Comrade Tom French – A Tribute

It was with a profound sense of loss and sadness that we learned of the passing of our comrade, friend, and former President of the Workers Party, Tom French – a loyal comrade, good friend and a true gentleman in the best sense of the word.

On behalf of our current Party President, Ted Tynan, and the Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party, I wish to express our sincere condolences to Tom’s family, to his wife Frances, his children and grandchildren and to the wider family circle.

Full text of the tribute to the late Tom French

The attempted murder of PSNI officer Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell was a brutal and barbaric deed carried out by people who have absolutely no contribution to make to this, or any other, society.

It is a senseless act of terror and must be met with the complete and unambiguous revulsion of the community. Many of those who still seek to justify and glorify the slaughter and savagery of the Troubles era would do well to reflect on last night’s shooting and its implications.

Anyone with any information about this callous attempt of DCI Caldwell’s  life should contact the PSNI without delay.

#omaghshooting

The Trade Union organised rallies, in support of striking teachers, lecturers, ambulance and healthcare staff, have helped maintain the momentum in the campaign for fair wages, improved conditions, safe staffing levels and better services. Workers Party members took to the streets in a colourful and high visibility show of support.

While thousands of workers staged a convincing show of solidarity across Northern Ireland, sections of the media and other detractors sought to personalise the issues by focussing on individual pay grades, hyping up the parental and public inconveniences involved and questioning the effectiveness of industrial action.

Yesterdays rallies, and the industrial action of the past eighteen months have been about much more that specific demands. They have been about defending and securing quality public services in the face of a relentless campaign of budget cuts, austerity and the seemingly indifference of major political parties, all of whom have been conspicuous by their absence on picket lines and trade union rallies.

Public services, and wage levels that reflect the skills and dedication of those who provide them, are central to the security and quality of life of all our citizens. Until we have secured a socialist society, the daily battle to defend and develop them continues.

#WORKERSDEMANDBETTER

It is now well over fifty years since citizens in Northern Ireland took to the streets demanding change, a better, fairer and more accountable society and civil rights for all.

We are now approaching the twenty fifth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, signed at the end of over thirty years of murder, bloodshed and terror.

Today, we have families that cannot afford to heat their homes, children going hungry, queues at foodbanks, part time, precarious employment and a culture of zero hours contracts. We have working people depending on benefits to top up their wages, thousands of workers on picket lines in defence of jobs, services, pay and conditions, and we have large companies and corporations posting the most obscene levels of profits and making huge payouts to their shareholders.

Yet we continue to elect, in large and increasing numbers, political parties whose response to these crises is to sustain  and develop existing divisions, promote culture and identity wars, build on their tribal bases and all the while support the very social and economic system that lies at the heart of all our problems.

In sixty years we have gone backwards. We have been dragged backwards, firstly by armed gangs on our streets and violently competing nationalisms, British and Irish, now by political nationalisms, British and Irish that sees flags, community identity, language and symbolism as more important that the lives and prospects of working class people. We are not in that camp.

The coming year will be a telling one in the battle for the dignity of working people, the preservation of our public services and the advancement of the socialist alternative. We are up for that challenge.

The National Union of Journalists( NUJ) is campaigning against the cuts to BBC Radio Foyle and is appealing for support for its petition and public meeting on January 4th next year.

See the links below for further details of the campaign website, petition and meeting information.

LINKS

Campaign Website: https://www.nuj.org.uk/resource/say-no-to-bbc-radio-foyle-cuts.html

Petition link: https://www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/save-bbc-radio-foyle-oppose-cuts-to-jobs-and-programmes

Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/save-bbc-radio-foyle-nuj-public-meeting-tickets-487531599137

Save BBC Radio Foyle: NUJ public meeting Join us at a public meeting hosted by Derry and North West NUJ branch on 4 January, to oppose proposed cuts at BBC Radio Foyle.

Nursing staff in Northern Ireland, Wales and England took to the pickets lines this morning in defence of safe staffing levels and a fair pay settlement. Workers Party members joined them at several locations to demonstrate solidarity and support .

The Director of the Royal College of Nursing in Northern Ireland , Rita Devlin, explained the background to today’s action,

“Nurses in Northern Ireland have today spoken loudly and clearly to tell our politicians that we can no longer tolerate the unacceptable and at times unsafe conditions that nursing staff are putting up with, day in day out. This is not a decision that has been taken lightly but it is clear that our members feel they have no other choice but to take action on behalf of their patients”.

This is only the second time in their history that nurses in Northern Ireland have gone on strike. Today they joined the thousands of workers across the public and the private sectors who have been forced to form picket lines at their places of work in the fight for above inflation wage increases. pension rights, job security, conditions of employment and in defence of safe public services.

No one wants to be on strike, but they have been left with no option other than to engage in industrial action.

There is too much at stake to passively accept the erosion of our public services, The implications for the quality of life for thousands of families, and of future generations, are too far reaching not to exert all the pressure possible in support of working people.

They deserve our full support and solidarity.

Chloe Ferguson, NUS-USI president has responded to Economy Minister Gordon Lyons announcement of an additional £2.8 million in support for higher education students studying in Northern Ireland. 

While we welcome this additional funding and the certainty that it provides to higher education institutions as the year begin, consistently students report financial troubles as being the biggest barrier to completing their studies, and one of the main contributors to poor mental health. Hardship funds help to keep students in education. 

“However, this funding is a drop in the ocean compared to the real support students need to get through the cost of living crisis. Student finance hasn’t risen with inflation for over a decade. How is a student today supposed to survive on the same amount when electricity and gas is sky rocketing, rents are going up and food bills are also increasing? 

