Blue for Eurovision

Longtime readers know this blog is one of the few standard bearers for Eurovision in the British left. In my self-declared role as its champion in our ghetto I am happy to report that, for once, the UK is in danger of entering a contender. The BBC have shown a bit of Eurovision nous and has selected an act those pesky continentals will have heard of, and that act is the recently-reformed Blue.

It seems the lessons have been learned from last year's debacle. Contrary to popular myth, the UK has performed dismally in recent years not because of the Iraq War or the Putin/Gazprom-orchestrated block vote. The explanation for our dismal scoring is more mundane: one, our songs have been crap; and two, they've been fronted by complete nobodies.

Blue aren't to my tastes, but they are known to the European record-buying public. They have scored number ones in Italy and the Netherlands, and top ten hits in Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland. Will this be enough to see off the regional star power of other entries? We shall see.

Sadly, Blue's song, I Can, isn't available anywhere at the moment. So allow me to play out with this wonderful ditty from last year's contest. This choice had absolutely nothing to do with Paula Seling.

Unison Socialist Party Members Vindicated

The press statement below from the Socialist Party is very good news. There is a long and sorry tradition of bureaucratic proscriptions and bans being used against "undesirables" in our movement. The court judgement against Unison could mean their day is done:

At a time when 150,000 council workers are facing redundancy and another 100,000 have been told they will be sacked if they don’t accept cuts in their pay and conditions UNISON members would rightly expect that every minute and every penny of union resources be spent on fighting the cuts.

However, UNISON’s leadership have spent three years and tens of thousands of pounds witch-hunting some of its most effective fighters. Today an Employment Tribunal has ruled that campaign of bullying to be unlawful. All of the trumped up charges against the four UNISON activists and Socialist Party members – Glenn Kelly, Brian Debus, Onay Kasab and Suzanne Muna – were thrown out. UNISON is now required to reinstate all four to their positions in the union including Glenn Kelly being put back on the National Executive of the union.

UNISON members will be lobbying the National Executive on 8 February to demand that this is immediately carried out.

Egypt's Day of Rage

You wait years for a revolution, and then two turn up at once. With the revolutionary process at an earlier stage than Tunisia, Egypt nevertheless stands on the brink.

At the time of writing Hosni Mubarak's regime is looking very shaky indeed. The excellent coverage on Al Jazeera this evening has broadcast images of the National Democratic Party's Cairo headquarters being looted and then torched without any kind of intervention from the security forces (simultaneously, protesters are apparently protecting the the priceless artifacts housed in the Egyptian Museum, making attempts by the BBC to portray them as "a mob" look lazy and unsustainable). Evening news broadcasts on terrestrial channels have shown footage of protesters and riot police squaring up and fighting running battles earlier in the day. But now, Al Jazeera is saying the police have left the streets and been replaced by the army. Again, like Tunisia, the army were welcomed by some sections of the uprising as a power that will protect them from the regime. On the other hand, as troops approach strategic infrastructure (TV and radio stations, security apparatus ministries) the protesters are giving the military's an increasingly frosty reception.

Again, as with Tunisia the army can play a Bonapartist role in the Marxist sense of the term. According to Ibrahim Arafat of Qatar University, the army and the rest of the security apparatus are institutionally separated in the Tunisian and Egyptian dictatorships. Because the military played no overt role in the day-to-day repression of the two regimes it could appear as an entity standing above and apart from the rest of society, in a manner analogous to Britain's constitutional monarchy's relationship to mainstream politics. Therefore it can pose as the repository of all manner of hopes and illusions - as guarantors of the constitution, as protecters of the nation, and so on. This institutional separation is the basis of an ideological cloak that hides the fact the military top brass are as much a part of the ancien regime as Ben Ali's and Mubarak's secret police henchmen.

Nevertheless the army is not immune from the forces demolishing the regime's foundations. The army is overwhelmingly working class in composition. The military brass value their own necks. This underlines the main question: which direction will the army swing? Will they dampen down the protests and obey the president's increasingly desperate decrees, or refuse to carry out his orders? And if so, what role will it go onto play in a post-Mubarak society?

