The Welfare Reform Bill

I HATE the sound of this bill. Anyway, this has just come in from Global Womens' Strike.

Welfare Reform Bill:

Mothers, carers, people with disabilities, victims of domestic violence … win important changes in the Lords.
But some may be overturned on Tuesday when the Bill returns to the Commons. Join us to press MPs to keep them.

Many important concessions have been won. Testimonies from those affected, among a wealth of letters and evidence from organisations, including ours, were taken up by Peers and journalists, forcing the government to shift. The government has publicly agreed to some of the changes, but some remain under threat.

The Bill is coming back to the Commons on Tuesday 10 November.
ACTION YOU CAN TAKE: Phone and/or email your MP to urge them to keep the concessions and to condemn the worst measures in the Bill.
House of Commons tel: 020 7219 3000 Find your MP

Most under threat:

· Single parents of children under five are entitled to care for our children full-time without losing benefit for not doing “work-related activity”. We need to press MPs not to overturn this. No mother should be forced to go out to work if she feels her pre-school age children need her.


Changes likely to be approved:

· Single mothers/parents of children aged three to six. Single parents on Income Support will be able to keep £50 earnings, up from £20. No “work-related activity” will be compulsory outside school hours, childcare or term-time. Mothers won’t have their benefit cut for missing “job seekers” appointments due to family responsibilities. Parents of children under 12 claiming Job Seekers Allowance will not have to work full-time and can reject jobs that do not fit within school hours.

· Parents. Jobcentre advisers and “back to work” staff must have regard for the welfare of the child in what they tell parents to do.

· Carers. Single parents will be exempt from job seeking if their disabled child under 16 receives any rate of Disability Living Allowance for care. Previously, the government said the parent must work if a child is on the low rate for care.

· Women fleeing domestic violence. A three-month exemption from job seeking. Though not enough for recovery and settling distressed children, it is an improvement over the previous discretionary decision by Jobcentre staff.

· It is illegal for anyone to be pressured into medical treatment. Jobcentre or “back to work” staff will not be able to tell disabled people claiming Employment and Support Allowance (including people with mental health problems) that they have to take their prescription or undergo surgery. The government previously claimed that some people are “wilfully keeping themselves unfit for work”. People with drug and alcohol problems can be required to attend assessments and “motivation” sessions, but cannot lose benefit for refusing rehabilitation or treatment.

Despite these changes, the Bill takes away many of our rights:

It abolishes Income Support. This is the main benefit which acknowledges unwaged caring work by single mothers and other carers.

It wipes out entitlement based on need and brings in US-style workfare. Couples with young children must both seek work. Almost all claimants of working age must look for a job or engage in a “work-related activity”. Those who cannot find a job will have to “work for their benefits”, i.e. for £1.60 an hour. Forcing more people to chase scarce jobs, while allowing employers to bypass the minimum wage, lowers everyone’s wages. Councils looking to cut costs are already preparing for workfare staff. Those of us who do not or cannot comply are threatened with destitution. Asylum seekers were the first to be made destitute, and this inhuman standard is being extended to others.

It introduces compulsory joint birth registration even where the father is violent. If the mother has no official proof of his violence (a common situation) she will be forced to give his name. Mothers of newborns should not have to worry about going to court to stop the father abusing his parental rights to persecute her and the child.

It expands charging for disability services which local authorities are allowed to deduct at source from disabled people’s personal budgets. While many disability groups welcome “the right to control” in the Welfare Reform Bill, the new percentage charging system discriminates against those with severe disabilities, who pay more from bigger budgets.

We are determined to defend our entitlement to benefits and free high-quality services. Many people have signed up to a letter condemning the abolition of Income Support. Add your name. LINK

Contact us for more info:

Single Mothers’ Self-Defence centre@crossroadswomen.net
WinVisible (women with visible and invisible disabilities) winvisible@allwomencount.net
Global Women’s Strike womenstrike8m@server101.com
Legal Action for Women law@allwomencount.net

Tel: 020 7482 2496 www.allwomencount.net www.globalwomenstrike.net

Life: Imagine The Potential

We are the true progressives.

Life, what a beautiful choice

Abby Johnson, the former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic, has come over to the side of life.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it

Hat Tip: Paddy C

Who Is Margaret J Ballard And Why Was She Writing To The Universe Last Summer?

