Lessons from Latin America
May 17, 2006
It might have been the longest ever public speech in London but Chavez held an audience of a thousand people for nearly five hours on Sunday afternoon in Camden Town Hall. Those lucky enough to fit into the hall heard a feast of literature, analysis, mathematics, anecdotes, self criticism and unity of peoples seeking something better.
After he had completed this marathon, sustained only by sweet coffee from a tiny cup, Chavez went to nearby Grafton Way and Warren Street to see the house where Bolivar met Miranda, where the liberation of South America from the Spanish Empire was planned, and where hope was born for millions.
However, as Chavez pointed out, Bolivar died a sad and almost broken man. True his amazing physical feats of travelling tens of thousands of miles to promote revolution had brought independence from Spain. What it had barely brought was liberation for the poorest and mostly indigenous people. The landowners ran Venezuela and the rest of Latin America for at least the extent century, and in some cases still do.
Bolivar had a nurse in his comfortable upbringing In Venezuela. A black woman called Hippolata, who never forgot this little boy. When he finally arrived in triumph in Caracas she was there to greet him. It is poignant that the Venezuelan Government recognises that there are still many desperately poor and dispossessed people in their country and have launched the Hippolata programme to try and alleviate this poverty.
Listening to Chavez it is easy to forget the serious threats to the whole process of change that is sweeping Latin America, and the dangers of isolation of Bolivia and Venezuela. The reaction of neighbouring governments to Bolivia’s public ownership plans of oil and gas has hardly been and example of solidarity in action.
On Monday night I realised with a big thump exactly how powerful the forces against Venezuela really are. I was a guest on the World Report programme on Sky TV hosted by James Rubin, former (under Clinton) Under Secretary of State. Rubin was joined by a former Under Secretary for Defence and they denounced Venezuela for instability, not fighting terrorism, wasting oil revenues and being a dictatorship. I pointed to the election of Chavez and the Parliament, the (failed) coup attempt and the process of change in Latin America from a continent of military dictatorships in the late 1970’s to the elected civilian Government’s of today. Rubin showed his true colours by claiming this was all the success of Reagan and Clinton and that there had been no interference in internal politics for the last 25 years. My mention of the shameful Contra war in Nicaragua and Kissinger’s complicity in the murder of Allende in Chile had them fulminating with righteous indignation. As if I really needed the lesson but I realised that when it comes to foreign policy there is nothing to put between the two parties in the USA.
The strategy of trying to isolate Venezuela is a carefully thought out one and will be pursued relentlessly in the world’s media in the next few months.
Chavez did come to Parliament and ironically met the Labour Friends of Venezuela in the Churchill Room with the grand old man’s grim bust staring at him he reminded MPs in one of his shortest speeches, a mere twenty minutes, that socialism represented hope and the human spirit. Capitalism was essentially barbaric. The Third Way was not an alternative and he hoped that all countries would travel their own road. It is a long time since Labour MPs hear speeches like that in Parliament. One Minister wandered in to the meeting carrying his red Ministerial briefing case and looked bemused. I don’t think Tony Blair and Hugo Chavez are on quite the same wave-length.
The Council elections in London, with the exceptions of Islington and Lambeth, produced very poor results for Labour as tens of thousands of supporters stayed home and allowed the resurgent Tories to gain control of eight more of London’s thirty two Boroughs.
Housing was a major concern on the doorstep and a debate in Westminster last week showed the reason why.
Despite the obvious need for new housing for rent, ie Council housing, the statistics of the past fifteen years show a disturbing trend. In 1990/1 in England 14,575 Housing Association and 12,958 Council dwellings were constructed, in London the figures were 2,279 and 1,745 respectively. In 1997/8 21,00 Housing Association and 300 Council dwelling were built in England. Last year the figure was 16,637 Housing Association and only 100 Council homes. In London there were just 6,000 new dwellings for people in desperate housing need.
The chronic housing shortage affects everybody. In London prices are so high that in most boroughs three quarters of the people cannot afford to buy anything. Anyone working at even the London average wage has no hope of being able to buy so they need Council places. Many Councils now routinely house those in desperate housing need in private leased flats. These are often of very poor quality and very expensive, with rents often topping £300 per week. This rent is mostly paid by Housing Benefit to enable the family to survive. Obviously everyone in need should get all the benefits to which they are entitled. There is however a big issue here.
Anyone living in one of these leased flats who goes back to work has to pay the full rent, thus coming off benefit and into work starts with a £15,000 rent bill plus Council Tax. A new benefit trap has been created that keeps families in misery and pays enormous and totally unjustified sums to private landlords. The Tories abolished rent controls and set housing benefit at market levels.