With any luck, Hosni Mubarak will follow the footsteps of his son and hightail it out on a plane. I wouldn't be surprised if an underling's already been on the phone to the retirement home for washed-up despots in Saudi Arabia. In the mean time not only will other North African and Middle Eastern dictatorships and monarchies be biting their fingernails, the USA itself will be concerned for its strategic interests. Along with Israel and Saudi Arabia, Egypt is the third key US regional ally. The protesters are fully aware the self-proclaimed champion of democracy and universal human rights have been training and supplying the security apparatus for many years. And US planners know one mistaken step could see their carefully-crafted geopolitical strategy unravel as quickly as Mubarak's legitimacy.

NB: Excerpts of a translated Egyptian protest manual are available here, and follow the uprising's Twitter topic here.

Tommy Sheridan Sentenced To Three Years

Karen Greensheild, a reporter with STV News at Tommy Sheridan's sentencing this morning tweeted "Scent of blood, anticipation in the air, wonder if this is what it's like at a Public Hanging?" How could the atmosphere be otherwise? Since being found guilty of perjury charges on December 23rd the presiding judge Lord Bracadale told Tommy he could expect a prison sentence.

In a 45 minute long mitigation speech to the judge, Tommy refused to admit his guilt, but talked about his low risk of reoffending, the length of perjury sentences, his and Gail Sheridan's health, and his caring responsibilities toward his Dad. Sentencing, Lord Bracadale said he thought Tommy was a "hard-working and effective politician" but that he "brought the walls of the temple crashing down on your own head", before imprisoning Tommy for three years. What a shame. What a waste.

No doubt this sentence will lead to another round of bilious infighting and denunciation. There will be more than a few people shopping around the far left for an organisation that suits them who stumble across what passes for the Sheridan "debate" and decide to take their time and effort elsewhere. And I can't blame them.

The whole process of the trial from the notorious SSP executive meeting on a November evening in 2004 to its denoument today has exposed an ugliness at the heart of the far left, an ugliness you wouldn't expect to find not in a movement built on solidarity and socialist values. Tommy's expectation that his comrades should lie for him so he could trouser £200k from the News of the World was contemptible, as were the shrill attacks on those who refused to risk perjury charges and told the truth in court. But equally appalling were the pre-and-post defamation trial actions by those SSP members who ensured Tommy's confession was leaked to the press, went out their way to collaborate with the police, and of course, have done nothing to disavow the actions of George McNeilage - the former best man who taped his admissions.

But what I find most disturbing is the frenzied attacks by those who reside in England and have absolutely no connection to the trial whatsoever. This hatred - for that is what it is - by members of nominally Trotskyist outfits closely resembles what you'd expect from a cult. When Scientologists are criticised, no one is surprised they intimidate and denounce opponents. That is, after all, what cults are all about. But for socialists to ape this behaviour? It speaks volumes of the fundamentally unhealthy organisational practices of self-described Leninist groups. Democratic centralism - a principle of organisation Lenin thought appropriate to mass parties, not tiny groups of a couple of thousand - tends not to be exercised around action, but rather is a principle for regulating the boundaries of permissible thought. Freedom of discussion becomes circumscribed discussion. Unity in action is, in practice, unity behind the positions formulated by the opaque and unaccountable executive/central committee. This is no recipe for generating critically minded working class politicians and Marxist cadre. But it does create a small following happy to swallow it all and regurgitate it when occasion demands. Such as when one of their key allies gets in a spot of bother with the law.

If there are political lessons to be drawn from this episode, they have to centre on the far left's culture, on its promotion of and slavishness toward charismatic leaders, its pronounced tendency toward group think, and its inability to handle disputes in anything but a mature fashion. If some good is to come from the tragic and shameful waste of Tommy Sheridan's fate, a thorough rethink of all this would be it.

Socialist Party on NSSN Anti-Cuts Campaign

This has been circulated to Socialist Party activists after Saturday's conference of the National Shop Stewards' Network agreed to set up its own anti-cuts campaign. This letter from Linda Taaffe is reproduced here for readers' info.

I want to thank everyone who attended and helped organise yesterday's excellent NSSN Anti-Cuts Conference in Camden. Well over 500 shop stewards/workplace reps, community campaigners and students debated whether the NSSN should launch an anti-cuts campaign. It was a model of democratic debate with both sides having the same number of speakers and equal speaking time. After 2 and a half hours of discussion, the trade union delegates at the Conference voted to launch the anti-cuts campaign by 305 votes to 89. We then went on to elect a Campaign Committee. As we received 11 nominations for the proposed committee of 10, Conference agreed to accept the slightly enlarged committee, which will meet over the next couple of weeks.