Margaret J Ballard wrote the following letter to Catholic weekly, The Universe in late summer 2008:

"I feel obliged to make a few comments regarding the campaign, which your paper has been conducting against the British National Party since July and shows no signs of abating.
It appears to have originated with the ridiculous and unsubstantiated accusations in the article by Paul Donovan, which prompted letters by your readers, two of which, on August 24, pointed out the part played by New Labour in the moral and religious decline in this country, and the very real concerns of the indigenous population with regard to mass immigration and the consequences. As for John Battle's assertion that he is unable to 'engage with the BNP' because of violent reaction, he really should have taken his statement to its logical conclusion, giving details of the 'violence' which he has suffered. The British National Party is a legally constituted political party, recognised by the State. It participates in elections, abides by the rules of the Electoral Commission and now has a reasonable number of local councillors, as well as a member of the London Assembly. As a Catholic newspaper, you should be more concerned with the terrible persecution of Catholics, particularly in Iraq, where before this country's involvement in the illegal invasion, Catholics enjoyed freedom to practice their faith.Terrorist activities, violent crime and now murder are a daily occurence in this country, none of which are connnected with the BNP. As for the issue of voting, or not voting for the BNP, your readers should not agonise too much; it should be obvious to all who have the power to reason that in a quasi-Marxist tyranny that this country is fast becoming, voting is irrelevant. Finally certain anti-abortion groups should perhaps divert their spiteful and uncharitable allegations against Catholic MPs who support abortion, rather than criticise BNP policy, which I'm sure does not advocate the killings of disabled babies.

I blogged about this in May, wondering whether the BNP was targeting Catholic voters. I noted that along with numerous letters from fascists, The Universe, whose readership is largely drawn from traditionally staunchly Labour-supporting working-class Catholics of Irish descent, had been sent a Catholic-themed BNP pamphlet studded with references to Rerum Novarum.

The plot thickens

Dolphinarium can disclose that Margaret Joyce Ballard shares an address in Carshalton with one, Paul Ballard. She's nearly 90 and he's nearly 60. Perhaps they're mother and son.

The name Paul Ballard will be familiar to seasoned anti-fascists. He just happens to be the BNP's branch organiser for Surrey and Croydon - the "hardline Croydon branch" as the authoritative Searchlight describes it - with a lot of previous, so to speak. This former National Front organiser was active in Combat 18, the neo-Nazi terrorist organisation, between 1992 and 1995. Recall that Combat 18, the numerals being derived from Adolf Hitler's initials, publishes the notorious RedWatch magazine and has been suspected of involvement in numerous immigrants' deaths as well as night-of-the-long-knives style liquidations of its own members. Ballard and his comrades published an antisemitic rag called The Rune to which wannabe fuhrer, Nick Griffin, contributed and then edited. It was in The Rune that Griffin described a matter of historical fact as the "holohoax" and declared, “the electors of Millwall [who voted in the BNP’s first local councillor in 1993] did not back a post modernist rightist party but what they perceived to be a strong, disciplined organisation with the ability to back up its slogan ‘Defend Rights for Whites’ with well-directed boots and fists. When the crunch comes power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate.”

In 1998 Ballard was convicted, along with Griffin, of incitment to racial hatred. Interestingly, he also has form when it comes to latching onto causes the better to promote his nasty brand of fascist politics, as The Independent reported in March 1998. In January of that year, Ballard was one of a number of fascists who attended a People Power Downing Street protest - East London-based People Power was set up in the wake of Daniel Handley's murder to campaign for tougher measures against convicted sex-offenders and soon found itself infiltrated by fascists with a former chairman of the National Front, Ian Anderson, producing its literature.

It is as well to know these things.

Neither Washington Nor Moscow But Roman Catholicism

Time for priests to dust off their dog-eared copies of Kapital because early Karl Marx rocks - so says L'Osservatore Romano.

According to The Times Georg Sans, a German-born professor of the history of contemporary philosophy at the pontifical Gregorian University, wrote in an article that Marx’s work remained especially relevant today as mankind was seeking “a new harmony” between its needs and the natural environment. He also said that Marx’s theories may help to explain the enduring issue of income inequality within capitalist societies.
“We have to ask ourselves, with Marx, whether the forms of alienation of which he spoke have their origin in the capitalist system,” Professor Sans wrote. “If money as such does not multiply on its own, how are we to explain the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few?”

However,

Professor Sans’s view of Marx was not without criticism. He argued that Marx’s “materialist” view of history had wrongly reduced man to no more than a product of his material, economic and physical circumstances. He also said that after the fall of communism [sic] in 1989, few believed any more that private property was in itself wrong or unjust, and “given the experience of the past half century” no one believed that collectivisation of property was the answer.

So it's a qualified thumbs-up to be sure.

