Capitalist Fraudsters

Letter from this weeks Socialist

In January last year when reporting the Madoff scandal the socialist posed the question of how many more fraudsters like him were going to be exposed like him. Since then we've seen the downfall of England Cricket Board backer Alan Stanford, and a report by accountancy firm, BDO, a massive increase in reported fraud.

This year reported fraud has reached £2bn a year, the financial sector alone accounting for £1.34bn a 70% increase on last year - but around 90% of the largest frauds aren't even reported at all. The fraudsters, have been using the wealth they've been able to con from greedy bankers to emulate their opulent lifestyles.

We need to take over the banks and run them democratically under workers control to use the wealth to benefit the majority of the population, not just the opulent lifestyles of a few.

Iain Dalton

Review - McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers by Misha Glenny

This review of this recently published book was written by myself and featured in this weeks The Socialist.

As the title indicates, this book is a penetrating insight into the close co-existence of big business and organised crime throughout the world.
Glenny, a former BBC correspondent during the break-up of Yugoslavia, starts his journey through worldwide organised crime with where he knows best, the Balkans. He interviews law enforcement agencies and current and ex-criminals and describes the web of corruption in these newly capitalist states that have allowed smuggling to establish itself so strongly. He goes on to trace the explosion of organised crime worldwide.
Unlike other authors discussing the relation between organised crime and the break-up of the USSR, he doesn't see the rise of the mafiya in Russia as an aberration on its path to transforming into a full-blown free market economy. He demonstrates that the rise of the mafiya and the gangster capitalist society it brought with it were linked.
Mafiya bosses transformed themselves into 'legitimate' businessmen who would then cut and run with their new money and status to the west.
Glenny then examines the effect this transformation of the former Stalinist states had on other countries. He demonstrates how globalisation, in particular the deregulation of financial markets, has led to a bonanza for organised crime as the boundaries between legality and illegality have blurred.
He points out that the main recruiting sergeant for organised crime gangs and syndicates is capitalism's inability to provide even the hope of a decent future for many people, whether it be the street gangs in Mumbai, the Yakuza in Japan, drug mules in South Africa or coca growers in Colombia.

Maintaining 'order'

He also notes the role that organised crime plays in helping to maintain capitalist society in many countries - not just by occasionally doing big business' dirty work but also in maintaining 'order' through their own rule of terror that law enforcement agencies co-exist with rather than tackle.
An extreme example was when the boom in the Japanese economy ended, leaving several financial institutions with bad debts owed to the yakuza. To reclaim these debts the yakuza made an example of one leading banker by murdering him. To stop a crime wave setting off, instead of punishing the yakuza for this act, the government underwrote all the financial institution's bad debts, effectively buying the yakuza off.
The book offers no serious way forward. Instead Glenny is rather despondent, understanding that the financial and other loopholes that organised crime exploit are the same that benefit big business.
He says in the conclusion that: "The need for strong, well-equipped law-enforcement agencies to combat organised crime is axiomatic. But appeals like this, which offer solutions based on the greater engagement of the police or military alone, betray a profound abdication of political responsibility."
Getting halfway there, he then adds that these appeals "are the product of unimaginative politicians who lack either the vision or the interest to address the great structural inequalities in the global economy upon which crime and instability thrive."
Glenny explains that it is not in the interests of the major capitalist countries to do this but at this point he reaches his limits.
It is socialists who have both the vision and interest to tackle inequality and really begin a fight to eradicate crime.

Twice As many Deaths at Work as on the 'Streets'

This is a short piece that features in this weeks issue of the Socialist

A report published by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies last week showed that whilst 765 are killed in acts of violence each year, almost twice as many, about 1300 a year, are killed in workplaces across the UK.
Given the huge attention given to rightly condemned street stabbings (only a small number of the 765 deaths), what about this which accounts for far more deaths? And as one of the authors point out "'In many ways these crimes are more premeditated. They have the opportunity to plan and prevent these deaths", but as ever the interests of profits and big business come first.

The Socialist Crime Fiesta

This weeks socialist features a wealth of article of interest to the budding left/socialist criminologist. We have articles on youth crime, the exeter attempted terrorist attack, civil liberties, a review of a crime tv programme and a report of barbaric violence in South Africa. To read these go to http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/main/The_Socialist

NUS conference report: Struggle still essential

This is a full report of NUS conference taken from this weeks The Socialist and a piece about the activist academy happening at Portsmouth Uni today.

