Grangemouth Heroes

Gordon Brown has come out today condemning the strikers at Grangemouth oil refinery and demanding the Unite members call off their strike.

These trade unionists have decided to take industrial action to protect their pension scheme against attack from the profiteering venture capitalist who has taken over their company.

This dispute cannot be charicatured in the usual way by the media as a group of selfish workers striking out of self interest. These workers are striking to prevent their company's pension scheme being undermined for future workers joining the scheme. They are standing up to protect the pensions of future generations of workers in their industry.

Gordon Brown is currently supposed to be writing another of his books on heroes and heroism. I suggest that he includes a chapter on the selfless sacrifice of the Grangemouth heroes who have had the courage and determination to stand up and fight to protect for the pensions of workers yet to come.

Mobilising Success of Today's Co-ordinated Solidarity Action Across Public Sector

What a day!

First, I met the TGWU members at Shelter who are on a two day strike because their management has decided to tear up their contracts and impose new terms of employment, cutting their wages and undermining their conditions. These are people who have dedicated their lives to working to tackle homelessness and who through their dedication have made Shelter one of the most respected voluntary sector organisations in the country. Their Chief Executive has decided that the organisation has to embrace the contract culture and that the staff must pay for this with cuts in pay and conditions.

Next, on to attend the rally in Westminster Central Hall in support of the teachers, lecturers and civil servants on strike. Listening to three young teachers addressing 3000 trade unionists packed into the hall just lifted all our spirits. You couldn't fail to be impressed by this display of the idealism of workers committed to their profession and to providing public services. The buoyant atmosphere of determined solidarity across a range of public sector unions demonstrated the potential their is in our movement at present and for the future.

Then I went on to address the Grades Conference of the RMT, which represents many of those railway workers who undertake the maintenance work on the rail network and the underground. Many of these RMT members have seen their jobs privatised, their companies like Metronet go bust and in some instances have seen their jobs being brought back in house under Network Rail. They made it clear that they too had had enough of being treated like chattels and delegates raised with me the possibility of solidarity action across public services.

I was then interviewed by various news programmes asking me why I supported today's strikes and informing me of the round of ministerial statements, including one from Gordon Brown, condemning the strikes.

It is becoming increasingly clear that this Government is close to a political tipping point. New Labour continues to alienate section after section of our support and the political situation is now perilously close to being irretrievable. By turning on its own movement and supporters New Labour is handing government over to the Tories.

Lessons from the 10p Tax Debacle.

After days of threats from Labour MPs to back Frank Field's amendment to the Government's Finance Bill, the Prime Minister's crisis appears to have receded, at least for the time being.

Frank's amendment sought to compensate those people on low incomes who have suffered from Gordon Brown's abolition of the 10p tax rate in his last budget as Chancellor. Today Alistair Darling has offered a range of concessions and Frank has withdrawn his amendment.

I wrote to him both thanking him for the work he has put in to achieve a shift by the Government but also to explain that I would have preferred to have held out longer to ensure that we saw the detail of Darling's offer. It looks to me that there will still be people on low incomes who will lose out and we still do not have clarity on the amounts to be restored or when.

If it works out that the offer from Alistair Darling does not properly compensate the losers from the 10p abolition it will be seen as a significant act of bad faith on the part of Gordon Brown.

The question now being asked is how did we get into this mess.

My view is that the sequence of events went something like this. Last year Gordon Brown wanted to make a splash with his last budget to demonstrate that he can wrong foot the Tories and to project himself even further as the natural successor to Blair. So he seized on the political stunt of cutting the base rate of tax and bringing down corporation taxes at the same time. To pay for this he decided to raise £7 billion by cutting the 10p rate of tax.

Normally Treasury ministers would have been given the task of working out detailed examples of the implications of cutting the 10p rate and funds would have been set aside to smooth out any problems of potential losers.

I believe that this essential planning collapsed when just before the budget a heavy lobby was undertaken by MPs and charities campaigning for more resources to get the Government back on target of cutting child poverty. Gordon Brown scrambled round to put together resources for a child poverty package and either the resources were no longer readily available to compensate 10 p tax rate losers or the issue was just not thought significant enough.

Worryingly to pay for publicity seeking tax cuts Gordon Brown instinctively resorted to cutting financial support to the least well off rather than taking on the rich, the non doms or big business. In addition this whole exercise has demonstrated an almost amateurish approach to policy planning by creating an unnecessary crisis literally days before critically important local elections.

See my article on the Guardian's Comment is Free website for further comment on this issue.

Vote to Restore Pensions Link to Earnings Blocked by Government

The media has focused for the last few days on the threat of a rebellion by Labour MPs on the abolition of the 10p tax rate but tonight there was an equally important vote in Parliament that has gone ignored by the press.

The House of Commons was debating the final stages of the Government's Pensions Bill. An amendment was moved and supported by a number of Labour MPs to urge the Government to set a date for the restoration of the link between earnings and pensions.

The background to this issue is that as part of her attack on the welfare state Mrs Thatcher broke the link whereby state pensions would be increased each year by either the increase in inflation or earnings, whichever was the highest. Raising pensions only in line with inflation has meant that pensioners have lost out on over £35 a week.

In opposition the Labour Party promised to restore the link to earnings and after a long and hard campaign by pensioner organisations, particularly the National Pensioners Convention, Gordon Brown as Chancellor had to concede to restoring the link. However he only promised to do this at the earliest in 2012 and possibly only by 2015 if he judged the economic situation permitted.

This bitterly disappointed the pensioner groups because many current pensioners would simply not be alive by that time to enjoy the benefits of the restoration of the link. In the meantime 2 million pensioners remain in poverty. It is estimated by the Government that 60% of pensioners will eventually be forced to rely upon means tested benefits but the Government's own figures demonstrate that 40% of pensioners do not claim the means tested pensioner credits they are entitled to.

Tonight's amendment called upon the Government to announce the date when the earnings link will be restored in its next pre budget report. So it was hardly a revolutionary demand. Nevertheless the Government opposed it and despite 20 Labour MPs voting against the Government the amendment was lost. It's an irony that 24 hours after the Government was able to find £30 billion to bail out the banks who have profiteered at our expense over the last decade, it can't find less than a half a billion to fulfil a longstanding pledge to our pensioners. It demonstrates quite clearly where the Prime Minister's priorities lie.