In her reply to the debate the Minister, Yvette Cooper, did concede that many more houses for rent had to be built, and that housing was a big problem. It seems that current policies are simply pouring public money into the pockets of private landlords and property companies – much better to invest in bricks and mortar and use planning powers to intervene. The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, wants half of all major developments to be for “affordable” homes. We need to go a bit further and stop using loose words like “affordable” and encourage Council’s to build. Where any application for private development takes place, whatever the size half ought to be for those who are simply unable to buy.
The current policies are simply not strong enough to deal with the free market which is consigning families to a lifetime of overcrowding and stress, and exporting the poorest out of London.
Strange times
May 10, 2006
Hugo Chavez has never done anything by the normal route. An officer in the Venezuelan army he was moved by poverty and social injustice to challenge the ruling oligarchs of his country. The old political system of the comfortable bourgeois parties was eventually overthrown by pressure from the Bolivarian revolution. Those who challenge his democratic credentials would do well to recall that he has been elected, re-elected, won a recall referendum and a parliamentary majority. Nobody can challenge his results in this respect; all done with no help from a hostile media and neighbour to the north.
His visit to London next week is another example of stepping outside the norm. His visit is officially “private” so he will not be meeting Tony Blair or any Ministers. There is an irony in this as the Prime Minister has had much to say about the Venezuelan process and his perceptions of it. He might do well to reflect that the re-distribution of wealth and elimination of poverty in Venezuela is an example to the whole continent.
Chavez will however be meeting many other people who have shown their support for the revolution in Venezuela, and who have been long term activists on Latin America.
After his brief visit to London, Chavez will be travelling to Vienna for the EU Latin America summit and trade discussions that are being held there to try to shore up the EU position in Latin America, and encourage trade.
It is a strange turn of events that the whole continent is now being courted by the world’s power blocks.
Since the 19th century the Monroe Doctrine of treating everything south of the Rio Grande as a US “sphere of influence” has meant that after coming out of the control of the Europeans through Spanish and Portuguese imperialism, the continent had the strange relationship of a settler ruling class who owned the land, and such industries as existed were owned by US and British capitalists.
History records that every attempt to change the social order was met with brutal repression of peasant uprisings, or where radical governments were elected they suffered at the hands of the USA. The exceptions were the success of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the Cuban Revolution of 1959. In every other country from Guatemala to Chile, radical governments were overthrown by US funded and supplied military coups.
Cuba’s survival of nearly 50 years of US economic blockade looks all the more remarkable alongside what has happened elsewhere in the continent.
The highest standard of literacy, health care, education and popular housing are all in Cuba; compared to the rest of Latin America it is an amazing success story. The example of Cuba is a very powerful image throughout the continent.
The success of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela has had a huge effect on the neighbours, with Bolivia electing Morales and the Left gaining ground in Peru. The pro US Government in Colombia looks more and more isolated.
Economically, the continent is blessed with huge resources but needs massive investment to develop them. Bolivia has announced the nationalisation of its oil resources and control of production.
Initially the reaction of the oil companies was to threaten all kinds of retribution and sadly the reaction of Lula in Brazil was to express concern about this action. Brazil’s state owned oil company Petrobas is a big stakeholder in Bolivia. Morales has shown the way to the utilisation of resources for the people. Historically, Bolivia lost its silver to the Spanish, it’s tin to British and other companies, and does not wish to see its oil and gas go the same way.
Whilst the EU and US might bemoan what is happening across the continent, the real investor in the continent is China. Huge hard currency investments are being made by China who is making long term trade agreements to ship natural resources to China.
The excitement of the revolution in Venezuela and Bolivia and its high hopes should not blind us to the reality of the powerful forces that are at work.
The US might be very bound up in Iraq at the moment, but it has never lost sight of what is happening to its south.
The NAFTA Treaty and the problems it has created for the poorest in Mexico are an example of what the aim is. Bush wants a Free Trade of the Americas agreement which will impose free market economics on the whole region. The Venezuela/Bolivia/Cuba trade agreement is very different. Building internal trade is obviously necessary, but also conquering poverty, high infant mortality and lack of education for the poorest.
Chavez’s visit is an historic first. His contribution to the elimination of poverty is a huge step forward and has given real hope to lots of very poor people. There are lessons we can all learn.
It is policies that really matter. The Parliamentary Labour Party packed into the historic committee Room 14 on Monday to hear Blair say he was staying for a bit, was going to go sometime, and that he had much to do.
More ominously, he said that he was staying on to ensure that New Labour’s policies were effectively carried out.
Brown, on the other hand said on Sunday that New Labour had to renew its coalition to win the next election.