Plainly, though, the Marxist renaissance in the Vatican isn't just restricted to Professor Sans. Another German academic has this to say in Spe Salvi:

The nineteenth century held fast to its faith in progress as the new form of human hope, and it continued to consider reason and freedom as the guiding stars to be followed along the path of hope. Nevertheless, the increasingly rapid advance of technical development and the industrialization connected with it soon gave rise to an entirely new social situation: there emerged a class of industrial workers and the so-called “industrial proletariat”, whose dreadful living conditions Friedrich Engels described alarmingly in 1845. For his readers, the conclusion is clear: this cannot continue; a change is necessary. Yet the change would shake up and overturn the entire structure of bourgeois society. After the bourgeois revolution of 1789, the time had come for a new, proletarian revolution: progress could not simply continue in small, linear steps. A revolutionary leap was needed. Karl Marx took up the rallying call, and applied his incisive language and intellect to the task of launching this major new and, as he thought, definitive step in history towards salvation—towards what Kant had described as the “Kingdom of God”. Once the truth of the hereafter had been rejected, it would then be a question of establishing the truth of the here and now. The critique of Heaven is transformed into the critique of earth, the critique of theology into the critique of politics. Progress towards the better, towards the definitively good world, no longer comes simply from science but from politics—from a scientifically conceived politics that recognizes the structure of history and society and thus points out the road towards revolution, towards all-encompassing change. With great precision, albeit with a certain onesided bias, Marx described the situation of his time, and with great analytical skill he spelled out the paths leading to revolution—and not only theoretically: by means of the Communist Party that came into being from the Communist Manifesto of 1848, he set it in motion. His promise, owing to the acuteness of his analysis and his clear indication of the means for radical change, was and still remains an endless source of fascination. Real revolution followed, in the most radical way in Russia.

But he went on to say that Marx made a critical mistake:

Together with the victory of the revolution, though, Marx's fundamental error also became evident. He showed precisely how to overthrow the existing order, but he did not say how matters should proceed thereafter. He simply presumed that with the expropriation of the ruling class, with the fall of political power and the socialization of means of production, the new Jerusalem would be realized. Then, indeed, all contradictions would be resolved, man and the world would finally sort themselves out. Then everything would be able to proceed by itself along the right path, because everything would belong to everyone and all would desire the best for one another. Thus, having accomplished the revolution, Lenin must have realized that the writings of the master gave no indication as to how to proceed. True, Marx had spoken of the interim phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a necessity which in time would automatically become redundant. This “intermediate phase” we know all too well, and we also know how it then developed, not ushering in a perfect world, but leaving behind a trail of appalling destruction. Marx not only omitted to work out how this new world would be organized—which should, of course, have been unnecessary. His silence on this matter follows logically from his chosen approach. His error lay deeper. He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man's freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favourable economic environment.

As has been noted here before, Pope Benedict's venerable predecessor, who came to be known as more of a liberation theologian than the liberation theologians had a similarly complex and contradictory relationship with Marxism. At times it bordered on fascination; as a young playwrite he wrote Brother of Our Lord, a play featuring a dialogue between the hero, the monk Brother Albert and a shadowy revolutionary. Yet there's a crucial failure in Sans' and the two Pope's analyses: the assumption that Stalinism had any relationship to revolutionary socialism. In point of fact, Stalinism was anti-socialism enthroned, a perverse evil which had as much in common with Communism as Gnosticism did with Christianity.

But until Professor Callinicos gets to deliver a lecture at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences all that is by the by. In the meantime, it's all about the dialectic in Catholic intellectual circles and let's enjoy the queasy look on George Weigel's face.

Hat Tip: Kevin Clarke at America magazine's In All Things blog.

Footnote: Professor Sans' article first appeared in La Civiltà Cattolica, which is, like America Magazine, a Jesuit publication. And this barely-disguised call for Gordon Brown to tack left was written by Father Peter Scally SJ in Thinking Faith ... another Jesuit publication. You know what I'm thinking, don't you? Is it the Red Flag or the Internationale which is de rigueur among the comrades in the Society of Jesus?

BNP Balls - That Toxic Fug Analysis in Full

Those BNP voters have a point, you know .... It's all the fault of Moslems and immigrants I tell you but no one has the courage to say it in public ... it's not racist to object to Islamic ghettos ... in ten years time when our social fabric has been torn to peices ... don't mention the Bishops Conference, it's a nest of doctrinaire Trotskyites, John Medlin should be put in charge ... er... if only the BNP weren't so nasty ...er national identity ... er what we need is a strong leader, er, er ... Lord Pearson ...

