LETTERS/AWARDS

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: march 2015 :: RMTnews 29 Dear editor, We seem to be giving the Green Party a lot of space in RMT News to put their views to the RMT membership. I would be careful about what some of their policies would mean for RMT members. The Greens would,I fear, will be aiming to bring in a congestion charge for most cities which would cost our members large amounts in congestion charge payments. I am a guard on Virgin East Coast at Leeds station and I need a car to get to work. I work unsocial hours and if a congestion charge was introduced would we have to pay it or not when I come to work at 05.00 hours? But then have to pay a charge when leaving work at 12.00/13.00? I can’t get a bus, I need my car. So let’s be careful who we give support to. Kind regards Bob Taylerson Dear editor, Brother Craig Johnson paints a stark picture in his letter in last month's RMT News and I would agree with every word of it. However in his final paragraph he writes that we need to 'get rid of this Con Dem government'. Is he suggesting that we should vote Labour? Should we vote for the party which when last in power took us to war in Iraq, introduced the bedroom tax (for private tenants), introduced university fees and academy schools, privatised significant parts of the NHS and maintained the anti-trade union laws which are the most oppressive in the western world? The party has actually called the police on its own members in Falkirk during the Ineos dispute last year leading to the Unite union convenor (a loyal Labour party official) at the site being forced out of his job. Labour is passing on savage Tory cuts in every local council it controls resulting in hardship for the most vulnerable and it promises to stick to Osborne's austerity plans for the first two years of a Labour government. Labour's Rachel Reeves has publicly stated that Labour will be 'tougher than the Tories' on our welfare system. They still refuse to promise to renationalise the railways, something supported by 70 per cent of the public. The despair of many natural Labour voters is one reason for the rise of ultra-Tory UKIP. The Greens might talk socialist but Brighton proved that when in power they are prepared to wield the axe. Now in coalition in Bristol they have just approved the next tranche of the city's £83m cuts budget and the Green deputy mayor is attempting to get the council to drop its no-evictions policy for those affected by the bedroom tax! Is Brother Pinkney aware of how un-socialist his comrades can be when they take power? Labour is no longer a party for working class people and offers no alternative to the Tories or Lib Dems. RMT is a key part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) which, unlike the Green Party who equates union money with that of big business donors', sees unions as a force for good in society. TUSC is aiming to stand 100 parliamentary candidates and 1,000 local council candidates in May. Those who say we need a Labour victory need to accept the reality of the situation we are now in. Whichever Establishment party wins in May working people will pay the price, the only difference is one of timing. It is time to build a socialist and pro-working class alternative to the mainstream parties of austerity, privatisation and sleaze. The trade unions are in the best place to make that happen and RMT stands head and shoulders above the others. Yours in solidarity, Ted Woodley, Birmingham Rail branch Dear Sir, The last issue of RMT News highlights in its letters column the dilemma that is facing us on the left in politics today. RMT president Pinkney is quite correct in saying that if we are looking to the Labour Party for salvation then we are going to be disappointed. The party now has little to do with the aspirations of the working class. It is wedded to the free market, the City of London and all that that implies given the HSBC and other situations of late. The words such as socialism and renationalisation would make the present Labour Party run to change its collective underwear. Is Peter Pinkey right to look at supporting the Greens ? Of course he is if that is the only party advocating the return to public ownership is the Greens. But then if, like me, you think that the EU is a failed experiment that is wrecking democracy across Europe the only party that I can vote for is UKIP. We do not have a united front that works toward the principles of freedom, democracy and workers’ rights. Maybe the time has come for the TUC to build a new party representing its members and ordinary people but here I would ask the question ‘where is the TUC, does it still exist because it is seldom heard anywhere? How can we support the Labour Party when in May it will advocate more austerity, keep Thatcher's anti trade union laws and seeks to divorce itself from organisations like ours because we embarrass it in the City? For those who have something approaching a tribal kinship with Labour then surely the time has come to re-evaluate our loyalties? What then to do in May? UKIP and the SNP and the Greens have shown that to appeal to the old working class you have to listen and not lecture them regardless of how untrendy or unpalatable such subjects as immigration and the way the EU is dominated by the European Central Bank. These issues are avoided by the main parties because they need the cheap labour that immigration supplies. These relatively new parties are making great headway and perhaps we should look at the tactics more closely in May's election with the prime objective of ridding ourselves of the elites that run our parliament now. Yours sincerely, Rod Northcott Retired member Dear editor, We are all aware that our president brother Pinkney has decided to stand for parliament as a Green Party candidate. At the time of Brother Pinkney's announcement the Council of Executives had not considered the matter. Previously when national officers have stood in elections it has been the collective decision of our executive or our AGM, specifically TUSC and No2EU. While it is Brother Pinkney's individual decision to stand as a parliamentary candidate for the Green Party, he has done so while in office as our national president. This has led to all media coverage announcing him as 'RMT president' misrepresenting the collective view of our membership. This continues to be the standard despite Brother Pinkney's attempts to clear this misconception up as in his New Statesman interview, which was particularly telling. He describes himself as a Marxist and then recalls a Syriza speaker who mentioned Karl Marx but was brave to say that was another century, in other words outdated. Marxism is a scientific discipline, I wonder if he would be as quick to cast aside Darwin as 'of another century'? His vision is that the Greens can be a British 'Syriza'. The shocking capitulation of Syriza to the troika and the Bundesbank was well predicted by Greek Marxists of the KKE who applied a class analysis to the Greek crisis. A class analysis of the Greens would lead us to a similar conclusion. In his reply to Steve Metcalfe he unashamedly defends the Greens appalling attack on striking refuse drivers in Brighton and makes no mention of the greens policy of ending trade unions funding political parties. He also misleads us on green EU policy. They do want a referendum but only want to ‘reform’ the EU. This is the same fatal mistake that Syriza made. Brother Pinkney also doesn't believe in immigration controls. Karl Marx founded the First International to prevent employers using scab labour from Europe to undermine British workers. But that was another century. I wonder who the GMB and Unite members at the Wilton International SITA EfW Plant in his constituency of Redcar would agree with, in this century, as they take strike action over their employer using EU free movement to undermine their collective agreements with cheap labour? The opportunity is fast coming to unite the labour movement around the project of building a mass party of labour, rooted in the trade unions, federalised, democratic and organised on class lines. This will not be achieved by making the leap into a liberal party that has opportunistically dressed itself in left clothing but in reality has no connection with the working class, is anti-trade union, pro-EU and pro-capitalist, but by collective action and hard work. The Interviewer noted Brother Pinkney looks a little bit like Trotsky. Much like the Greens and Syriza look a little bit left wing. A class analysis shows us that looks can be deceiving. VOTE TUSC GO GREEN? WHO TO VOTE FOR? GO RED LETTERS