We are now looking forward to working with all other forces fighting the cuts. We will especially welcome the suggestion in Matt Wrack’s (Gen Sec FBU) letter last week for a Unity conference called by the Trade Union Coordinating Group (TUCG). We will also follow through on the initial contacts made with the other anti-cuts organisations to see how we can work together more smoothly. Just before the Conference, the NSSN signed a letter along with Coalition of Resistance, Right to Work and others to the TUC offering our assistance to build for the biggest possible turnout at the demo in London on March 26th.

We will lobby on that march and in all other arenas for the unions to organise co-ordinated strike action to defeat the government's cuts. We also believe that the platform of speakers on the day should include those workers and students who are currently fighting the cuts. Our NSSN campaign has been launched on a clear 'Oppose ALL cuts' platform and will therefore call on Labour councils to refuse to implement the cuts. We will organise protests and support industrial action against them if they vote to pass the attacks onto workers’ jobs and services.

The character of the NSSN will not change as a result of Saturday’s decision. We will still play a crucial role in bringing together and developing trade union activists at the grassroots, which we hope and believe, will help revitalise the trade union movement. The continuing attacks by the ConDems on trade union rights are clearly linked to trying to prevent workers fighting back against the cuts and the bosses’ offensive.

The next meeting of the NSSN Steering Committee will be on February 19th, where we can begin to discuss, amongst other things, the planning for the annual NSSN conference in the summer, as well as how the Network will continue to organise rank and file workers. We appeal to whole of the Steering Committee to recognise the democratic decision of the Conference and play a full part in the development of the NSSN. We are confident that the decision yesterday will actually bring us in contact with a whole new layer of workers as they confront this brutal cuts package.

Linda Taaffe (NSSN Secretary)

Melanie Phillips: Marketing Bigotry

There are days I wish Melanie Phillips would act like a proper troll and only sally forth from under the bridge to harass passing goats. But as the Daily Mail columnist you love to hate, Mel wouldn't be doing her job if she didn't cause a shit storm once in a while. And that's what she's gone and done this morning with her latest rant, 'Yes, gays have often been the victims of prejudice. But they now risk becoming the new McCarthyites' (you can read the snappily-titled piece here without having to visit Mail Online).

In her latest broadside against The Permissiveness Undermining Our Nation and Endangering Your Children, Mel uncovers a secret plot hatched by the cunning homosexualists who pull the government's strings. As "part of the ruthless campaign by the gay rights lobby to destroy the very ­concept of normal sexual behaviour" the biggest threat to kids are no longer the perverts hanging round the school gates, but the gay propaganda infiltrating exercise books and course content. Witness the shocking imminent changes to the curriculum:

"In geography, for example, they will be told to consider why homosexuals move from the countryside to cities. In maths, they will be taught statistics through census findings about the number of homosexuals in the population.

In science, they will be directed to animal species such as emperor penguins and sea horses, where the male takes a lead role in raising its young."

Trigonometry exercises illustrated by pink triangles, crafts geared around the production of soft furnishings, French replaced by Polari, and Year Ones not progressing until they've learned how to spell 'tribadism' can only be a fey handclap away. In short, unless we stop this sick filth now our schools will become madrassas for queer fundamentalism. People will stop having babies, Britain as we know it will vanish and this sceptered isle will be open to colonisation by the Allah-worshipping hordes.

In the real world and not the one existing inside Mel's bigoted brain, it is entirely proper the curriculum normalises trans, lesbian, bi and gay folk. The Tories especially have a historical debt to pay as Section 28 was introduced on their watch - a debt Dave himself has acknowledged and apologised for - and any positive moves to making good on that should be welcomed. But despite the massive strides made in gay acceptance legally, culturally, and socially these last 30 years, homophobic bullying remains an unwelcome rite of passage for LGBT and straight kids alike. As this BBC Report from 2007 shows, far from schools being the gay-friendly spaces Mel imagines them to be bullying remains endemic.

Not that Mel and her ilk particularly care. Like the seriously deranged big mouths across The Pond, Mel is a professional right wing provocateur. She knows as well as anyone her career as a columnist and media pundit would be done if she ceased raiding the circa 1981 Monday Club ideological grab bag. She ain't going to shut up as long as there's a buck to be made.