Newly elected National Union of Students (NUS) president Wes Streeting, claims students will lose influence on the government if they protest and demand free education. Apparently students only have to ask for the £3,000 cap on fees to be maintained and the government will listen.

Disgracefully Labour Students and the rest of the right wing leadership opposed a call for a national demonstration to put pressure on the government and spoke against organising a mass campaign against fees and for free education in the run up to the review of the cap on top-up fees in 2009.

But Wes's tactic is not having much 'influence' as vice chancellors and universities are already budgeting for the increased income from higher fees.

This ludicrous argument was answered during the conference debate by Mia Hollsing from Cardiff Socialist Students. Mia argued that the most effective way of defeating fees and forcing the government to properly fund education is by "mobilising students into action and linking up with workers who are fighting attacks on their pay and conditions in a mass campaign".

Arran Cottam, from University of the West of England Socialist Students, received enthusiastic applause when he proposed NUS support for the teachers' industrial action on 24 April. He called on students to support picket lines and demonstrations but the NUS bureaucracy would not allow Socialist Students to propose an emergency motion.

But students also won a victory at the NUS conference. A proposed new constitution, which would have removed any potential for the NUS to represent and fight for ordinary students, was defeated.

The New Labour-backed NUS leadership attempted to force through undemocratic structural changes such as allowing student unions to opt out of mandatory cross-campus elections for delegates to NUS conference and replacing the current national executive (NEC) with a senate and board that would have allowed unelected 'experts' to veto any campaigns or actions proposed by elected student representatives.

The constitution was rejected on the basis of a higher turnout of students to NUS conference than in previous years. Despite attempts to pressurise delegates to vote in favour, Labour Students and others on the right narrowly failed to get the two-thirds majority they constitutionally needed to push through the attacks.

Socialist Students members contributed to the defeat of the right wing by organising opposition to the review in many student unions and mobilising ordinary students (ie those who are not seeking to carve out a career in politics seeing NUS as the first step!) to the conference.

The NUS leadership are already contemplating organising undemocratic extraordinary conferences (possibly in the summer when students are not on campus!) to push through their unwanted constitution.

Socialist Students explained that a democratic and campaigning NUS can only be defended by involving the mass of students in campaigning against fees, cuts, privatisation and other New Labour attacks.

There was a significant minority of activists at the conference, particularly from Further Education colleges who responded positively towards Socialist Students with many delegates buying copies of The Socialist and signing up to find out more.

However, because of the grip of the New Labour right-wing clique that runs NUS conference, the majority of ordinary students on campuses across the country are not involved in the structures and events of the NUS. This means that the majority of delegates to conference are not fighters or campaigners, but people looking to build political careers.

Fightback needed
Arran Cottam, Socialist Students candidate for the NEC, put forward a socialist fighting strategy for building links with workers and fighting back against New Labour during the hustings but missed out on a position on the NEC.

The right wing have a majority on the NEC (as well as New Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were elected) and will continue to use the bureaucratic structures against campaigns.

The left are in a minority on the NEC with Student Respect having two representatives on the part time 'block of 12'. The most effective use of their positions will be to go out to ordinary students and other activists and campaigners to democratically build effective mass action against fees.

Socialist Students and the Campaign to Defeat Fees has shown what is possible by organising a wide range of action against university fees, including days of action with over 50 coordinated protests around the UK.

This gives a glimpse of the anger that exists on campuses and in the colleges, and shows the potential for campaigning against fees and privatisation. It also shows the potential support for a genuine left campaigning alternative to the current NUS leadership.



Portsmouth Activists Academy - Get active and fight back!

This academic year has seen students protesting against fees around the country on 21 February, against anti-democratic attacks on students in Nottingham and Sussex, against privatisation of services in Exeter, saying no to military recruitment in universities in UCL.

Students are also involved in wider campaigning on national and international issues, such as climate change, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other issues. The Portsmouth Activists Academy aims to involve these activists in discussions around how to campaign, what is possible through campaigning and discussions on the different issues that face student activists.

