Save the Day at the MET!

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

Save the Day at the MET!

Two Unison Press Releases

Bush's Vietnam

Up to 1,900 jobs are at stake at the engineering giant Alstom in Birmingham. The famous and locally significant Metro Camel Llaird plant has been producing stock for over 100 years. The French transnational Alstom saw the opportunity to buy the company when it realised the potential profitability in producing for the Virgin Pandolino trains. The contract will soon be completed and the complex will close at the Washwood Heath plant.

            In the past, the firm was notorious for exploiting labour and always operated a stop/go policy, employing workers on temporary contracts and laying them off continuously. The workers’ organisation stepped in many times to maintain wages and conditions, particularly in the 1970s.

            The company has been extremely significant in terms of the city's economy, directly employing many workers in skilled and semi-skilled work over the years. Indirectly many suppliers have been dependent on the company. The demise of such a firm should be seen in the same light as the threat which was made to car companies in the area in recent times. The workers must be supported, as indeed workers at the MET, as it is known locally, have traditionally shown solidarity with past trade union issues.

            Although the French company is "upping sticks" and transferring jobs abroad, there is no issue that the MET has not been profitable in the past. The Birmingham Chamber of Commerce is making out that workers in the locality are not profitable and competitive. This is not the case; Alstom stands accused of lack of investment in high-tech equipment. They have cherry picked and exploited local labour only to dump them when they see fit.

            The trend of closures is linked to the transnational and multinational corporations' desires to be able to switch areas of production, export capital, when they want, contrary to any particular nation's interests. This aspect of globalisation is key when it comes to opposing the capitalists’ “right” to do such a thing, and an alternative economic strategy has to be developed in order to maintain manufacture as a viable portion of the economy. By this is not meant that the workers should “save the day” for the capitalists, but that they have a programme for the economy which puts the needs of the people at the centre, where they take control of what belongs to them, and in which the people are empowered to set the direction for the economy.

            Another aspect of the problem is linked to privatisation of railways and the lack of support for an important social programme such as rail transport. The rail network is in terminal crisis in Britain due to lack of investment. The alternative is to increase investments in social programmes. The dire consequences of adverse policies can be seen by what is happening at the Alstom complex that wants to shift work to Spain from Britain in 2004. This includes traditional London Underground work, where Alstom has just won a £101 million contract to build trainsets and trailer cars for the Jubilee line.

            If the workers are to save the day, they must come out of the margins and oppose the plan. It becomes essential that the workers take up the politics surrounding the issues. There is a requirement that worker politicians come forward at present.

UNISON Speaks Out Against War in Iraq

20/06/2003
A motion highly critical of the Government’s stance on Iraq was carried overwhelmingly by the UNISON conference in Brighton today.

            Keith Sonnet, Deputy General Secretary of UNISON, told the conference that the union completely and utterly condemns the British Government’s decision to support military action in Iraq.

            Keith Sonnet told the conference that the war was “illegal under international law, unjustified, undermining the UN, causing so much suffering to innocent people.

            “We condemn the deceit, manipulation and downright lies used to justify war. We condemn the hypocrisy of the British and American Governments who for years supported and sold arms and weapons to Saddam Hussein. We condemn our Prime Minister, a Labour Prime Minister, for being the conduit between Bush, Berlusconi, Asnar and Howard. The right wing axis of evil. We know only too well the need for regime change.

            “We pay tribute and salute the millions who demonstrated against the war. Particularly the historic demonstrations on 15 February in London, Glasgow and Belfast but also in every town and city. We congratulate the Stop the War Coalition. We will continue to support and work with them.

            “We are horrified at the reported civilian casualties – up to 7200 but probably much higher, since it’s the policy not to count the Iraqi dead. Thousands more maimed and injured. We are sorry for the families of all those killed and those injured.

            "They were killed and injured by 18467 Smart bombs 9251 Dumb bombs 802 Cruise missiles 908 Guided cluster bombs 311597 Rounds of 30mm ammunition 16901 Rounds of 20mm ammunition 400,000 Troops in Iraq and the region 1801 aircraft

            “And it cost $20 billion and $2 billion each month with the continuing casualties. And what was all this for? So far, two trailers for producing hydrogen gas for artillery balloons. Rumsfeld says that the Iraqis may have destroyed their WMD before the war started. Isn’t this what we asked them to do? Didn’t the UN weapons inspectors reports really confirm this?

            “Conference, has the war made the world a safer place? No, just the opposite. It’s increased the risk of international terrorism. We are all less safe now.

            “If, as our Prime Minister said, the price of our special relationship with America has to be paid in blood. I say end it now.

            “If Bush and Blair genuinely wanted a safer world then they would use their muscle and strength to force a peace settlement in the Middle East. One that creates an independent Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel. As we demand, they would stop selling arms to Ariel Sharon who should instead be tried as a war criminal.

            “Saddam Hussein and his evil regime have gone. Good. But, the Iraqi war was about none of these things but all about the need for oil and the self-interest of American business. Conference, we have seen it all before, with Ho Chi Min, Castro, Allende, Ortega to name a few and now probably Lula and Chavez. All because of American corporations and self-interest.