This material interest in continued exposure fits those of Mel's employers as snug as a bug in a rug. A market exists for reflecting back the bigoted prejudices of the angry and the alienated, and is one The Mail has long since cornered. But in Britain it has pioneered the capturing of a new and growing audience interested in right wing news 'n' views: that of the outraged left/liberal/Labourist/Graun/Indy/C4News milieu. DMGT doesn't care what those muesli-eating Marxists and the occasional lefty celeb are tweeting about, just as long as the newest slice of reactionary bilge upsets them enough to drive more people to the website so they can be disgusted and angered, and who in their turn drive more people to the website.

In short what DMGT have is a business model for successfully attracting large numbers of relatively well educated, relatively affluent people who wouldn't ordinarily touch their toxic rag with a pair of hazmat gloves. It's a stroke of genius: exploit your opponents' right-on politics and they will market your putrefying product across their social media networks for you.

Just remember that next time Melanie Phillips says or writes something stupidly bigoted and controversial.

Too Many Cooks?

It's done. Yesterday a special conference of the National Shop Stewards Network voted by 305 to 89 to set up yet another anti-cuts campaign. As I've said before what with UK Uncut, Right to Work, Coalition of Resistance, Trades Councils and various localised groups already organising opposition, I'm not convinced an additional group patronised by a Trotskyist organisation is anything other than surplus to requirements, especially as many of the charges the Socialist Party makes against their RtW and CoR rivals are somewhat economical about their real positions. But such is life on the far left. With self-defeating sectarianism like this, who needs satire?

We shall now see if Son-of-NSSN offers anything superior to what's already available as it's tested in the white heat of the anti-cuts movement. A conference report from the SP's Judy Beishon can be read here. A more critical take from Martin Thomas of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty is here so comrades who weren't present can make up their own minds.

One thing surprisingly missing from the SP's website at the moment is a report on the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition conference that took place immediately afterwards. I think the comrades involved are on a hiding to nothing (as demonstrated by TUSC's election results) and are set to do poorly at this May's local elections, in spite of their anti-cuts politics. But that's for another post. Anyway, here's Pete McLaren's report of the conference.

REPORT FROM TUSC CONFERENCE JAN 22 2011-01-22

Dave Nellist opened the Conference by expressing the need for hundreds of candidates in the May elections to fight the cuts and provide opposition to the BNP.

Michael Lavellette (SWP) spoke about his 9 years as a Socialist councillor in Preston. He argued we must stand together against the cuts. Five Labour councillors had informed the local TUC they would oppose cuts only to vote for cuts in the Council vote. He still thought we needed to find ways of working with those 60,000 new members of the Labour Party who had joined since the General Election.

Clive Heemskerk (SP) called for candidates rooted in the anti cuts movement. Councils were at the forefront of the struggle, but, as the TUSC platform spelt out, they did not need to implement cuts. Councils should set a “Needs Budget” and demand the government makes up the rest, as Liverpool did in the 1980’s. Surcharging was no longer a major issue as it only now existed for individual fraud. Any Councillor accused of breaking the Code of Conduct, according to the Standards Board, would be entitled to a hearing, which itself would be a focus for mass protest, and at worst case could only result in a 5 year ban from being a councillor! Councillors should use reserves and prudential borrowing powers.

Owen Herbert (RMT) apologised for arriving late. He outlined how Labour had betrayed the working class and was now calling for cuts, but a slower pace. The results were the same. In Swansea, the Labour Council had threatened to sack its workforce if they would not accept its cuts package and then re-instate workers on new inferior conditions. The Welsh TUC was doing nothing, and a TUSC intervention was essential.

Alan from Darlington UNISON moved the one amendment to the platform - that council tax could be raised above inflation if approved by the electorate.

The platform was opened for discussion, and 22 individuals spoke – 11 from the SP, 2 from the SA, 1 from SR, 3 from the SWP and 5 independents. Points made included the following;

* We need to work with Labour Party members
* There is no evidence of activism amongst the new layer of Labour Party members
* There should be national issues in the TUSC local elections platform
* There needs to be a new Party, and it should champion democracy
* There should be something on pay and conditions within the TUSC platform
* Candidates need to be involved in local campaigns
* We need to build TUSC. The fortnightly Bulletin should help.
* TUSC should stand in Barnsley to help establish itself
* The TUSC Steering Committee has agreed to there being an Independent Socialist Network within TUSC to encourage involvement from independent socialists
* We should use the TUC Demo to publicise TUSC
* We should oppose all cuts, rent and council tax increases as they are all attacks on the working class
* TUSC provides a political direction for the anti cuts movement
* Setting up a local anti cuts group can persuade local trade union activists to come on board, and in the longer term this could be a basis for a new workers’ party
* We should not include Labour councillors as part of our campaign unless they are prepared to vote against cuts
* TUSC should be opened up and become fully democratic
* We should work with all who oppose the cuts, whatever their label
* Green councillors do not vote against cuts in Council meetings
* TUSC should work with Labour councillors who do vote against cuts whilst standing against those who don’t
* We should write to ask Labour candidates whether they would vote against cuts
* We need to discuss our position on police cuts
* We should add our opposition to any attacks on pay or conditions to our platform position