There will be speakers on events in Venezuela, recent youth struggles in France and Greece, issues that students face such as the fight for free education, the future of the NUS, as well as workshops to share campaigning ideas. Virginie Prégny, French activist and trade unionist and member of the Committee for a Workers' International, will speak on May 1968, and whether it can happen again.

The Academy takes place on Saturday 12 April, starting at 10am.

If you are interested in coming along or building a fight back against fees, cuts, closures and privatisation, contact Socialist Students at www.socialiststudents.org.uk, socialiststudents@hotmail.com, 020 8558 7947 or at Socialist Students PO Box 858 London E11 1YG or visit http://www.upsu.net/diary/event/714.htm for Portsmouth Students Union.

Wrexham March Against the BNP

This piece is from this weeks socialist to promote the demo.

Saturday 12th April is the date for a demonstration against the British National Party called by Wrexham. The BNP received 5.1% (986 votes) in last May’s assembly elections, and received 9% in Wrexham. This year they are standing across North Wales, with 7 candidates in Wrexham – as well as candidates in Flintshire, Denbighshire, Conwy and even Gwynedd. Socialist Party members from North Wales will be taking part in the demonstration raising the need for a new worker’s party standing against cuts and privatisation to cut across the spread of the BNP.

Assemble 11.30am outside the town museum on Regent Street to march to rally at Queen’s Square.

Anglesey’s Carbon Surge

This is the one hundreth post on this blog - yay! This is a letter, published in the Socialist this week - i know it's also the green party conference either this week or next, so i thought it was timely to post it. Tomorrow also marks on year of this blog (i think!) so i'll do a special anniversary post

Last week North Wales newspapers reported that goods from a major Anglesey employer, Anglesey Aluminium have been switched from rail to road transport. The move pushed through by Austrian company Metall AG, will add 100 lorries to the already congested North Wales roads and produce 5 times more CO2 than rail transportation.
The incentive for doing this of course is cost, another one of capitalism’s short sighted strategies for profit that are destroying our environment. Big companies like Anglesey Aluminium and Metall AG as well as large haulage firms should be taken into public ownership and their resources should be democratically planned if we are ever going to be able to do anything about the looming climate catastrophe.

Stop the Anglesey nuclear time-bomb

I wrote this article (in this weeks The Socialist) based on recent developement on Anglesey and the battle between local politicans over who can be pro-nuclear enough. Also people may have noticed i've said in blogs i was writing this article, anyway here it is. There is also another version at www.socialistpartywales.org.uk

The pro-nuclear alliance of Anglesey County Council and local Labour MP Albert Owen have launched a new propaganda offensive to win people to the idea of a new nuclear power station at Wylfa on Anglesey.

Iain Dalton
They claim that without it, the island will lose 1,500 jobs. This figure has been inflated by Wylfa taking on temporary workers, and by including 400 jobs at Anglesey Aluminium which the company have publicly stated will not be threatened by closure of Wylfa, although they may use it as a pretext to move production to a lower wage economy.

However, a new nuclear station would employ far fewer people than the current station due to new technologies, and that is before cost-cutting practices of the new station's private owners (Wylfa is presently publicly run).

Local campaign group Pawb are arguing for an alternative employment plan for the island. Much of this lies around the potential for harnassing renewable energy sources, as the island has near ideal conditions for several technologies including tidal, wind, solar and wave. Additionally, based on the experience of decommissioning Trawsfnydd in nearby Gwynedd, decommissioning the current Wylfa station will provide at least 500 jobs for at least fifteen years.

Over a thousand people have now signed a petition organised by Pawb. Socialist Students in Bangor are helping to organise a public meeting.

There are lots of issues the mainstream politicians don't want to talk about. The fact that Wylfa has been shut down several times means that nuclear isn't a sure supply of energy as they argue. Cost-cutting could result in disastrous situations; the memory of Chernobyl still hangs across north Wales as farmers in the region are still affected by restrictions on animal movements as a result of fall-out from that disaster.

Furthermore, a new nuclear power station is seen as carbon neutral, but what about carbon emissions from mining fuel, transportation and construction of the plant itself? Also, the nuclear waste cannot be safely disposed of at present; this is a radiation time-bomb for future generations.

As the government announced the new plants, former Welsh Secretary, Peter Hain, offered his support for them, alongside Plaid Cymru leader Ieuan Wyn Jones. Both were prepared to grease the wheels for big business, whilst claiming, like the council, to be fighting for local jobs. Their policies are no solution to the endemic lack of jobs in north west Wales.

