COALITION OF RESISTANCE
National Organising Conference
Saturday 27 November, London
www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk

 




 

Stop the ConDem vandals
As the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression deepens and battle lines are drawn, a mass anti-cuts movement
must force the ConDems to reverse their savage cuts.
This is a defining crisis for a generation. What happens
in the next few years will determine the course of dec-
ades to come.
It is a battle over values. On one side are those who
stand for the rule of markets and the rich. On the other
are those who stand for solidarity and justice.
It is happening because capitalism is changing. The
leading capitalist nation, the US, is in steady decline. New
powers are emerging.
The first shots in this battle were fired over Afghani-
stan and Iraq. A gamble by George Bush to shore up US
power ran into a global opposition movement. Millions
protested. We did not stop the Iraq war. But, as Bush’s au-
tobiography now reveals, we prevented further attacks on
Iran and elsewhere. His gamble played badly. Iraq was a
disaster. The US and its lackeys are locked into an unwin-
nable war in Afghanistan.
The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 opened the
second stage of the crisis. The bankruptcy of the world’s
third largest bank opened up a global recession—the worst
since the 1930s. The US and its allies are still trapped by it.
They cannot break the cycle of decline because they can-
not break the grip of finance.
Two strategies have emerged instead. For the US,
“quantitative easing”—printing money—is preferred. This
is driving down the value of the dollar. Cheaper dollars
should mean more US exports. But competitors like Bra-
zil and China will lose markets. They warn of “currency
wars”.
Quantitative easing is another gamble for US power
Inside
Why we need a movement
that is wide and militant
abroad. It is stoking up tensions. The logic of the market is
destroying international co-operation.
For lesser powers, austerity is demanded. As in the
1930s, governments locked in recession are expected to
cut their own spending still further, to reduce deficits.
This is delusional. Government spending sustains
demand in the economy. Private businesses depend on
spending by government. Pull it away, and the recession
will deepen.
As the recession deepens the deficit worsens, provok-
ing more cuts. This is the demand death-spiral that helped
prolong the Great Depression. It is emerging already in
Ireland. As the cuts bite the economy contracts, driving
further cuts. Portugal and Greece are also threatened,
with the markets smelling blood. Speculation is pushing
up the costs of their borrowing.
Britain’s Coalition government is locking us into the
same spiral downwards. They aim to wrench £87 billion
out of public spending over the next five years. This is suf-
ficient to destroy the welfare state. The government claims
these cuts are necessary because spending is too high.
This is a lie. Under New Labour before 2008, government
spending averaged 39 per cent of GDP. Under Thatcher, it
was 43 per cent.
But the bank bailout cost £1.3 trillion. And the reces-
sion reduced tax receipts, while pushing up spending on
unemployment benefits.
The deficit grew because the banks failed.
The financial system that failed so spectacularly is un-
reformed. Hedge funds, unregulated gambling dens for
Anne Koerber
the super-rich, are on the rise. The feeble “Basel III” re-
forms won’t be introduced fully until 2019.
Another crash is likely—as Mervyn King, governor of
the Bank of England, warned in a recent speech. And the
banks will come squealing for another bailout.
But the last bailout crippled economies across the
globe. The Bank of International Settlements says the
UK is too “fragile” to withstand another one. It could not
raise the public funds needed. This is the deranged logic
driving the cuts: cut spending today so we can pay for the
banking crisis tomorrow.
The real weakness of British capitalism is revealed. It
can afford a welfare state, or it can afford the City. Both re-
quire public spending. But it cannot afford both. We face
a choice.
Eighteen of 23 Cabinet ministers are millionaires. They
have chosen as their class demands and their ideology de-
crees. We must force the opposite answer.
The Coalition’s strategy is divide-and-rule. They would
rather fight hundreds of small, local campaigns than one
big battle.
A united, national campaign can shatter that logic.
The Coalition of Resistance conference in London on
27 November is the place where such a campaign can start
to form. It will be a chance to draw together all strands of
opposition to this government.
Mass movements stopped the Poll Tax and helped force
Blair out of office. Hundreds of thousands of people on the
streets would transform British politics. It is time for all
those who value people’s lives ahead of markets to unite.
 Jean-Marc Bourquin / photothèque rouge
French trade unionists and
students took to the streets
to oppose the reform on
pensions

