" education... have allowed the school system to be captured by parental choice, which causes segregation and inequality". This completely ignores the neo-liberal agenda of successive governments which has lead to the fragmentation of our inclusive comprehensive system through the promotion of free schools – all of which has been opposed by the teaching unions.

It is not the role of unions to become involved in policy decisions and the hostility to free schools by the NUT and NASUWT has been because it undermines the interests of their members. The logical conclusion of Miles' viewpoint is that free schools are a good thing because the erosion of union influence and the shedding of state control affords governors and parents the freedom to sack "bad" teachers – or teachers they simply don't like.

Finally it is deliberately misleading to suggest unions are striking "for higher pay and pensions rights, rather than addressing the real deficiencies". Again, it is not the role of trade unions to address "real deficiencies" – they are there to represent their members. Furthermore, asserting that the NUT and ATL are striking for higher pay demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the current industrial dispute.

The historical role of trade unions has been to improve the pay and working conditions of its members, but the current dispute – focusing as it does on fighting a rise in the pension age, increased contributions and an effective pay cut – represents a fundamental realignment and weakening of the role of trade unions. Trade unions are no longer concerned with improving conditions and are instead focussed on fighting the erosion of workers' rights.

Yet the powerful myth continues – perpetuated by mainstream media – that trade unions only go on strike to improve salaries. This distorted reality creates a false impression of industrial disputes and undermines public sympathy.

Popular debate should not concentrate on bringing public sector conditions down to the level of the private sector, it should seek to elevate private sector conditions to the level of the public sector. In order to achieve this we need strong and robust unions in both the public and private sectors. Furthermore, the progressive and left-wing media must not regurgitate the same right-wing bile as the mainstream media and must challenge ongoing myths and lies. For instance, why is the average public sector pension – £7,000 per annum according to the TUC – thought to be "gold plated"? Thankfully, I have the freedom to differentiate between "good" and "bad" journalism.

Marxism 2011: Britain’s Trot Talent

Is the Pope a Catholic? Do bears shit in the woods? Are the SWP calling for a General Strike?

Some questions we instinctively know the answer to and Marxism 2011 – the SWP’s annual political conference – was saturated with the familiar calls for a General Strike. Instead of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, it’s The Marxist Who Cried General Strike. And both exclamations – repeated ad infinitum without foundation – quickly lose any relevance or significance.

But this time it’s different and last Thursday – on the same day as mass strikes in the public sector – Mark Campbell – a UCU union rep and SWP member – told Marxism’s opening rally that “the call for a General Strike is no longer an abstract slogan”.

Campbell’s proclamation was met with rapturous applause and a spontaneous rendition of One Solution Revolution – but it does give a fascinating insight into SWP tactics. Were they aware that all their previous calls for a General Strike were abstract demands?

A General Strike cannot come through decree, it must evolve through the inclusion of more and more workers and the involvement of more and more struggles. If workers are going to embark on a long and bitter industrial dispute, they need to be assured in their fight and possess a heightened consciousness – they can’t simply be following orders or abstract slogans.

There are a number of concrete reasons why calling for a General Strike is a tactical error. Firstly, there is the legal issue which – because unions cannot strike in sympathy or for political reasons – means a General Strike is illegal. Secondly – and closely linked to this – is the problem with public perception. Pervasive mainstream media hostility to trade unionism has created an insidious opposition to the prospect of strike action which can only be countered incrementally from the bottom-up. Different conflicts, issues and disputes in different trade unions have to be addressed simultaneously with action being co-ordinated locally and nationally on the same days. This, in effect, would represent a General Strike but the SWP’s radical rhetoric fuels the fire of a reactionary media and serves to alienate many workers who would otherwise sympathise with the struggle.

The Marxism festival illustrates that the SWP suffers from a number of intellectual inconsistencies and, one assumes, it comes from the problematic concept of democratic centralism. On the one hand, the SWP criticise the Soviet Union and Cuba for being top-down but, on the other, the central committee issue General Strike diktats to the British labour movement. On the one hand, they criticise the post-war Labour government for bourgeois collaboration and dismiss the welfare state and state control as distractions from building revolutionary socialism but, on the other hand, they claim to lead the fight against public sector cuts and privatisation. As Maxine Bowler said at a seminar on the USSR: “capitalism will use all sorts of strategies to make sure it maintains itself”. So why defend social democracy which curbs revolutionary zeal? Surely, from an SWP perspective, the best way to achieve proletarian revolution is from the most cut-throat and ruthless capitalism?

The true beauty and fascination of Marxism, however, lies not in the inconsistencies of SWP dogmatism but in the wealth of eminently reasonable and inspiring non-SWP speakers it attracts – whether it’s Jeremy Corbyn championing the progressive governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, Richard Wilkinson with his empirical dissection of inequality or Tariq Ali denouncing the obsequious acquiescence of Ed Miliband to Tory monetarism. It’s about the myriad of left-wing eccentrics it attracts – whether it’s the International Bolshevik Tendency heralding North Korea or the Workers Revolutionary Party starting a near-brawl. If the SWP can attract thousands of activists to a festival on revolutionary socialism, just think how many more can be attracted to a broad and inclusive movement against government cuts. Now if only the Labour Party would play ball...