Pawb have launched a new website: www.stop-wylfa.org

Police ballot for industrial rights

Article from the Socialist 515

GORDON BROWN is trying to enforce below-inflation pay rises on public-sector workers, from the civil service to local government workers, teachers and nurses. Now the police are being forced into considering action. The Police Federation, representing rank and file police officers, has called on the Home Secretary to resign and is at loggerheads with the Metropolitan Police over a protest demonstration on 23 January.

Iain Dalton
The police were awarded a 2.5% pay rise by an independent tribunal from 1 September. But the government decided to implement it for the 140,000 police in England and Wales only from 1 December, saving £30 million.

Since the 1970s the police have been awarded pay increases by an index, which takes into account their lack of a right to strike. This year however, as part of their drive against public-sector pay increases, the government decided they wished to come out of this and impose a settlement.

The index was given to the police after discontent in the police force in the 1970s. A series of pay disputes, no doubt influenced by working-class struggles at the time, led to calls then for genuine trade union organisation and the right to strike.

To silence their demands they were given an immediate 10% pay increase, with a review into police pay after this. When the Tory government was returned in 1979, it announced the new generous pay index, no doubt partly to buy the support of police officers for the assault on trade unions during the 1980s.

Now the Police Federation is to ballot its members on whether it should lobby for full industrial rights. The Federation is also attempting to organise a demonstration in London, although archaic legislation may be used to block this from taking place - which would leave us with the odd sight of the Metropolitan Police banning police from demonstrating.

Socialists support police officers' right to a proper trade union and the right to strike. We should work towards bringing the ranks of the police closer to the labour movement, whilst also calling for local democratic control of the police and opposing their repressive use.

PS - I was wondering about whether anyone else would be interested in setting up a joint blog about the left & crime?

Letter - An Organised Dab in the Hand

Letter sent in by myself appearing in the Socialist Issue 503.

A recent report published by the UN said that organised crime takes roughly £954 billion a year, and argued that it was one of the three biggest threats facing the world alongside global warming and the scarcity of global drinking water. Further into the report, it stated that contrary to popular opinion, only a minority of bribes (which accounted for over half of this crime) went to public officials in the developing world. The report stated that "the vast majority of bribes are paid to people in richer countries". Rising crime, as critical criminologists observed in the 1980's and 1990's, is an expression of free-market policies that right-wing governments have ushered in worldwide. On top of these bribes, in this country we have seen the huge donations that companies and the rich pour into the main political parties, being rewarded with peerages and PFI contracts. The capitalist system creates crime and needs replacing by a system run by the majority to meet their needs; a socialist world.

Victory to the Postal Workers

As anyone living in Britain may have noticed, there is a dispute going on currently in the postal service. Here i republish the editorial from last weeks issue of the socialist (no 495) and the brief report i wrote of the second day of strike action locally which was published in issue 496. And if you live in the UK, why not visit a CWU picket line outside your local sorting office, this is a battle over the future of the postal service of a whole and we should be supporting wholeheartedly those who are fighting to defend this vital public service.


A SECOND day of strike action by postal workers was called because the Royal Mail management point blank refused to even negotiate with the Communication Workers Union (CWU).The bosses are demanding, in effect, complete capitulation by the workers and an acceptance that they will have to pay for the crisis of the post office; a crisis of declining revenues and a pension fund deficit.

This crisis has been brought about through the deliberate government policy of deregulation, overseen by the government-appointed postal regulator, whereby private companies are able to pick out the most profitable parts of the business. Under the regulator, Royal Mail has lost some of its most profitable bulk business mail to private companies such as DHL. Some big business companies, like BT and British Gas, have stopped using Royal Mail to deliver bills etc to their customers.

It is no wonder that under this completely one-sided arrangement, Royal Mail is beginning to face a profits drain on its day-to-day operations. Royal Mail is left with the obligation to continue to deliver to all 27 million postal addresses in Britain, without being funded to cover the real cost.

The bosses' answer to the crisis, as always, is to off-load it onto the backs of workers. They are demanding that post workers take an effective pay cut and at the same time do more and more work.