The movement we need that the politicians’ priorities aremovement that goes way beyond every area there should be public
The students have shown what an all wrong? To be successful, such the usual activists and even the events big and diverse enough
anti-cuts movement could look like. a movement needs to be based trade unions. to convince people we have the
on four principles. This may seem obvious power to get somewhere. We
With millions more affected by savage in theory, but there are need open, democratic and well-
cuts, there are four principles a mass Build it wide practical conclusions. We need promoted planning meetings
First, it must be broad and reach organisation that is as inclusive between the big set pieces that
campaign will need if it is to win. far beyond the left. Every section as possible, that actively brings involve as many new people as
Millions are up in arms Anti-cuts campaigns have of society is going to be affected in new groups, networks and possible.
over the ConDem’s cuts. sprung up in towns and by a programme of cuts aimed campaigns into co-ordinated Trade unionists need to be
Cameron’s “we are all in this cities across the country and at re-engineering society, taking action. at the centre of this campaign.
together” rhetoric is widely the TUC have called what us back to a nineteenth century It is no good sections of the The unions are by far the biggest
regarded as a joke at a time we all hope to be a monster world before welfare. left going around arguing they networks in society and they can
when the bankers and the demonstration on 26 March Protests by artists, by should have exclusive leadership organise strike action—the most
rich are partying through the next year. scientists, by the disabled and of the movement, or voting down
crisis they have created. The questions are: how can pensioners, angry complaints initiatives because they didn’t “We need dynamic,
The brilliant student demo
and occupation of the Tory
we turn these first initiatives
into a campaign that can break
from women’s groups and black
organizations—let alone students
think
are
of them
completely
first. Such antics
missing the point
outward-looking,
Party HQ expressed the rage so the government and their and trade unionists—testify to and they put people off. creative ways
many people feel towards the programme of cuts? How can
politicians and their friends in we create a movement that
the almost unthinkable impact of
the ConDem’s plans on society.
We need dynamic, outward-
looking, creative ways of
of organising, not
finance and big business. addresses the widespread sense And it all shows we could have a organising, not activist cliques. In activist cliques.”

Students storm Tory HQ

michael-marsden.com

over massive fee hikes

Bonfires, broken glass and
burning effigies of David
Cameron scattered the courtyard
of 30 Millbank—Conservative
Party HQ—as over 50,000
students, lecturers, support staff
and graduates marched through
central London on the biggest
anti-cuts protest of the decade.
Both the police and the NUS
bureaucracy were powerless to
contain the demonstrators, who
poured into Millbank.
Windows were smashed to
allow the protestors to occupy
the building, with banners flying
from the roof and chants of “Tory
scum” reverberating around the
courtyard. A simultaneous sit-in
occurred at Parliament Square
and protestors also directed
anger at the Treasury buildings,
Liberal Democrat HQ and
the Department of Business,
Innovation and Skills. The NUS
leadership predictably distanced
themselves from the day’s actions,
condemning them as ‘despicable’.
The demonstration chimed
with anti-cuts alliances,
occupations and protests erupting
up and down the country:
Goldsmith’s University took over
their management buildings in
a flash occupation last week and
thousands protested on the day
of the Comprehensive Spending
Review— all an inspiring start to
a mass anti-cuts movement. As
protesters promised from the
roof of Tory HQ: “This is just
the beginning!”



  
 
effective tactic of resistance.
But we must not rely
exclusively on the unions. And
The anti-cuts movement
needs to do a similar job.
Third, although the cuts impact













we must not wait for them to act.
Most working people in Britain
are not unionised. Unions in
Britain are still recovering from
the defeats they suffered in the
1980s and a good deal of the
leadership is still hesitant and
sectional.
The only way the fight can
really take off is if it involves a
much wider alliance. There has
to be a political challenge to the
government which encompasses
large sections of society and
which generalises the struggle.
It needs to move more quickly
and more decisively than most
of the trade union leaders. This
kind of movement can give
people the confidence to take
serious strike action.
Ideas matter
Second, like any great struggle,
the fight against this government
will have to confront the
ConDems at an ideological
as well as an agitational level.
The ConDem alliance is united
around one or two arguments. It
argues that cuts are unavoidable
because of the scale of the deficit,
and that the deficit is caused
by excessive state spending by
Labour, hoping we will forget the
colossal bailout of the banks.
These ideas are not hard to
take apart. Scrapping Trident,
increasing taxes on the rich and
ending our foreign wars would
easily deal with the deficit.
But because the government’s
arguments are repeated over
and again by politicians,
commentators and journalists,
and because so few in the
mainstream challenge them,
they do effect people. This makes
resistance much harder.
What we need is a movement
that has the reach and influence
to be an alternative source of
explanations and solutions to the
crisis. Through mass rallies at
demonstrations, public meetings
and online networking, the Stop
the War Coalition has helped
popularise arguments against the
US-led wars that give people the
confidence to campaign.