            “Emergency motion 1 sets out the action we demand to restore Iraq to the people of Iraq. We do not stand shoulder to shoulder with right wing Republicans in Washington. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the suffering people of Iraq and with the Palestinians in their struggle for freedom, peace and justice.”

UNISON Conference Says no to PFI and Privatisation

20/06/2003
Dave Anderson, UNISON NEC, speaking at the union’s National Conference in Brighton today, underlined the union’s opposition to PFI and privatisation and highlighted the earlier decision made by conference on the union’s political fund.

            He said: “Anything we do in relation to our political funds will be determined by the clear decisions reached by you on Wednesday and the assurances given by our General Secretary, which had the overwhelming support of Conference.

            Our support for this amendment rests in our strong opposition to PFI and privatisation and in taking a united campaign forward.

            But nobody should read into that, that our position on our political funds has changed.

            That message must go out very clearly from this conference – both to the media and other political commentators who may wish to “spin” another line. Conference this debate is about our anti-privatisation campaign. The work with the political funds is only part of that. In our wider campaign:

            · We will continue to work through every avenue open to us: - 1) Commissioning research 2) Organising seminars at the highest level 3) Building and developing our anti-privatisation coalition 4) Using the bargaining agenda to defend our member’s rights 5) and yes comrades, using our industrial muscle in line with agreements reached earlier this week. Conference – There is an ever-reducing core of people in this country who still support the privatisation agenda

            · They are real focus of Conservatism · They are the ones stuck in the time warp · And they are the ones who are preventing the development of real world class public services This is our defining issue We are the public service union, whoever employs us. We will never give up this campaign And we will do it not out of self-interest, but out of our core belief in the work we do and the services we deliver.”

By John Pilger, 19 June 2003

In a cover story for the New Statesman, John Pilger reports from Afghanistan and describes the 'unfolding disaster' in that country and in Iraq, scenes of America's two 'great victories' following 9/11.

Once more, we hear that America is being "sucked into a quagmire". The rapacious adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan are going badly wrong. By John Pilger

                America's two "great victories" since 11 September 2001 are unravelling. In Afghanistan, the regime of Hamid Karzai has virtually no authority and no money, and would collapse without American guns. Al-Qaeda has not been defeated, and the Taliban are re-emerging. Regardless of showcase improvements, the situation of women and children remains desperate. The token woman in Karzai's cabinet, the courageous physician Sima Samar, has been forced out of government and is now in constant fear of her life, with an armed guard outside her office door and another at her gate. Murder, rape and child abuse are committed with impunity by the private armies of America's "friends", the warlords whom Washington has bribed with millions of dollars, cash in hand, to give the pretence of stability.

                "We are in a combat zone the moment we leave this base," an American colonel told me at Bagram airbase, near Kabul. "We are shot at every day, several times a day." When I said that surely he had come to liberate and protect the people, he belly-laughed.

                American troops are rarely seen in Afghanistan's towns. They escort US officials at high speed in armoured vans with blackened windows and military vehicles, mounted with machine-guns, in front and behind. Even the vast Bagram base was considered too insecure for the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, during his recent, fleeting visit. So nervous are the Americans that a few weeks ago they "accidentally" shot dead four government soldiers in the centre of Kabul, igniting the second major street protest against their presence in a week.

                On the day I left Kabul, a car bomb exploded on the road to the airport, killing four German soldiers, members of the international security force Isaf. The Germans' bus was lifted into the air; human flesh lay on the roadside. When British soldiers arrived to "seal off" the area, they were watched by a silent crowd, squinting into the heat and dust, across a divide as wide as that which separated British troops from Afghans in the 19th century, and the French from Algerians and Americans from Vietnamese.

                In Iraq, scene of the second "great victory", there are two open secrets. The first is that the "terrorists" now besieging the American occupation force represent an armed resistance that is almost certainly supported by the majority of Iraqis who, contrary to pre-war propaganda, opposed their enforced "liberation" (see Jonathan Steele's investigation, 19 March 2003, www.guardian. co.uk). The second secret is that there is emerging evidence of the true scale of the Anglo-American killing, pointing to the bloodbath Bush and Blair have always denied.

                Comparisons with Vietnam have been made so often over the years that I hesitate to draw another. However, the similarities are striking: for example, the return of expressions such as "sucked into a quagmire". This suggests, once again, that the Americans are victims, not invaders: the approved Hollywood version when a rapacious adventure goes wrong. Since Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled almost three months ago, more Americans have been killed than during the war. Ten have been killed and 25 wounded in classic guerrilla attacks on roadblocks and checkpoints which may number as many as a dozen a day.

                The Americans call the guerrillas "Saddam loyalists" and "Ba'athist fighters", in the same way they used to dismiss the Vietnamese as "communists". Recently, in Falluja, in the Sunni heartland of Iraq, it was clearly not the presence of Ba'athists or Saddamists, but the brutal behaviour of the occupiers, who fired point-blank at a crowd, that inspired the resistance. The American tanks gunning down a family of shepherds is reminiscent of the gunning down of a shepherd, his family and sheep by "coalition" aircraft in a "no-fly zone" four years ago, whose aftermath I filmed and which evoked, for me, the murderous games American aircraft used to play in Vietnam, gunning down farmers in their fields, children on their buffaloes.