What should the CWU do now? The first Royal Mail workers' strike was overwhelmingly supported as no doubt - as we go to press - will be the second strike. Crown post office workers are also engaged in a series of half-day strikes. Will these one-day and half-day strikes be enough?

The first Royal Mail strike was called from 3am on the Friday morning to the same time the following day, to accommodate the many different starting and finishing times of the workers involved. As well, some workers who drive vans into and out of sorting offices and whose shifts were due to end after the 3am deadline refused to cross the picket lines.

In effect there were elements of unofficial action as well as the official action. This will no doubt be repeated in the second strike. Post workers need to be prepared to counter provocations and harassment from managers, for instance it will only take some cowboy manager to start throwing their weight about and suddenly those who refuse to cross picket lines when their shifts have not ended could find themselves being suspended.

There is some talk that the way forward is to move towards sectional action and to develop more unofficial action. One idea being mooted is for sorting offices to come out on strike one day and delivery offices the next or at least in the same week. The difficulty there is that some delivery offices are on the same site as a sorting office and again the question then arises of a picket line and unofficial action.

The link between sorting and delivery offices means, not just for those on the same site but also in general, that the two should not be separated if disunity and confusion is to be avoided and the maximum unity of post workers maintained. Far better would be to maintain the present united action but to step it up. This means continue to take strike action together, but escalate it from one day to two or more days at a time.

The action needs to be increased until the bosses are forced to seriously negotiate and as one postal worker correctly said: "This does not mean some mealy-mouthed form of wording so that the union leaders have an excuse to call off the action when in effect the bosses have conceded nothing!".

Rank and file CWU members must be as fully consulted as possible and involved in key decision-making at each stage of the dispute. As well as maintaining unity of action among post workers, a determined strategy needs to be adopted to develop the struggle in auxiliary ways, such as the maintaining and increasing of public support.

Union leaflets need to cut across the lies of the bosses who say the workforce is the problem. The CWU strategy also could include approaches to win support from workers in the private mail companies.

Very important is to appeal for co-ordinated action with other public sector workers, over low pay, privatisation, job losses and other attacks. The socialist believes that a 24-hour strike of the entire public sector is urgently needed to force the government to step back from its many assaults on public services.

A number of public-sector union leaders are in any case discussing or preparing for strike action over pay. However, some of them - with the honourable exception of the PCS - are hoping to avoid taking action and it will take major pressure from union members to make sure it goes ahead.

However, the primary responsibility of the CWU leadership is to take forward their own action in defence of their members. It is better to strike together with other public sector unions but post workers cannot simply wait for this to happen as this would allow the post office bosses to dictate their agenda of cuts instead of the union taking the initiative.

In the final analysis, industrial action is only part of the strategy. Also necessary is a new mass workers' party committed to public ownership, to stop the process of privatisation and deregulation and to draw up an overall programme to fight for workers' interests in all respects.

Ossett

The strike in Ossett (near Wakefield) was solid. 15 CWU members were on the picket line in jubilant mood. The strikers discussed ways to further build public support for the strike by petitioning in the town centre against the attacks Royal Mail management are making to the postal service. They also discussed how the Socialist Party could further support them. The Socialist Party strike bulletin was well received.

Report Rejects Nuclear Expansion

This piece was published as a letter in the most recent copy of the Socialist (issue 495).

The Oxford Research Group has published a report into the potential uptake for civil nuclear power generation over the next 65 years. The nuclear power lobby claims that nuclear power can have a new 'golden era' of providing cheap, clean power. The report suggests that nuclear power expansion will make little impact on significantly reducing carbon emissions.
The report suggests that to make such an impact we would need to build 3,000 new reactors world-wide over the next sixty years, equivalent to one a week, whereas there are only 492 in operation today and many of these are nearing the end of their useful working lives.
Furthermore the creation of more nuclear plants will increase the possibility of them becoming a focus of terrorist attacks with the potential for mass destruction. It would also see expansion of nuclear energy into countries that do not already have such reactors.
Socialists are opposed to nuclear power, because there is no safe way of disposing of nuclear waste, which can stay reactive for hundreds of years and could do great damage to the environment. There should be greater research into providing clean renewable energy sources, planned to meet people's needs.