The problem last Thursday, when Labour scored 16% of the vote in England, was that the policies on Iraq, health internal market and private finance have failed to enthuse Labour voters.
We need a change of leadership in the Labour Party, but not a coronation.
The policies that are being followed in some key areas are a real turn-off for voters. It is policy debate and change we need first.
Labour supporters deserve commitment from the Government to ensure that we run public services by public ownership, and that we have less of the Plc mentality and much more of the sense of community needs in our core philosophy.
A new Defence Secretary and new Foreign Secretary have a huge opportunity to say we are not getting involved with attacking Iran and will withdraw from Iraq. A break with US foreign policy is what is needed to bring supporters back to Labour.
Venezuela
May 5, 2006
(From Socialist Campaign Group News)
During a recent Parliamentary debate on Venezuela one Tory MP complained that the regime of Hugo Chavez was undertaking a “land grab” and had to be opposed. It then turned out that the Member concerned, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, was actually related to the Vestey family, who have massive land holdings in Venezuela. The unused parts of their estates have been handed over to landless peasants.
In a sense history is being played out to its fullest extent in Venezuela, where the Bolivarian revolution is in full swing and is providing inspiration across a whole continent.
Bolivar, the charismatic leader of the South American independence movements lived in London in Warren Street, and the Bolivar Hall (run by the Venezuelan Embassy) is in neighbouring Grafton Way. Bolivar dreamt of South America as independent of Imperial Spain. He suffered many reverses in his campaigns, including an impoverished spell in Jamaica before resuming his efforts. His achievements were the routing of the imperial forces, many decrees on people’s rights and the concept of national culture that encompassed the indigenous and the European settlers. He died too soon, and the newly independent countries suffered from the injustice of land ownership by the settler class, and endless neo-colonial exploitation by European and North American companies.
Venezuela, like others, has massive injustices of wealth and power, but unlike many others it has huge resources of oil.
The Bolivarian revolution led by Chavez is rapidly changing things. The poorest do get food, can see a doctor thanks to Cuban help, and are able to get good education. Chavez was elected, faced down a coup attempt, won a recall referendum, and then won Parliamentary elections. His electoral democratic credentials are beyond reproach.
In power, and faced with enormous opposition from a very hostile media, he has allowed them to continue, preferring instead to develop an alternative from of communication and thus inspire support. The very interesting BBC Radio 4 reports on Latin America have freely conceded the levels of support that the revolution inspires.
Radical movements in Latin America are not new; indeed the whole history of the 20th century is of radical governments removed from office by coups, and US inspired economic pressure. Guatemala, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua to name but a few have suffered military repression and brutal civil conflict.
Allende was killed in 1973 after a CIA run coup put Pinochet in power, who went on to ensure the deaths of over 25,000 through Operacion Condor in the Southern zone. The heroic Sandinista government in Nicaragua from the 1979 liberation was eventually defeated by the US backed Contra, and economic strangulation. Nicaragua is now the poorest country in the region.
These defeats and the debt crisis of the 1980s have changed many things. The success in Venezuela has inspired others so that there is a tangible shift across the whole continent, with the election of Left Governments in Uruguay, Bolivia and now Peru looking likely to follow. The isolation of the USA with only the lame duck President Fox of Mexico, and President Uribe of Colombia supporting it at the 2005 trade conference in Buenos Aires shows just how far the politics of the region have moved.
In Parliament, Tony Blair seemed not to understand that the survival of Cuba since 1979 is an inspiration to the poorest in the region, and that Venezuela is seriously conquering poverty by emphatically rejecting the Neo Liberal policies of the world’s financial institutions.
Success for radical policies in Venezuela is being achieved by providing for the poorest, liberating resources, but above all by popular education and involvement.
As with Cuba the threat to the USA by Venezuela is not military or economic. It is far more insidious, a threat by example of what social justice can achieve.
Solidarity means practically working with the Unions and popular organisations in Venezuela. Blair’s ill-informed outburst in response to a perfectly reasonable question from Labour MP Colin Burgon backfired. The media in Latin America showed how out of touch with real social change New Labour is.
May Day onwards
May 3, 2006
May Day is an historic opportunity to celebrate our radical past and make demands for the future. It is not just a shopping list of demands on how the working class can benefit from one reform or another, but a coherent declaration of the internationalism of the labour movement.
On Monday morning the BBC led with another alleged Blair-Brown rift, but this time over pensions. It was claiming the Prime Minister wanted to link future pension rises with earnings, whilst the Chancellor wanted this limited to those over 75. The deeply suspicious would read from this that the ultimate Treasury mandarin aim was for the retirement age to be raised to 75.