The Doctors' Revolution

Michael Tynan, Emeritus Professor of Paediatric Cardiology, first visited Cuba in 1987 to provide expert advice to a new children's heart unit at the William Soler Hospital in Havana. Over 20 years later and Cuba is the only country in the world to offer foetal heart scanning as a standard part of pre-natal care, infant mortality is one of the lowest in the world and Michael has just finished making a documentary film – The Doctors' Revolution – charting the struggle and success of Cuba's health system.

Cuba first began to focus on pre-natal heart defects in the 1980s when infant mortality had been brought down to Western levels. Maternal obstetric care was sorted and children were no longer dying from curable diseases such as malnutrition and pneumonia. Tynan differentiates Cuba from other developing countries:

In a Third World context, infant deaths resulting from heart disease are almost irrelevant because you’re more concerned with clean water and maternal care. As far as I can interpret, Cuba realised that congenital heart defects were an increasingly important proportion of the now pretty low infant mortality.

The Doctors’ Revolution tells the story of a young boy, Felix, with a congenital narrowing of the aorta. Although it required major and potentially dangerous surgery, a relatively simple piece of equipment could have been used to open up the valve leading to Felix’s heart.

Unfortunately, due to the blockade, and aside from a complicated – and in Tynan’s view overly bureaucratic – procurement system, the hospital was unable to order the equipment internationally because it was manufactured in the United States.

Although there is scope for limited humanitarian medical exchange between the US and Cuba, Tynan explains that Cuba’s internationalism and record of offering healthcare to developing countries is seen by the US as an attempt to profiteer:

Before Felix there seemed to be a tightening of restrictions. The United States government decided that equipment being exported to Cuba was being used by children from other countries and this contravened their rules. They assumed – because this is how healthcare in the West goes – that this was being done for financial gain so they intensified the embargo and wanted details of every child that was using the equipment. What right does the US government have to demand the medical history of a patient in another country? This turn of the screw meant there were long hold-ups and difficulties in getting specific pieces of equipment.

The situation with the US government is further complicated because, if there is an irregularity, then the person liable for prosecution is the person responsible for where it originated in the States. As Tynan notes, this has resulted in medical equipment coming to Cuba from the US in very roundabout ways: “Things from America could go via France or Madagascar and, by the time they got to Cuba, they were more expensive because everybody had had their piece of the action along the way”.

Considering the intensification of the blockade, Cuba’s achievements in the field of healthcare – particularly in the areas of infant mortality, life expectancy and internationalism – are nothing short of miraculous. As far as Tynan is concerned, it is the organisation of the Cuban health system which lies at the heart of this success:

The most impressive thing about the Cuban health service is the organisation of preventative medicine through the family practitioner. If you don’t take your insulin for your diabetes then the GP wants to know why and it’s not left to you to go along and ask for a prescription. That’s the most impressive thing – even more than the high-tech medicine.

After the revolution, public healthcare was based on the Soviet model of the polyclinic and it wasn’t until the late 1970s that they moved to a family-centred model based on preventative and proactive medicine. There are still a high proportion of un-booked new born deliveries in Britain – but that’s very rare in Cuba because GPs live within the community they serve. As Tynan says:

It’s very much a patient-family-community healthcare system. The number of doctors they have – and the number of nurses who are just as important – is amazing. They have as many doctors in Cuba for 11 million people as we have in Britain for 60 million.

Cuba’s commitment to public health has been the heartbeat of their socialist programme – both domestically and internationally – since their struggle against Batista in the 1950s. Following the exodus of significant numbers of doctors after Castro’s victory, Cuba needed to train large numbers of doctors and nurses in a programme Tynan equates in size and significance to the literacy campaigns.

It was central to their ideas when they started and I think it was intensified by their experience during the revolution in the Sierra Maestra. The enemy had cannons and tanks but they had a doctor – and the people had never seen a doctor before. The basic socialist ideas were reinforced by what they saw of the peasant life in rural areas. And of course Che Guevara must have had some input because he’d been through Latin America and seen various levels of healthcare.

The diversity of the medical profession in Cuba testifies to the increased opportunities ushered in by the revolution. On Tynan’s first visit to Cuba he met a young doctor who attributed his success to the victory of the 26th July Movement:

He was the son of a garage mechanic and, although it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the son of a garage mechanic could become a doctor in England now, it was well beyond the realm of possibility in Cuba before the revolution. The medical school in Havana was dominated by the white middle-class of Spanish decent.

Although called The Doctors’ Revolution – because Tynan himself and many of the people he interviews are doctors – Tynan recognises and praises the work of all health workers in Cuba:

Just like any healthcare system the doctors are just the head on the beer. They have the most glamorous role but plenty of people would die after surgery if they didn’t have physiotherapy. Then there are all the radiology technicians whose expertise is central and the people working in pathology departments, dieticians, dentists and nurses.

Cuba’s commitment to public health and its associated success – at home and around the world in developing countries and disaster zones – is not only remarkable considering the economic and political context in which it exists, but it stands as a shining beacon to the Western world of what is possible if you prioritise public health and international solidarity.