Bin Collections & Recycling

articles mostly by myself from this weeks socialist

We need - Weekly bin collections AND recycling schemes

OVER RECENT months several councils have announced their intention to move to fortnightly non-recyclable bin collections (from weekly) and to increase recycling bin collections to fortnightly too. Environment Secretary, David Miliband, also announced plans to allow councils to introduce additional bin charges as well as rewards for those who recycle the most.
Iain Dalton
For the last year I have lived in an area where the alternating fortnightly bin collections (non-recycled then recycled) had been trialled.
I went from having five bin collections every four weeks (four weekly non-recyclable and one monthly recyclable) to four (two fortnightly non-recyclable and two fortnightly recyclable), which is a cut in collections.
For the most part the two of us sharing the house managed to cope with the reduced collections, except at Christmas, where the reduced collections meant that it was almost four weeks between them.
In consequence, we were left with a pile of bags in the house that wouldn't fit in the bin. It was even worse for the family next door with a new-born baby. They had bin bags full of nappies that they couldn't fit in their bin for months.
This scheme was supposed to improve recycling and reduce the amount of waste, similar to the announcements made recently by the Environment Secretary.
The problem with the scheme is that it didn't take into account the different amounts of waste produced by families due to the differing numbers of people living within each house.
Schemes that try to charge for bin collections or charge by bin weight will come across similar problems, as houses containing more people will undoubtedly create more waste than those with fewer.
Despite claims that any charging scheme for waste collection would be revenue-neutral, all councils are engaging in ways to cut costs, whether by trying to limit public-sector pay or cut services.
Providing more recycling collections gives people the chance to recycle things they couldn't in the past due to their recycling bins being full. However, reducing non-recycling collections doesn't mean that recycling will increase, given the amount of excess packaging on many products.
Packaging
JUNK MAIL and packaging are the main sources of waste that could be reduced. Miliband proposes an opt-out scheme for undirected junk mail, but why should people have to opt out of mail they don't want anyway.
Excess packaging is another thing which people are burdened with by companies. Any packaging which is still needed should be designed to be recyclable or reusable.
Products could be designed to last longer and thus need replacing less often too (creating less waste) and those that do exist (such as energy-saving light bulbs) should be made affordable to more people.
Whilst more affluent individuals may be able to afford the 'green lifestyle' products companies now produce, these tend to remain out of the reach of ordinary people.
It will take more than just Miliband's 'voluntary agreements' with big business to change the above problems. They exist because companies believe that they can either attract more customers (junk mail), lower their costs (non-reusable/recyclable packaging) or increase sales (short-usage products) all meaning greater profits.
The firms that are mostly responsible for this are making millions and sometimes billions of pounds worth of profits, yet still they squeeze more out through these wasteful methods.
This is due to the very nature of capitalism based, as it is, on profits rather than the needs of people and the environment.
Only by production being democratically planned to meet the needs of the environment and people can we reduce this vast waste.

We should demand:

• Fully funded weekly public waste collection and recycling schemes
• No to privatisation of bin collection and to extra collection charges
• Nationalisation of the big supermarkets and the top 150 companies under democratic control.
  

When recycling becomes a hazard

SOON, SOME 200 councils will have axed their weekly rubbish collections. It is claimed that fortnightly collections will improve household waste recycling rates. Currently, 100 million tonnes of rubbish is dumped in landfill sites and the UK is close to the bottom of the European recycling league.
However, Channel 4's Dispatches programme (broadcast on 24 May) showed that fortnightly collections were risking a public health hazard by leaving waste uncollected for longer. As a consequence, households were recycling less waste. They were putting recyclable items into non-recyclable collections if it meant getting rid of them faster.

Squandered - earth's mineral resources

UNDER THE present system of profit and waste, it is not only rubbish that gets thrown away or squandered. As an article in New Scientist magazine (26 May) showed, some of the world's most valuable mineral resources are being seriously depleted.