In their replies, Michael Lavalette explained that all SWP members opposed all cuts. He went on to argue there needed to be a clear alternative to Labour, adding that if a Left Councillor was elected it boosted workers’ confidence.

Clive Heemskerk argued for as many TUSC candidates as possible, adding that ‘Trade Unionist & Socialists Against the Cuts’ had also been registered. He accepted that TUSC was a work in progress.

Dave Nellist concluded proceedings by putting the proposed TUSC platform to the vote. It was agreed unanimously. He went on to announce that the TUSC SC would discuss AV, and reminded delegates that TUSC candidates would need formal nomination so there would be a need to communicate with the TUSC SC

Pete McLaren 22/01/11

Blogging Language and Criticism

In the comments on the recent Ed Balls post (below), Modernity asks "Why is it that ex-Trots in the Labour Party seem to dance around criticising the LP leadership? If I read you, Dave Osler or even [Andy] Newman, instead of saying the LP leadership are right-wing shite and utterly useless politically, instead of that I find understatement, careful wording and opaque criticism."

I can only speak for myself. And I don't accept this is the case.

Since joining Labour almost a year ago and thereby ending my association with Trotskyist politics (though I haven't regarded myself a Trot from long since before joining the Socialist Party), I've penned 18 pieces looking at some aspect or another of Labour's leadership. In the few months since Ed's election as Labour leader I think seven blog posts could be described as commentary on his leadership (that doesn't count guest posts like this). One - the most recent - might utilise understatement, but previous reflections on Ed Miliband certainly do not. This and this critically analyse the position of the Labour party leadership in relation to the contradictions emodied by the organisation as a whole. This piece criticises Ed on workers' struggles ("on further commitments he's proving more slippery than an eel dipped in KY jelly"), and here and here criticises Ed for his appointment of Alan Johnson and the subsequent evolution of their economic "alternative" to the Tories' sole preoccupation with deficit reduction.

True, they fall well short of explicitly calling out the Labour leadership as "right-wing shite and utterly useless politically", but then again, so are this blog's many critical posts about the Tories and LibDems.

As far as I'm concerned what's written here is part of a political project. My arguments are an effort to persuade readers of the merits of my positions. They are not, like many a Trotskyist denunciation of Labour and trade union leaderships, exercises in revolutionary identity politics. They're an attempt to grasp hold of the political situation to see what can be done to push things in a socialist direction. The language used and the form adopted by critique are conditioned and disciplined by these concerns. And it should go without saying that when you're pitching these arguments to left and labour movement audiences there's no need to extraneously drop in the fruity stuff when it's obvious your default position is critical.

Ed Balls: Let Tories Tremble

I never believed Ed Miliband was going to lead the Labour Party into a glorious socialist future, but I was disappointed when Alan Johnson was appointed shadow chancellor. I was then and remain convinced this had more to do with the internal balance of forces in the party and the desire to squash the 'Red Ed' label than anything else (see here). With a political career not exactly synonymous with economics, this decision didn't show Ed's leadership in its best light.

But now Alan Johnson has stepped down for 'family reasons' and Ed Balls has been shuffled into his position. Good.

Of the Labour leadership candidates during last summer's contest, only Balls and Diane Abbott offered a decent alternative to the 'slow and shallow cuts' consensus of the other three. And of the two Balls offered a comprehensive and serious critique of Tory/LibDem economic policy. In my opinion, Abbott's shopping list of left demands were worthy but lacked the necessary grasp of the issues. It was also obvious the Tories feared Balls and his Keynesian agenda more than any other contender.

