The NPA - a model for Britain

The Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) was formed in Febuary 2009 to unify the radical left and youth in France. The founding of the party was a response to the urgent need for unity in the face of vicious government attacks. President Sarkozy’s social program of privatisation and bank bailouts meant that the NPA quickly attracted 10,000 members. The NPA’s opposition to the neo-liberal policies of the government resonated with workers and youth in struggle across France, and across France’s borders.

The NPA is different from the various socialist unity projects of recent years in Britain. Instead of being a temporary coalition of self-interested factions, it has grown out of the experience of workers’ and youth struggles in 450 local and regional action committees.

These action committees were set up for people to fight back against the crisis. Before the founding of the NPA, these “committees for a new party” were involved in grassroots political activity: they spearheaded local campaigns and organised resistance to the waves of public sector cuts and job losses sweeping across the country.

As demonstrated by its loudspeaker logo, the NPA is a call to action for committed anti-capitalists in France. Its success in mobilising anti-racists, anti-fascists and socialists in the European elections ensured 5% of the popular vote for the new group.

No2EU blamed their terrible European election result on the fact that they were a ‘new electoral front’. Well the NPA was just four months old on polling day, and managed to achieve a higher percentage than all the British so-called radical left put together.

The abysmal performance of the rest of the left in Britain exposes the criminal ineffectiveness of their strategy. This ‘performance’ has spurred some groups to make tentative noises about ‘unity’ and the need to ‘fight fascism’. But their idea of unity is not the unity that drew 10,000 activists together to found a fighting, democratic organisation. Their slogan of fighting fascism is a cover for the abandonment of the principles of workers solidarity and internationalism.

The NPA has proven that a mass party does not have to surrender to nationalism to steal the limelight from the fascists. It shows that sticking to and promoting a principled stance will reap the rewards of electoral success.

Without exaggerating this success, the example of the NPA is a model for building a unified, fighting, anti-capitalist group in Britain: a group that will be able to emulate the success of the NPA in the French student movement, where dozens of universities have been crippled by months of strike action by staff and students. A group that will be committed to fighting for internationalism in the struggles of workers and youth against capitalist exploitation.

In this time of crisis, only a new party rooted in local action committees can claim any legitimacy. After the French example, we know that these committees and eventually the national party organisation are invaluable tools of resistance. The French youth were instrumental in their local and regional committees to the founding of the fledgling NPA. And the NPA in turn is playing a vital role in supporting the fight of the French students and youth against job losses, university closures, and the systematic oppression of young people by capitalism.

NUT Strike at Haggerston School

Members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) today took strike action over threats of job losses at Haggerston School in Hackney, east London. The action followed a ballot last month that saw a 100% turnout. With 36 out of 37 ballots in favour of discontinuous strike action, the determination of the teachers is clear.

This militancy was demonstrated by a lively morning picket attended by teachers and parents at the school gates.

Eleven teachers have been told that they could be made redundant, including teachers who have dedicated over twenty years to the serving the school and its community. Unsurprisingly, three part-time posts are threatened - highlighting the fact that employees on temporary contracts are always the first to be targetted when jobs are on the line.

The proposed cuts stem from a management plan put in place to recover a budget deficit. These "restructuring measures" concocted by the governors and the senior management are part of an industry-wide assault intended to make teachers and support staff pay the price for managerial incompetence.

However, angry teachers say that there was £1.3m left over in the school budget in June last year. This is a colossal sum for any school to fritter away - let alone a school in the heart of one of the most deprived areas of London. Where has this money gone?

One teacher spoke of the outrage of staff and parents over the behaviour of management towards teachers involved in the dispute. As reported in the Hackney Gazette, some teachers were given their notice of dismissal by courier. In one example a taxi was hired (at a cost of £80) to deliver notice of redundancy to a teacher in front of colleagues and students as she supervised a school Sports' Day.

The anger of teachers at Haggerston is compounded by allegations of petty and vindictive behaviour towards staff by a management secure in their employment prospects.

The behaviour of the manangement and the governors in this dispute should be monitered closely by unions. A vote of no confidence by three unions recently forced the sacking of a headteacher at a flagship Academy in Cumbria. This tactic should be considered by all teachers fighting against profit-minded managements determined to run our schools for the benefit of private individuals rather than in the best interests of the students and staff.

Education is not a place for the government to turn when it needs to raise quick funds. Working people and the youth have no affinity with foreign wars, nuclear weapons or pan-handling bankers. If the government persists in keeping it's wretched free-market on life support, then it can find the money elsewhere.

This government must wake up to the fact that only a massive investment in education will secure an acceptable post-recession future for the youth of Britain. Gordon Brown may take tea with Thatcher, but he must learn from the mistakes of the '80's when an entire generation was condemned to long-term unemployment as a result of the pillaging of education during the recession.

For a massive program of investment in education and public works, to provide socially useful labour and employment.