byRoger Shrives

Expensive metals like platinum, essential for such environmentally important products as catalytic converters and fuel cells, are in increasingly short supply. Due to wasteful methods of production and usage, platinum makes up 1.5 parts per million of roadside dust. Scientists are now trying a bacterial process to separate platinum from the dust in the largest waste sites.
Gallium, indium and other metals that are needed for solar cells are also becoming rarer. The US imports 90% of its 'rare earth' metals from China which is industrialising fast and may keep more of its bounty for its own industrial needs.
Shortage of resources often increases tendencies towards conflict. Already, media reports show the effects of capitalism on poverty-stricken but mineral-rich countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose people have faced horrific civil war as battle has raged over the huge mineral resources.
Millions have died in wars while plunder by mineral companies has reduced vast areas to little more than desolate moonscapes worked by miners as young as eight. Gold, diamonds and the biggest tantalum mines in Africa are not being used as a common resource to raise living standards in that continent and solve environmental problems worldwide but to boost private profit and power.
Nobody knows how much or how little reserves of these minerals are still in the earth.
Socialist planning needs to replace the chaos of production for profit and prestige. This is the only way of making a better world and finding a solution to the problems caused by the short-sightedness of capitalism.

How do we phase out plastic bags?

THE SMALL town of Modbury in Devon received quite a bit of media coverage when it went plastic carrier bag-free early in May.
Plastic bags make up a large percentage of waste. These carrier bags do not degrade, rather they break up into smaller pieces that can eventually enter the food chain.
So, it is beneficial to the environment to phase out their use. In Modbury, the elimination of plastic bags was achieved by replacing them with compostable bags. However, the population of only 1,553 people is hardly analogous to any major town or city.
What is more, £3.95 per compostable bag is hardly affordable to working-class people. However, if such bags were produced in greater quantities this would immediately reduce their price - they need to be provided very cheap or free.
It would be necessary for these to be available in all shops, most importantly the big chain stores and supermarkets where their use would have the most impact.

Political Cartoons & Chinese Protests

Hi all, just been looking at some work by the political cartoonists who do the covers for the Socialist Party's monthly magazine and theoretical journal Socialism Today. So added to the links section are Suzanne Muna's cartoons and Alan Hardman's cartoons. I know in the past cartoons were a regular feature of the Militant, and it's a shame we don't have so many today (to see more of Alan Hardman's cartoons from that period the SP books Rise of Militant and Civil War Without Guns have quite a few in them).

In other news the city of Xiauan in China has seen a mass protest(20,000 strong) against the building of a plant which will produce a harmful chemical px. As ever the Chinese authorities have tried to do al they can to break the struggle, including mass police deployment and cutting mobile phone signals. See a youtube video here and an article here.

Blair has no solutions to crime problem

This article is taken from this week's socialist, again written by myself.

Blair's crime review - No solutions to crime or crowded prisons - Iain Dalton

TONY BLAIR has had 53 'law and order' bills passed in ten years at number ten, but still thinks he isn't being tough enough on crime yet. New Labour's latest crime review includes extending 'early intervention' to monitoring all children to examine their 'risk' of criminality.
'Summary justice', ie 'on the spot' fines, would be extended as would fixed penalty notices and ASBOs, which lack even the limited accountability of the undemocratic judiciary. The review also wants to increase police DNA databases to all suspects they come into contact with.
So it is more of the same authoritarian policy we have come to expect. Blair also decided that "the pace of public service reform in criminal justice needed to match that in health and education" (the guardian, 28 March) and is proposing 'workforce reform' (read privatisation) of court, probation and prison staff and the introduction of league tables for courts (which already exist for prisons).
Such proposals show New Labour have no real solutions to the record prison population announced last week and the gun and knife crime in the headlines recently. Not that the other capitalist parties have solutions. The Tories decry the logical conclusions of some of the policies they first put into practice during their 18-year rule while the Lib-Dems claim that Blair has adopted some of their policies.
In the guardian on the same day as the crime review, an article on Britain's high levels of poverty, low pay, youth unemployment and McJobs showed that life is bleak for young people.
Although there is no simple relationship between crime and poverty, the two are intimately associated with each other and are rooted in the exploitative capitalist system. We can win higher pay, better working conditions and other reforms under capitalism, but we need a socialist world to make these problems a thing of the past.

Prisons

Now I know I am a criminology student, and it's in title of this blog, so people are probably wondering why i haven't posted anything on crime and the like yet. WEll I haven't got round to it, although I'm probably going to put something up on the 'riots' of the early 1980'sa in the next week or so (time permitted). Instead I thought i'd leave you with a recent article I wrote for the Socialist.