“Hardship funds provide vital emergency support to students who need it. But the funds are notoriously difficult to access, and often leaves students waiting several weeks for an amount which might only cover a single month’s rent. By allowing student incomes to stagnate year after year our government is letting students reach crisis point unnecessarily. We need real action to help students this winter – and we need a government back up and running.”

As GP shortages, practice closures and difficulties getting appointments are making headlines, it is worth looking behind some of the issues.

It may come as a surprise to many people to learn that GP surgeries are not part of the NHS in the same way that hospitals are. GP surgeries are private independent contractors. In most cases the doctors own or rent their premises, or work rent free from health centres and employ their own staff.

However, and with a small number of exceptions, all GP’s work is done for the NHS

We believe that for as long as GPs remain as private independent contractors there will continue to be the difficulties in recruitment and threats to services that we have been hearing about recently.

It would be inconceivable that other health and care professionals like nurses, social workers and hospital doctors would sit outside the NHS rather than be its employees/. Why should GPs  be any different?

GPs becoming NHS employees, instead of private contractors, would improve the service, reduce waiting times and address many of the problems currently faced in primary care.

There is no doubt that GP services and community care in general are severely underfunded and, just like some hospital based services, there is  more than a suspicion that this is a deliberate  political decision to run them down in preparation for privatisation.

Recently, 37 GP practices in the London area were bought over by the American multi-million dollar and Fortune 500 company, Centene-Operose. It also operates private eye and skin clinics and some private mental health services in England. The company’s main business is private health insurance.

This represents a further, and dangerous, distancing between GP services and the NHS and a further barrier between working people and free accessible healthcare.

GPs must cease operating as private contractors and become employees of the NHS like all other health and care staff and all primary care services must be fully resourced.

If there was not already enough cause for concern them the appointment by the Tory government last year of the outgoing chief executive of Operose Health as an “expert adviser for NHS transformation” should leave no doubt about the planned direction of travel.

PRIDE remains important. It is a celebration but it is also a protest at the inequalities, discrimination and hatred which still persist.

The struggle for equality continues, desite recent advances. Protection from discrimination in employment, health and  housing, access to  goods and services must be secured. Family rights must be safeguarded and upheld. Sexual orientation and gender identity should never be a case for abuse or prejudice.

The commercialisation of PRIDE

In recent years it has been impossible not to notice the growing commercialisation of PRIDE.

Multi national corporations, many of them characterised by anti-worker practices, low wages, poor conditions and precarious contracts of employment, have been falling over themselves to produce ‘special’ PRIDE editions of their products and add rainbows to their packing to demonstrate their pro-PRIDE credentials.

Whether the practices of many of these corporations live up to their manufactured image is questionable. The commercial hijacking of PRIDE by companies wanting to prove that they are anti-homoophobic means little when those same companies and corporations make political donations to right wing conservative parties, exploit young people, discrimanate against women and people with disabilities, engage in oppressive working practices and avoid paying their rightful taxes. 

PRIDE has become a useful social marketing tool for corporations and brands. They use it to distract attention from the real and oppressive nature of their values and actions.

Fast food delivery companies,for example, paying poverty wages, and no sick pay or holiday pay presenting a smiling face to the public by changing its logo to rainbow colours  for PRIDE week. A cosmetics company declaring its support for PRIDE but sacking its celebrity promoter for speaking out aganist racism or the major UK bank which adds rainbow colours to its credit cards and merchandising while being guilty of gender pay discrimination, financing companies that manufacture and sell arms to Israel for use aganist Palestine and , on an environmental note, bankrolling fossil fuel companies to the tune of billions of US dollars in the last five years alone.

Rainbow capitalism has no conscience and no scrupples. If PRIDE can turn a profit or enhance its image, then it’s game on.

Endorsements by global brands do not liberate, elevate or alleviate the human condition. As we rightly celebrate PRIDE 2022, we should reflect on its origins and its purpose. We should not content ourselves with a level of recognition and acceptance inside a social order that is corrupt, oppressive and dehumanising.

Capitalism is captialism, what ever colours it chooses to dress up in.

Workers Party members have joined with hundreds of community workers, volunteers and concerned citizens to highlight the recent deaths of homeless people and the crisis in housing provision.

The march to Belfast City Hall was organised in response to the deaths of 14 homeless people in recent months.

The Facts & Figures

Fourteen homeless people died on our streets or hostels in the past few months.

There are currently 16,000 people in Northern Ireland officially classed as homeless.

36% of those are single men and 29% are families

There are more than 44,000 people on the Housing Executives waiting lists

In 2005 there were more than 15,000 new homes started in Northern Ireland.

Last year that figure was 7,500—a 50% decrease

 Of the total number of homes built last year only 650 were public housing

We are in a housing crisis that is taking the lives of, mostly, young homeless people and is impacting on the quality of life, the mental well-being and the opportunities for thousands of individuals and families.

Not only are we not building sufficient and affordable public housing, but the fundamental and basic human right to a roof over our heads is classed as a Workers Party members have joined with hundreds of community workers, volunteers and concerned citizens to highlight the recent deaths of homeless people and the crisis in housing provision.

Not only are we not building sufficient and affordable public housing, but the fundamental and basic human right to a roof over our heads is classed as a commodity to be profited from – the housing ‘market’.

Well intentioned as they may be, and vitally necessary as they are, short term measures and one-off initiatives are neither capable of addressing nor resolving these problems.

Only a state-controlled house building programme can begin to alleviate the current distress and dangers and eventually lead to a society in which every citizen can be guaranteed the security and dignity of a home.