For key industries to be under the control of those who work in and use them- clearly the capitalists will stop at nothing to satisfy their craven greed. In insisting on imposing their free market on our young people, they show us nothing but the depths of their contempt.

We must similarly demonstrate our contempt for their determination to run our entire educational system into the ground.

My Radio

rhythms hiss within a brushed chrome
casing, feels more like a casket,
branded nearly departed.
it’s a fickle and contrary machine, the
circuit board is one big,
glorious design fault and
the aerial is
at best temperamental with
a reception that shrieks
a hormonal staccato,
A fiend resembling nothing so much
as a clockwork sibling, that emits
-Rat Pack Hits-
in rose-tinted glasses of course, Chanel I think
or Steve McQueen I fancy once charmed
with their vintage pedigree.
Now by means of an arcane tuning system
-no dial, why no dial-
My radio has connived with commercial
platforms, to wind me up by degrees, it
persists
in enlightening me:
Seems you can tune an ear, to a tasteless
bandwidth, eloquent in its irony – unashamed
it wallows, baiting your patience,
meandering through the tracklist;
Oh the mindless indulgence.
More music – less talk is very well and that,
and I don’t want to bring up quality quantity
that canard
but Roy Orbison lilts on and presently
I’m tired of DAB and digital and FM and
-what the fuck is going on-
decades since California dreamed, that
band plays on – unaware
that I’m still waiting for my favourite song.

Wendy Running Guns

Wendy put to sea and took to running guns with
a fiddler and a fugitive. They shared their passage in
care of illicit liqueur and a ransom in lace fringed with
a threadbare caress. At length the fugitive would tire
of his fantastic stories relayed in the reverie of
an accomplished liar. From dusk the seas would long to embrace
the heavens – the stars a candelabra on the watery canvas.
The fiddler was by turns tragic with romance, or flush with
dispassion; he’d play a dolorous address to the unfeeling tide.
The confines of their derelict coracle necessarily subdued
the devil in Wendy’s flounce, but the fugitive had affected –
around the 49th parallel – a trilby à la Dick Turpin in which he'd vainly
flaunt a tricolour cockade, though in truth he knew not from whence it came.

Wendy awoke dockside to her rendezvous – sporting a
caftan. Her careworn valise is tailored with a
nimble flourish, once intended, no doubt, to accessorize
a proud debutante; now marred by the casual
embrace of a weary world. The polished asphalt
echoed the tattoo of her impractical shoes. The rhythm is
offbeat and her stride is skewed. Habit slips her
innocuously into a speakeasy, frequented by dapper lapels
whiling away other men’s time at baccarat with
guileless smiles. Fancy that – a dandy with symmetry in
his cravat and sleight of hand deploys a glance that fidgets
Wendy’s nerves and unsettles her poise. His voice commands
a tequila sunrise swiftly delivered, in hushed undertone he said:

I’m Clyde. With a practised flourish he manoeuvred Wendy
through to a private parlour. The eyes are fatigued by the tasteless
décor and sallow walls which purvey a stale scent of foreign
cologne and cheap cigarettes. Wanted across the six counties, his
manner impassive. In a sibilant drawl –his back all the while to Wendy–
‘Well luscious lips, they’d said you were back in business’
Wendy considered, and offhand-feigned she countered: -Naturally,
this business is selfish, it leaves no room for altruism.-
-Verily- intoned the dandy -and yet you imagine this to be?- Bejeweled,
a hand motioned the crate of matériel. The gun-runner acknowledged
the white elephant with -It is not my place to justify expedience or means-

Presently, arrived the fugitive with the fiddler in tow
and for fear of pursuit, a hasty retreat was enjoined thro'
valleys estranged over years by the tramp of harried feet.
Inevitably the relentless dawn broke with false sympathy
- stifling the vain ambitions of their deceived optimism.
Nine miles shy of the border, the premature stir of hope was
stillborn on the cusp of our fugitives’ souls, as a clinical
ambush waylaid and triumphed over a swindled ideal.
To ease the gun-runner, the dying fiddler bathed her brow with
two drops of diamonds, along with: 'Maybe the change of scene
will furnish the relief you seek’ – he meant that candour
of thought delivered on a rifled wind, which presents
the void of redemption, tempered by a concealed fatigue.
They say at the departing of the soul, it was the contempt of belief
that prompted our lonesome romantic to insist:

–it must be better than Wyoming-

Baby, Walk On

You show no mercy
When you say that we
That we ain't lovers;
Oh, what can you mean?

I'm a patient man,
Sittin' on impatient dreams,
But see where I stand;
Sheltered in my vanities.

I suffer with patience,
‘Til you come on by.
And tomorrows don’t matter-
No need to justify,
A knee jerk reaction;
This feeling’s not quite
Fickle winds of affection;
Since yesterday's alright.

I said easy, mister;
‘Cause I’ll tell it you true-
‘Bout when all your friends laugh;
And they call you a fool.

We’ve got no need to talk;
Why talk round the answer.
So farewell baby, walk on;
'Cause tomorrow don’t matter