Last week at the Annual meeting of Greater London Forum for the elderly, an enormous delegate body of pensioner groups from each of London’s 32 boroughs came together to demand a decent pension, and also to insist upon security in social services, publicly run and accountable care homes and nursing care being part of the NHS. My old friend Mick Kavanagh from the engineering workers’ retired members section said Nye Bevan would be turning in his grave at the elderly being forced to sell their homes to pay for nursing care. The debate at the Pensioners Parliament in Blackpool will be stern and strong, for we are on the verge of an historic opportunity.
When the Government finally makes its decision on pensions it should be an opportunity to finally deliver the justice for pensioners that the Tories took away in 1980 and 1986. The facts are all there about pensioner poverty, means testing and the unreliability of the private sector. Perhaps unwittingly, Adair Turner and his voluminous reports have provided all the arguments and evidence.
By breaking the link with earnings in 1980 the Tories succeeded in creating poverty for many pensioners, forcing many more into means tested benefits, and by de-valuing the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme forced many younger workers into dubious private schemes.
Labour, since 1997, has obsessed itself with Pension Credits which, whilst welcome, in the sense they do provide more money, are means tested and do have to be applied for. Many simply cannot or will not apply and thus they lose, whilst the Treasury gains. The mis-selling of pensions by the private sector in the 1980’s was a by-word for Thatcherite free booting capitalism. But we have an opportunity to pout a lot of this right, very quickly.
Firstly, by asserting that the state pension should rise to the Pension Credit level and thus remove the anomalous means testing for a level of income that the State decrees every retire person is entitled to, and then link it at least to the level of earnings rises. For the tiny minority of super rich pensioners, taxation applies anyway, but this would radically improve the lives of many people.
The struggle of public sector workers to defend their pension scheme, which is contributory, is an important one not just for the tens of thousands of members involved, but also for the principle of the final salary schemes. The Government in the form of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is the final guarantor of the Local Government Pension scheme and could, and should, ensure that the Local Authority Employers come to an agreement with the Unions not just to protect existing members, but to ensure that new employees do not become second class employees. We fought to end the anomaly of a two-tier workforce; and we don’t want two-tier retired members either.
The message an agreement on public pensions gives to the rest of the economy is an important one. Company after company is lining up to not just refuse to reimburse the funds for the contribution holidays they awarded themselves but to end the whole final salary system. Victory in the public sector for justice is a good message elsewhere.
Some self-appointed experts are wont to argue that the National Pensioners Convention charter is unaffordable, and workers should save for themselves in retirement and the state role should be as a final reserve safety net, not a principle provider. In an historic context, this argument belongs more to the pious ravings of Victorian free marketers than the 21st century, but it is still being pursued. At its crudest level it is forcing workers to save privately, another form of taxation, without the accountability or reliability of publicly owned and run schemes.
Barbara Castle did a great deal for the cause of pensioners in 1975 when the economic conditions were very tough. Now we are told by the business pages of the daily papers that, globally, costs must be reduced to compete. It remains a judgement of the quality of our society how we treat our elderly. The next move by the government will tell us which way they want us to go as a society.
Trade Union freedom has always been a demand of the Labour Movement, right back to the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1825. Without the freedom to organise and associate, the ability to represent and demand change is constrained. The whole theme of the history of trade union activities in Britain has been to protect hard won freedoms and develop the working class movement. Each advance is later met by a set back or repression of Union activities. Attacks on funding, the Taff Vale judgement, imprisonment on conspiracy charges of the Shrewsbury builders, the National Industrial Relations Court, sequestration of funds and the Tory legislation under Thatcher are all part of a continuum. After the 1974 election the (then) Labour government rapidly repealed the heath legislation and enshrined Trade Union rights in the 1975 law, which led to a rapid growth in Union membership. New Labour with a much larger majority and a much easier economic environment have been more than timid in refusing to protect workers rights to even the European norm.
The sacking of the Gate Gourmet workers by megaphone and intimidation last year at least alerted the wider public to the crudity of the methods, and the law in this respect. Last year the loss of jobs at Longbridge showed how weak our job protection regulations are. This month the Peugeot workers at Ryton realised they too are expendable because of the weakness of our laws.
The May Day theme this year is the Trade Union Freedom Bill which a large and increasing number of Labour MPs support. John McDonnell, the Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group and of the Labour Representation Committee is right when he says that the test of support for any candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party should be their attitude to this Bill.
Internationalism is not a slogan; it is the only way to bring peace and justice to the world. Protection of social security, welfare systems and workers rights in Western Europe are best done not by compromising and retreat, but by international solidarity to gain workers’ protection and security around the world.
That is best done by strong, independent, and free trade unions.