 

 

wins campaign award
Clare Sambrook, prominent
journalist and Counterfire
supporter, was recently
awarded the Paul Foot Award
for campaigning journalism in
recognition of her work with
migrant rights group End Child
Detention Now.
The group—which emerged in
2009 in response to the treatment
of a single family in detention—
now campaigns against the
horrific conditions faced by
children in detention centres
across the UK.
Clare’s work has revealed
countless examples of shocking
conduct by government
officials, including the deliberate
classification of unaccompanied


locally they are implemented
nationally. They are part of
a concerted, national (and
international) ruling class
offensive. Local resistance is
essential to defend particular
services and draw people into
action.
The local anti-cuts committees
need to be broad, vibrant and
permanent. But every serious
anti-government campaign—from
the Anti-Apartheid movement
to the Poll Tax campaign and the
anti-war movement—has had
national organisation.
In order to unite people in
a campaign that can break the
austerity plan and get rid of
the government, we will need
national co-ordination, strategy
and action. We will need to get
all the local anti-cuts campaigns
and as many other organisations
as possible working and planning
together. For all these reasons the
Coalition of Resistance conference
in London on 27 November is
a crucial step in developing a
movement that can win.
Beating the blues
Finally, we must challenge
pessimism. It comes in many
forms. Some say demonstrating
makes no difference, others that
the politicians will ignore us
whatever we do, and still others
that the far right will be the main
beneficiaries of the crisis.
These arguments paralyse
us. They are the things the
government wants us to believe.
And they are untrue. Popular
struggles have shaped the world
we live in.
Popular struggle won the vote
and we wouldn’t have the welfare
state itself if it hadn’t been for
demands for change at the end of
the Second World War. We beat
the Poll Tax in the 1990s and the
anti-war demonstrations finished
off Blair.
There are no guarantees,
but we live in an age of mass
movements. If we can build
one broad enough and militant
enough then we can see off this
government of millionaires.
Jack Levin, an American criminologist, suggests
child migrants as adults—
removing the minor protection
they receive under the law.
Her work, and that of the
campaign, has also earned official one per month.
recognition by the Scottish
Parliament who moved a motion main trigger for murder suicide, or murder at all,
condemning the barbarity of
detention centres, in particular
the notorious Yarl’s Wood where tough economic times, with murders in the home
female detainees led a hunger
strike last year in protest against Dr. Richard Gelles, the Child Welfare and Family
their appalling living conditions. Violence chair for the University of Pennsylvania,
In her acceptance speech,
Clare thanked all the
organisations that had supported mineshaft’.
and contributed to her work,
including the Joint Council for
the Welfare of Immigrants
and Counterfire.
The family is supposed to be a bastion of love, support and protection
from a world of uncertainty and risk; but for many this ideal is
destroyed by debt, a crashing economy and a ruthless free market
ideology that offers no lifeline for those at the losing end.
Last summer, a family of four was found dead
in their house in Hampshire. The woman, a
31-year-old nursery manager and mother of two
young girls, had been murdered alongside her
children, apparently by the father who was later
found to have hanged himself.
This horrendous incident took place only days
after a nurse died having had her throat cut outside
the hospital where she worked. The police are now
questioning a colleague, her ex-boyfriend, with
whom she had recently had a baby.
In 2008, Christopher Foster killed his wife Jil-
lian and their 15-year-old daughter, Kirstie. He
then burnt down the house and committed suicide.
Watching the news you could be forgiven for
thinking that these heartbreaking acts of violence
were not only random and unpredictable but also
unrelated, forming no pattern worthy of cultural
or political analysis.
In fact, we have in the past almost been cajoled
by the British media into believing, however hor-
rid these incidents are, that there is nothing soci-
ety can do to stop the violence within families that
leads to the deaths of over 100 women, 52 children
and 12 families each year. Understandably, author
Sophie Hannah asked, ‘why weren’t whole editions
of Newsnight being devoted to discussing how we,
as a society, could ensure such crimes were never
committed again?’
Naming and defining this type of murder helps
begin the process of understanding why it occurs
with such regularity in western societies. Profes-
sionals and academics in Britain have described
the act committed by men (as it usually is men)
who kill their entire family and then themselves,
as “murder-suicide” or “familicide”.
Although this is rarely referred to by name in
the UK, in the United States, it is commonly and
somewhat sensationally known as “family annihi-
lation”. Valuable research and debates there have
helped to shed light on this unusual but increas-
ingly common form of crime. Firstly, evidence
highlights that perpetrators on both sides of the
Atlantic are primarily white middle class males,
seemingly successful “family men”, with properties
and businesses that give them high status within
the community and the opportunity to create a
“normal” functioning family. These goals often
disintegoalsgrate on the rocks of debt, bankruptcy
and unemployment; leading to a financial, social
and emotional rupture which in turn leads to a
psychological breakdown.
family killers are usually men who have ‘a profound
need for control that drives them to destroy their
family, when they can no longer provide for them
financially or when the family been divided by di-
vorce’. Since the recession began in America, fam-
ily murder-suicide rates have jumped 9 per cent.
In Britain, the rate over the past decade jumped
from one every eight weeks to one in six weeks to
There are those who argue that poverty isn’t the
but Levin importantly points out that family an-
nihilation is likely to become more common in
and in the workplace increasing. For this reason,
suggests that family annihilations, though unusu-
al, should be seen ‘as the canaries in the violence
He stresses the point that there is a lag fac-
tor with violence in communities hit hard by job
losses and public service cuts. Police, teachers and
social workers will start to see the horrific effects