What does this mean now for Labour's economic policy? Ed Miliband has said the new appointment will not effect his economic policy. This is not, strictly speaking, true. The Miliband/Johnson orientation (it would be mangling the language to call it a policy) said more things about investment and growth than the Tories, but were fundamentally in agreement with them on the necessity for cuts. Balls's strategy boils down to placing more emphasis on the former than the latter - his Bloomberg speech does accept a role for cuts, but it is entirely swamped by the argument for economic activism. Luckily for Ed Miliband, policy up until now has been so vague that Balls could take it in a more Keynesian direction while allowing Ed to save face by pretending this is what he favoured all along.

As far as I'm concerned, Ed Balls doesn't go far enough. There is absolutely no reason for cuts. Period. As Paul Mason explains in his "interview" with Marx, this crisis is one part a crisis of investment. It follows if private capital in its totality is fighting shy of investing, the state has to step in to get things on the move. The multiplier effects of creating jobs and stimulating demand creates conditions more conducive to private investment. Cutting only worsens the climate and makes the private sector-led recovery Osbourne and Dave are pinning their hopes on fanciful and utopian, and their actions irresponsible and dumb. As the world's economy is jittery, as Portugal, Spain, Italy and Belgium aren't looking good and the unwelcome spectre of currency wars is frightening economists and chancelleries, investment at home is the strongest inoculation possible the UK economy can take against a global economic chill.

That said, Ed Balls as shadow chancellor is a step in the right direction. With a strong advocate for investment over cuts in one of the most influential political positions in the land, the hand of the labour and anti-cuts movement has been strengthened ahead of the fights to come.

N Staffs Against Cuts Conference: 26th January

Press release and statement of conference aims. I'll be going, are you?

North Staffs Against Cuts Press Release 17/01/2011
North Staffs Against Cuts (NSAC) will be holding an anti-cuts conference on the 26th January at the Forum Theatre, Hanley Museum, 7pm.

Speakers invited from local anti-cuts groups and trade unions

Everyone who wants to fight back against the cuts are invited to attend this very important conference for the local anti-cuts movement.

NSAC Chair Matthew Wright says: "We must prevent the government's and local council's inevitable attempts to divide the anti cuts movement by playing off one campaign against the other (“If we save this swimming pool we will have to close that children's centre”) .

Therefore we will maintain a firm commitment of opposition to all cuts not just in words but also in deeds. “Not a Single Job Lost Not a Single Penny Cut!”

As real concrete cuts are revealed and their effects are felt, campaigns will spring up across the area. NSAC will offer support to these campaigns and strive to link them together into a general anti-cuts movement."

Press contact:
Matthew Wright (Chair) v1w02 at students.keele.ac.uk 07817772531
Jason Hill (Organiser) nstuc at burslem.demon.co.uk 07778913528

Conference Statement

Aims:

- To build a NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE AGAINST CUTS FEDERATION
- To assist in the struggle to Stop ALL CUTS

Two sections are key to stopping cuts
a) Trade unions, still with a potential power of 6 million organised workers, have a crucial role to play together with workplaces where no trade union representation yet exists.
b) Anti-cuts campaigns - as well as student groups, welfare claimants, tenants, pensioners organisations, disability groups etc.

For unity in opposition to all cuts, closures and privatisations:
We must prevent the government's and local council's inevitable attempts to divide the anti cuts movement by playing off one campaign against the other (“If we save this swimming pool we will have to close that children's centre”)

Therefore we will maintain a firm commitment of opposition to all cuts not just in words but also in deeds. “Not a Single Job Lost Not a Single Penny Cut!”

As real concrete cuts are revealed and their effects are felt, campaigns will spring up across the area. NSACF will offer support to these campaigns and strive to link them together into a general anti-cuts movement.

For a democratic and effective structure:
A federal type structure, where each affiliated body is free to pursue its own independent campaign but can in turn draw on the support and united strength of NSACF and all its affiliated bodies, is the most effective method of organising a democratic and united opposition.

Each individual organisation, community group etc will be asked to affiliate to NSACF. A committee will be elected to represent all affiliated organisations and campaigns plus a chair, secretary and other officers where necessary. All affiliated bodies will be asked to send representatives to form this committee with each representative having full voting rights.

Finance:
Raising money to produce leaflets etc will be vital so all affiliates will be asked to make a donation (a minimum of £15). We will set up a bank account and elect a Treasurer to oversee our finances.

Immediate tasks:
• Continue to inform people about the true facts and involve the public in our campaigns against cuts.
• Relentless lobbying of councils, councilors,and other bodies, to persuade them NOT to vote for cuts.
• Organise a march in North Staffs and build for a strong contingent for the TUC demo in March.

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