His Master's Voice

Don't mind if I tell you what I think, govnor, cos I'm going to do so anyway ... our misery is caused by immigration, that and high taxes ... all these immigrants coming over 'ere, with their funny foreign religion, taking our jobs, the papers are full of them ...and you know what happens when they get jobs, don't you... first the mums are all over the papers like a bad rash then next thing you know so are the sons ... this country's in a mess, I know how I'd sort it out ... stand as a Conservative councillor in Crouch End... so I was talking to the association chairman and I said the immigrants are our misfortune ... Lord Pearson's the geezer you want ... and I dunno, squire, he looked at me all funny like he was gonna be sick.

No Platform - The Socialist Workers Party Debate

Given the BBC's shameful decision to allow Nazi Nick Griffin onto Question Time - following which, a poll conducted by You Gov for the Daily Telegraph found that one in five respondents are so morally illiterate that they would "seriously consider" voting for the fascist BNP - the No Platform policy has been the subject of intense debate, as the following motions debated at the SWP's national committee a month ago show. The first is the Central Committee motion, which was inevitably carried, the second from one, John Rees.

Motion carried at the SWP National Committee 13 September

BNP and No Platform (CC Motion)

1. The national committee notes the shock and anger when the BNP won two seats in the European elections earlier this year.
2. Since then UAF has been building up the pressure on the BNP with protests from the egging of Nick Griffin outside parliament to the kettling of the Red White and Blue festival in Codnor. There have also been two successful counter protests against the English Defence League in Birmingham.
3. The decision of the BBC to invite Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time has led to a groundswell of anger.
4. The Labour Party will now drop its opposition to sitting on panels with BNP members – they will put a representative up on the Question Time panel.
5. The BBC has indicated that UAF may be invited on the panel.
6. SWP members in UAF will refuse to appear on a panel with Nick Griffin or any other member of the BNP or fascist party.
7. We will redouble our efforts to win the case for no platform for the BNP in the media and build the UAF campaign of protests and pickets to challenge the BBC’s decision – “Pull the plugs on the BNP thugs”

Martin Smith

In Defence of No Platform for Nazis

Party Council notes:

1. The SWP is currently engaged in an important campaign to deny the BNP a public platform in the media and elsewhere. We are campaigning against Nick Griffin onto BBC’s Question Time.
2. But at the last two National Committee meetings of the SWP a majority of the CC who spoke argued that the SWP should be prepared in the future to debate with members of the BNP in the media after Nick Griffin appears on Question Time on October 22nd, thus abandoning the No Platform position.
3. A majority of NC members who spoke supported this position, despite the fact that the last NC reaffirmed No Platform for the moment.
4. The only public reference to this change of position has been a letter from John Molyneux in Socialist Worker (13th June) arguing that we should abandon the No Platform position.
5. The justification for this reversal of the SWP’s traditional stance is tht the election of two BNP MEPs and the change in the position of the BBC means that we have to change our tactics and debate with the BNP. John Molyneux argues that Gramsci had to debate with Fascists in the Italian parliament in the 1920s and that we should adopt the same tactic.
6. The BBC has never operated a No Platform policy for the BNP. The BNP have already appeared on the BBC main news, Newsnight, the Today programme, the Moral Maze and so on. The only change is to extend this policy to Question Time.
7. A large majority of people in the Metro newspaper poll supported the No Platform position. There have been letters and articles in the press from a range of people defending No Platform, including the right wing Labour MP Denis McShane.

Party Council believes:

1. That the election of two BNP MEPs and the change in policy by the BBC does not mark a significant enough shift in the balance of forces between the left and the BNP to justify abandoning No Platform.
2. The return of the BNP to the streets in the guise of the English Defence League actually marks and opportunity to defend No Platform on the grounds that the BNP are really the street thugs that we always said they were.
3. The analogy with Gramsci’s situation is inaccurate. The Italian working class had seen a general strike smashed by the Fascists, left wing organisations attacked by over 2,000 fascist squads, their offices burnt out and 35 fascist MPs elected to the Italian parliament. Nothing resembling this situation exists in Britain today.
4. Labour and other mainstream parties are going along with this development for their own opportunist reasons. This will aid the BNP. If we do not defend No Platform in the media this weaken the resistance, not strengthen it.
5. The BNP will not be beaten by ‘clever’ debates. What they want is legitimacy. If we appear with them, even if we win the argument, we lose the real battle because we add to their legitimacy. The principle at stake here is that the BNP should not be regarded as a legitimate bourgeois party.
6. If we abandon No Platform in the media it will open up the space for an attack on No Platform in the colleges and NUS, in the unions, the civil service and other public bodies. It will be much harder to ban Nazis from various professions and expel them from unions. Everyone from the BNP themselves to the liberals will say ‘if you debate them on TV, why not here?’
7. Revolutionaries will not be the main people debating the BNP. The media will choose cabinet ministers and MPs (Jack Straw is going on Question Time) and they will continue to do so whether or not we put ourselves forward to debate the BNP.
8. Maintaining the No Platform policy does not mean that we are excluded from the media. Most of the media accept that we will be interviewed, often directly after a BNP spokesperson, and do not require that we share a platform with Nazis.