Reid's prison disaster
HOME SECRETARY John Reid is under great pressure from the media and MPs after several well-publicised crises and humiliations about his department's work in law enforcement. He has also come under attack for reiterating the position that magistrates should only jail the most dangerous and persistent criminals. This is a bid to ease overcrowding in prisons in England and Wales, that are full to the point of bursting. IAIN DALTON looks behind the headlines.
IN NOVEMBER last year, the prison population exceeded 80,000 for the first time ever, increasing at a rate of 2.4% or 1,790 prisoners per year. Britain puts 143 out of every 100,000 people behind bars, now having Europe's largest prison population.
Some of the 139 prisons are overcrowded up to 130% of their capacity. Despite the government making police cells available to accommodate prisoners under Operation Safeguard, in some areas prisoners are accommodated in court cells. All this is whilst government figures tell us that crime is decreasing.
Labour looks set to copy the Tories' policies from the last time there was a prison overcrowding problem: build more prisons, and most likely private prisons. Reid is apparently securing treasury funding for an extra 8,000 prison places. The last overcrowding crisis in the early 1990s was the excuse for the Tories to introduce privatisation in this arena.
Britain now has the largest percentage of private prisons in the world (though the USA has the highest number of privatised prisons). But this 'solution' has been shown to fail. Not only has the prison population risen to take up that capacity, but private prisons are among the most overcrowded.
There has also been an attempt to extend early release, also introduced following previous prison crises. However, despite the keenness to increase the role of electronic tagging (privatised since inception), upwards from the 3,000 prisoners currently released early subject to tagging, it has seen resistance from the courts, and is less likely.
Labour have also been keen to bolster community punishments as an alternative to prison, however, Labour's legislation has increasingly made community punishment an addition to prison, rather than an alternative. The 2003 Criminal Justice Act allows judges to 'pick and mix' various penalties for offenders, leading to increases in both rather than a shift from prison to community.

Discontent

ACADEMIC CRIMINOLOGISTS are keen to point out that the judiciary is 'the crux of the crisis'. Indeed as 97% of all cases are tried at a magistrates' court, determining guilt and sentencing mostly lies in the hands of unelected middle- and upper-class individuals. Many prisoners are debtors or have been sentenced for minor crimes.
The judiciary tend to support heavy punishment, which can be seen in the increase in numbers sentenced to prison and sentence lengths, especially the new indeterminate public protection sentence for current offenders introduced in 2005, which has been imposed on 1,890 prisoners, and is set to increase to over 12,000 in the next five years.
Institutionalised racism is also present. There are disproportionate numbers of ethnic minority prisoners, with disproportionately long sentences. Many from a similar class background to judges get much lower sentences (or are completely let off). However, it is not just the judiciary that are the problem.
Whilst there is not the discontent within prisons of the early 1990s (which saw rioting) conditions are continually worsening as a result of overcrowding and are far from the 'luxury accommodation' right-wing commentators criticise. Up to three prisoners can be accommodated within a single small cell.
Many prisoners get no access to decent education or training facilities, with resulting high illiteracy and innumeracy. Additionally, the increase in prison population has made prisons more understaffed than ever.
Many prisoners are locked in their cells for most of the day, which as POA (prison officers' union) leader Brian Caton pointed out in a recent interview for the socialist means that any supposed rehabilitation cannot occur. The morale and working conditions of staff are deteriorating.
With roughly 60% of prisoners re-offending, how does the prison system actually stop crime? Although New Labour say they have been tough on crime, they have not made the situation any better, and have probably made it worse, for the general public, prisoners and the staff inside the prisons.

Long-term solution

CAPITALIST POLITICIANS from the main parties have repeatedly shown they have no long-term solution to crime apart from locking increasing numbers of people up for ever-longer periods of time, which just the makes the problem of overcrowding even worse. Only socialists have a real solution to this crisis.
A socialist programme to give jobs and training for all on a living wage, with housing and other essentials of life under public ownership and control would be necessary to begin to overcome the present levels of crime.
A socialist programme would call for steps such as releasing all debtors and those in prison for trivial crimes immediately. This would instantly reduce prison overcrowding, and improve conditions for prison staff. Other cases should be reviewed by democratically elected bodies.
Socialists must also campaign for the right to trial by jury in all cases and a democratically elected judiciary earning no more than the average wage of a worker and subject to recall at any time. Privately owned prisons should be returned to the public sector.