                On 12 June, a large American force attacked a "terrorist base" north of Baghdad and left more than 100 dead, according to a US spokesman. The term "terrorist" is important, because it implies that the likes of al-Qaeda are attacking the liberators, and so the connection between Iraq and 11 September is made, which in pre-war propaganda was never made.

                More than 400 prisoners were taken in this operation. The majority have reportedly joined thousands of Iraqis in a "holding facility" at Baghdad airport: a concentration camp along the lines of Bagram, from where people are shipped to Guantanamo Bay. In Afghanistan, the Americans pick up taxi drivers and send them into oblivion, via Bagram. Like Pinochet's boys in Chile, they are making their perceived enemies "disappear".

                "Search and destroy", the scorched-earth tactic from Vietnam, is back. In the arid south-eastern plains of Afghanistan, the village of Niazi Qala no longer stands. American airborne troops swept down before dawn on 30 December 2001 and slaughtered, among others, a wedding party. Villagers said that women and children ran towards a dried pond, seeking protection from the gunfire, and were shot as they ran. After two hours, the aircraft and the attackers left. According to a United Nations investigation, 52 people were killed, including 25 children. "We identified it as a military target," says the Pentagon, echoing its initial response to the My Lai massacre 35 years ago.

               

                The targeting of civilians has long been a journalistic taboo in the west. Accredited monsters did that, never "us". The civilian death toll of the 1991 Gulf war was wildly underestimated. Almost a year later, a comprehensive study by the Medical Education Trust in London estimated that more than 200,000 Iraqis had died during and immediately after the war, as a direct or indirect consequence of attacks on civilian infrastructure. The report was all but ignored. This month, Iraq Body Count, a group of American and British academics and researchers, estimated that up to 10,000 civilians may have been killed in Iraq, including 2,356 civilians in the attack on Baghdad alone. And this is likely to be an extremely conservative figure.

                In Afghanistan, there has been similar carnage. In May last year, Jonathan Steele extrapolated all the available field evidence of the human cost of the US bombing and concluded that as many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the bombing, many of them drought victims denied relief.

                This "hidden" effect is hardly new. A recent study at Columbia University in New York has found that the spraying of Agent Orange and other herbicides on Vietnam was up to four times as great as previously estimated. Agent Orange contained dioxin, one of the deadliest poisons known. In what they first called Operation Hades, then changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand, the Americans in Vietnam destroyed, in some 10,000 "missions" to spray Agent Orange, almost half the forests of southern Vietnam, and countless human lives. It was the most insidious and perhaps the most devastating use of a chemical weapon of mass destruction ever. Today, Vietnamese children continue to be born with a range of deformities, or they are stillborn, or the foetuses are aborted.

                The use of uranium-tipped munitions evokes the catastrophe of Agent Orange. In the first Gulf war in 1991, the Americans and British used 350 tonnes of depleted uranium. According to the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, quoting an international study, 50 tonnes of DU, if inhaled or ingested, would cause 500,000 deaths. Most of the victims are civilians in southern Iraq. It is estimated that 2,000 tonnes were used during the latest attack.

                In a remarkable series of reports for the Christian Science Monitor, the investigative reporter Scott Peterson has described radiated bullets in the streets of Baghdad and radiation-contaminated tanks, where children play without warning. Belatedly, a few signs in Arabic have appeared: "Danger - Get away from this area". At the same time, in Afghanistan, the Uranium Medical Research Centre, based in Canada, has made two field studies, with the results described as "shocking". "Without exception," it reported, "at every bomb site investigated, people are ill. A significant portion of the civilian population presents symptoms consistent with internal contamination by uranium."

                An official map distributed to non-government agencies in Iraq shows that the American and British military have plastered urban areas with cluster bombs, many of which will have failed to detonate on impact. These usually lie unnoticed until children pick them up, then they explode.

                In the centre of Kabul, I found two ragged notices warning people that the rubble of their homes, and streets, contained unexploded cluster bombs "made in USA". Who reads them? Small children? The day I watched children skipping through what might have been an urban minefield, I saw Tony Blair on CNN in the lobby of my hotel. He was in Iraq, in Basra, lifting a child into his arms, in a school that had been painted for his visit, and where lunch had been prepared in his honour, in a city where basic services such as education, food and water remain a shambles under the British occupation.

                It was in Basra three years ago that I filmed hundreds of children ill and dying because they had been denied cancer treatment equipment and drugs under an embargo enforced with enthusiasm by Tony Blair. Now here he was - shirt open, with that fixed grin, a man of the troops if not of the people - lifting a toddler into his arms for the cameras.

                When I returned to London, I read "After Lunch", by Harold Pinter, from a new collection of his called War (Faber & Faber).

                And after noon the well-dressed creatures come
To sniff among the dead
And have their lunch

                And all the many well-dressed creatures pluck
The swollen avocados from the dust
And stir the minestrone with stray bones

                And after lunch
They loll and lounge about
Decanting claret in convenient skulls