This article was originally written for CubaSi magazine

Dawkins’ divine intervention challenges faith in his atheist integrity

The creation of the New College of the Humanities (NCoH) – a new private university in London staffed by some of the world’s leading academics and charging fees of £18,000 per year – is a frightening extension of the government’s growing thirst for free-marketisation. The increase of competition within the educational field promises to widen the gap between the richest and poorest in society and has already given birth to an increase in university tuition fees and the growth of free schools. However it is the curious involvement of Professor Richard Dawkins – the eminent biologist and renowned atheist – which seems particularly odd.

Firstly, it is important to recognise that the rise of free schools, the increase in tuition fees and the foundation of NCoH are part of the same cohesive neo-liberal project which believes free-market principles improve educational standards due to increased competition. NCoH is the logical conclusion of the rise of free schools because it comes as a result of the erosion of state authority and the idea that the market can provide for everyone’s needs. The enforced abdication of state authority creates a power vacuum which is filled by other powerful actors – such as private companies or organised religion.

The establishment of NCoH does not in itself contradict Dawkins’ disciplined atheism but – when contextualised within the narrative of educational liberalisation and marketisation – it can be seen to conflict with Dawkins’ rabid religious scepticism because the rise of free schools has fortified the influence of organised religion.

The problem with free schools

There are numerous reasons why free schools reinforce hierarchy and exacerbate social division but – in this case – the most pressing factor is the ascension of faith schools. Free schools in Britain are based on a Swedish model which has been criticised for rapidly increasing the number of religious schools, giving influence to controversial institutions such as the Church of Scientology and the Plymouth Brethren, and empowering fundamentalist Islamic organisations. Indeed, half of Michael Gove’s first round of free schools had a religious ethos.

Gove himself has acknowledged concerns that faith schools may use new legislation to push their own agenda but – unlike in Sweden – no guidance has been issued relating to free school applications. Indeed, David Cameron’s favourite think-tank, the right-wing Policy Exchange, argued in its Faith Schools We Can Believe In paper that free schools are increasingly vulnerable to extremist influences.

Many faith schools have remained within the private sector so as to not compromise their religious beliefs but, under a free school system, they can access state funding without state control. Furthermore, teachers in free schools are not required to hold recognised teaching qualifications.

Dawkins and religious education

According to The God Delusion Professor Dawkins believes:

Children are educated, again often from a very early age, with members of a religious in-group and separately from children whose families adhere to other religions. It is not an exaggeration to say that the troubles in Northern Ireland would disappear in a generation if segregated schooling was abolished.

Dawkins conceptualises religious education and the enforced endowment of religious beliefs onto children as a form of child abuse and lies at the very core of his critique of religion. One facet of this criticism is that segregation and in/out groups creates conflict. Dawkins’ association with NCoH is therefore hypocritical on two levels. Firstly, opportunity to develop the NCoH has only arisen because of the spread of free schools and the inevitable rise of faith schools – something which Dawkins, if he is to remain intellectually consistent, should be opposing. Secondly, both free schools and elitist higher education further encourages segregation on the basis of wealth and class. Dawkins criticises religion for encouraging segregation, so why doesn’t he apply the same analysis to education?

Dawkins’ involvement with the NCoH neo-liberal experiment suggests that he may be more interested in his own wealth and self-interest than academic integrity. According to the Bible, Jesus told his disciples “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. Fortunately, for Richard Dawkins at least, there’s no such place as the kingdom of God.

This article was originally written for Left Foot Forward and can be read here.

Anger at GMB signing up to Cable

The GMB's decision to invite Vince Cable to speak at their national conference today was a curious one but – considering the media attention given to Cable's appearance – it can be viewed as a tactical masterstroke.

Although Cable regurgitated familiar soundbites about the need for cuts and the economic mess left by Labour, it was the hostile reaction of the GMB delegates which grabbed the headlines. Government stooges usually speak to economic acolytes at business galas in the City to whoops of agreement and media silence, but – because Cable spoke at a trade union conference – it exposed the anger at government cuts and gave a platform to left-wing economic arguments.

I was at GMB conference for the speech and – although many delegates thought Cable shouldn't have been given the platform – his appearance helps send a message to the outside world that there is a hunger for economic alternatives. Furthermore – with palpable anger permeating the conference centre – it will galvanise the trade union movement into action. Many of the delegates were spitting blood – would they have been quite so vitriolic with a leftie keynote speaker? Hopefully their anger will be transformed into workplace organisation and community activism.

In its simplest sense, Cable's appearance acts as a warning to trade unions. It is a threat that co-ordinated strikes will result in a crack-down of anti-union legislation. But what does it matter about legislation when trade unions are too afraid to strike anyway? The sole weapon of trade unions is the power – or threat – of industrial action. Without it they are ineffective and impotent. If the labour movement allows itself to be bullied out of co-ordinated action then it is admitting defeat. Cable's rhetoric shows the government is running scared; now is not the time to concede ground. His appearance at GMB conference is not a concession to neo-liberalism; it is a catalyst for fight-back and a powerful message to the rest of the country.