of the recession in six to nine months time. It’s not
the case, he says, that on Monday a man loses his
job then on Wednesday he becomes a wife beater.
Therefore, his argument that services should be fo-
cused on communities hardest hit by job losses is
not only a preventative initiative, it is a humane
strategy.
In Britain that would mean investing resources
in Yorkshire, for instance, where private sector jobs
have been worst hit in the country since the reces-
sion began. Furthermore, Yorkshire suffered over
the last 30 years as a consequence of the Tory pit
closure plan. For these two reasons, it has frighten-
ingly high statistics for violence and abuse already.
The problem academics have with understand-
ing family annihilations is that they tend to look
just at the problem of economics and male power,
ignoring the glaring fact that women still suffer
from sexism. And it is this that underpins such
gender specific violence. Full-time working wom-
en earn on average 17 per cent less than men, and
part-timers can see a difference in wages of up to
30 per cent.
This is a huge ideological effect on the stand-
ing of women within the family and society as a
whole. It perpetuates the myth that women’s work
is inferior and secondary to their role in the home.
However, this is far from true. Women’s work has
been an essential part of the economy and their
wages are very much needed by the family in order
to fulfill its role as a unit of consumption.
Therefore, economics can’t fully explain why it
is that women and children suffer the most from
abuse and violence in the family. Even during the
so-called ‘good years’ of the Blair administration,
two women and one child a week died at the hands
of someone they knew. Author Lindsey German
highlights the problem with the family in a capi-
talist society: there are ‘contradictions inside the
family, which means it cannot fulfill the expecta-
tions of its individual members for much of the
time.
The household is seen as the repository of love,
calm and respite from a cruel world. The reality is
rather different. The family contains within it per-
sonal and sexual tensions, some of which spill over
into violence. The majority of murders take place
in and around the family. Children are more at
risk of abuse within the family than they are from
strangers’.
So, for the man who sees himself as the “head
of the family”, with other members in a subservi-
ent role, his inability to maintain the family and
solve its problem is compounded by his huge fall
in status. This pressure leads directly to the act of
murder-suicide. For men like Foster, who aspire to
the fragile family dream, they are unaware that it
doesn’t matter how hard they work, they are still
part of a machine; a rotten system that allows
families and individuals within it to go to the wall
mercilessly. Looking at families trying to survive
in mining communities after the closures, it was
plain to see that the family worked only while the
government supported it.
People, whether in families or not, need to be
valued and given the opportunity to live with-
out fear of poverty, loneliness and failure. For a
long time I hated the men who committed these
crimes. Now I realise they are victims too. There is
no warmth or comfort in a society like ours from
institutions that people try to rely on in times of
need. We receive little support from the benefits
system, the job market, the banks or politicians.
Now, more than ever, we have to fight for jobs and
services nationally and support those internation-
ally. This is the only way to protect our communi-
ties and the ones we love.