Party Council resolves:

1. That we should maintain our full No Platform for Nazis policy.
2. That we should campaign in the movement against the Nazis and in the unions to sustain this policy.
William Alderson, Richard Allday, Elly Babcock, Sian Barrett, Alex Brooke, Andy Brown, Jane Claveley, Kate Connell, Margie Corcoran, Adam Cornell, Adrian Cousins, Kevin Deane, Anita de Klerk, Tracy Dodds, Noel Douglas, Tony Dowling, Gary Duncan, Sam Fairbairn, Neil Faulkner, Des Freedman, Lindsey German, John Gilmore, Dave Goodfield, Jo Gough, Elaine Graham-Leigh, Louise Harrison, Madeline Heneghan, Joe Henry, Penny Hicks, Dave Holes, David Hughes, Feyzi Ismail, Gerry Jones, Spencer Jordan, Rachel Kendall, David Lowden, Naz Massoumi, Narzanin Massoumi, David McAllister, Jack McGlen, Caron McKenna, James Meadway, Brendan Montague, Viva Msimang, Jackie Mulhallen, Katya Nasim, Chris Newlove, Chris Nineham, Jesse Oldershaw, Edmund Quinn, John Rees, Matthew Richards, Andrew Robbins, Mark Smith, Alex Snowden, Clare Soloman, Alliya Stennett, Lindy Syson, Guy Taylor, Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, Paul Vernell, Carole Vincent, John Whearty, Gordon White, Tom Whittaker, Somaye Zadeh, Andreja Zivkovic.

A couple of things stand out; first John Molyneux is cast, once again, in his familiar role, that of the party's loyal opposition, secondly, there's hardly the proverbial cigarette paper's difference between the motions. Plainly this isn't just about the No Platform policy. There's a factional split bubbling up from the surface of the second motion and it's spelled R-E-E-S.

Eleven months ago, John Rees was unceremoniously booted off the CC prompting resignations from the missus and Chris Nineham. Is this the Reesites last stand and if so, what is the CC going to do about it?

Nina Simone - Mississippi Goddamn

The Same Old Crap

I wonder how some people don't tire of trotting out the same clapped-out old tune.

Unemployment and inflation are not caused by immigration – bullshit! Come off it! The enemy is profit.

Nazi Scum Off Our Streets!

There were protests against Nazi Nick Griffin appearing on the BBC's flagship programme, Question Time this evening in Nottingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Nottingham, Belfast and of course in London where I joined Louise, who has some good pictures of the event and thousands of others outside BBC TV Centre on Wood Lane.

Placards were carried proudly aloft, banners waved in the air, the crowd a demographic cross-section of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic London.

I ran into Jacob and Delmi who used to work at Housmans and met Stuart King of Permanent Revolution who seemed like a decent cove but would probably be horrified, or at the very least deeply confused by this blog. Towards the end, the demonstration moved down Wood Lane towards Uxbridge Road, ending up at the mouth of Frithville Gardens, from whence it was rumoured Nazi Nick would be exiting. In the event he was spirited off elsewhere, though we bawled at a few straggly fascists who were escorted off by the plod.

Is There Going To Be Another BNP Membership Leak Today?

The Graun isn't certain about the authenticity of the document.

Meanwhile, Sunny's got 20 questions he'd like to put to Nick Griffin. They're pretty good, especially question 5:

Would Griffin, Andrew Brons and all other members of the BNP be willing to submit to multiple independent DNA tests to confirm that none of them have any non-European ancestry?

Question 7 should be read by all Pro Lifers:

Does Griffin agree with the senior member of the BNP who is on record as stating that he supports forced euthanasia of people with disabilities and others deemed to be "a waste of time, money and resources", including the very old and (especially) newborn babies?

Are you are Pro Life? Want to do something for the cause? Then sign up HERE RIGHT NOW