Statement from the North West Region of the Socialist Labour Party

GLOBAL WARMING & CLIMATE CHANGE: ‘OUR’ PROBLEM?

In major speeches this October both Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown have concentrated on stressing the ‘vital need to address the problem of global warming and climate change.’

Significant changes, we are told, must take place if we are to successfully combat this growing problem. Huge increases in stealth taxes, named in a leaked report as ‘eco-taxes’, have been mentioned which would impose a financial burden on all sections of society.

Yet it is not ‘all’ sections of society who have caused this problem in the first place.

It is not the working class who control industry and can control pollution, it is not the working class who own the means of production in this society and can control, in any shape or form, the way the atmosphere is damaged. On the contrary, it is government and the multinationals who have reaped billions of pounds of profit over the years without any thought as to how their actions have affected the planet, yet now, when the time has come to seriously address the problem, it suddenly becomes ‘our’ responsibility, and it is now a problem that ‘we’ have to pay for.

Incredibly a letter from Environment Secretary Alan Miliband to Gordon Brown dated 18^th October 2006 emphasises that the answer to these problems can only be addressed by ‘market forces and price signals.’

Yet it is precisely the ‘market forces’ philosophy that has been responsible for the rape of the planet Earth for the last historical period, with its ‘profit at all costs’ mentality. The ‘market philosophy’ is not the answer to the problem, it is the cause of the problem!

While the ruling class have gorged themselves on the profits made from this planet’s natural resources, and have gathered wealth unimagined, with not a thought given to the damage they have done to our environment, they have, at the same time, done all in their power to drive the real value of wages for the rest of society downwards with the result of record personal debt, record bankruptcies and record debt related suicides.

And they now have the effrontery to try and ‘make the working class pay’ for their irresponsibility.

The working class and their trade unions have every right to answer this hypocrisy with the response that we will indeed take responsibility for addressing the problems of global warming and climate change caused by the capitalist system, and we will do that by taking control of all major industry, banks and financial institutions and all the means of production and in that way ‘we’ will control ‘our’ environment with a planned and logical socialist economic system based on the needs of people and their world and not on the ‘profit before everything’ principle which has led us into this mess in the first place.

30th October 2006.

THE FAREPAK RIP-OFF

DOES THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT ONLY REPRESENT MILLIONAIRES?

On the 13th October 2006 savings club Farepak Food and Gifts Limited (Farepak Hampers) a subsidiary of European Home Retail plc (EHR), ceased trading and was "unable to honour its commitments to make deliveries of any vouchers, hampers or other items" to its approximately 350,000 customers, 40,000 of whom reside in the North West.

Customers have been paying into the Farepak saving scheme all year, expecting hampers or vouchers they can spend in the high street to help them through Christmas. Farepak also announced that no money would be available for refunds. The company is now in administration.

Also now in administration is the parent company EHR.

Chairman of European Home Retail is Sir Clive Thompson, and he has an interesting history.

Thompson was knighted in 1994 for his ‘services to industry’ and by 1998 he was appointed President of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) having impressed his colleagues with his fierce opposition to the introduction of a minimum wage. In his maiden speech as President of the CBI he compared the task of controlling trade unions with ‘pest control’ a comment that was apparently well received by his audience and his speech was reported to be one which Margaret Thatcher would have wholeheartedly approved. In the audience that day, as guest of honour, was Tony Blair. (BBC News 21st July 1998).

Clive Thompson was chief executive of Rentokil Initial from 1983 and its chairman from May 2002. However, by May 2004 the company’s shares had collapsed and wiped out £436 million off the value of the company. Following this disaster Rentokil dumped Thompson yet incredibly he walked away with a pay-off of more than £13 million and more than six million share options! (London Evening Standard May 19th 2004). He currently lives in a £2 million mansion.

Subsidaries of EHR include Farepak, Kleeneze  Kitbag, and I Want One of Those.com. All were put up for sale and all were sold exceptionally quickly to the Findel Group, except for Farepak.

Included in the subsequent statement from the Findel Group is this paragraph:

“On 30 June 2006 EHR announced that as a result of the placing in administration of the voucher provider to its subsidiary Farepak it would face a peak borrowing requirement above its bank facilities. On 23 August 2006 EHR announced that it had requested suspension of its shares as no conclusion had been reached with its bankers over the provision of additional finance. On 13 October 2006 EHR announced the Appointment of an Administrative Receiver to European Home Retail plc, noting that this had been as a result of the appointment of an Administrator by its subsidiary Farepak, and an inability to reach a funding agreement with its bankers. Findel is confident that the businesses which are being acquired, are strong and can flourish under Findel's management and contribute to the overall strength of the Findel Group. Findel is not acquiring the Farepak business.”

This statement reveals that European Home Retail continued to allow its customers to pay into its savings club even though it was in trouble back in June 2006 and the stock exchange had suspended its shares last August!

This raises the question of whether it is too much to expect that companies act responsibly and are held accountable if they do not? And should such irresponsible companies be allowed to hide behind completely one-sided company laws?

If the situation was reversed and for instance workers took out bank loans or other credit facilities, knowing full well they would never repay those loans, would a statement from the workers concerned saying they cannot repay be the end of the matter, would such a statement suffice? Indeed not! The full force of the courts would be brought against those workers and they would lose their homes or have their furniture repossessed to cover what they had taken. Yet the multi-millionaires who run Farepak and EHR can walk away facing no similar penalty.

Therefore there is absolutely no moral reason why the Labour government should not immediately refund all of Farepak’s victims in full and then pursue recompense themselves from the companies involved. No reason at all……except if there is one law that applies to the vast majority of us and another law that applies solely to a few elite millionaires.

We do not believe that this Labour government should protect people like Sir Clive Thompson and his fellow directors but on the contrary should intervene on behalf of the 350,000 workers and refund all monies owed. However the Financial Services Authority (FSA), are saying that their remit does not cover companies like Farepak – yet the board of the FSA are in fact appointed by the Treasury Department so it is perfectly within the power of this Government to make it their remit.

While the Government stands idly by on this issue other vultures have begun to emerge. Regional papers in the North West are now publishing articles featuring loan companies who are offering the Farepak victims ‘comfort and joy’ by supplying ‘ affordable loans’ and ‘reasonable rate borrowing.’

So not only have people been ripped - off by Farepak, they are now expected to go further into debt by taking out loans from these financial parasites. Yet these 350,000 people have acted honourably throughout, have dutifully paid into a savings scheme, and have every right to demand they receive what they have paid for or be fully recompensed financially. Nothing less is acceptable.

In Ayrshire Scotland the SLP has already initiated the founding of the ‘Farepak Victims Committee’ to demand justice for all those people affected by yet one more example of a corrupt and rotten system.

And a system that protects only millionaires is a system with no future and must be challenged.

The SLP Campaign Committee calls for the establishing of Farepak Victims Committees in all areas of the country.

“GERMANY CALLING….”

The planned introduction of the Enabling Bill by the New Labour government will effectively mean that individual cabinet ministers would be able to establish new legislation without any recourse to Parliament. Moreover, other Acts of Parliament introduced over the last few years all include a clause which allows the government to bring in new rules without the need to refer to, or seek, parliamentary approval. The introduction of ID Cards, national DNA data bases, and the proposed ‘good citizens’ contracts, together with the recent additions to the Terrorism Bill, which include arrest and detention without charge, with no responsibility on the government or security forces to provide evidence, are all an assault on the civil liberties and hard won democratic rights of the working class. The ultimate aim of these measures is to produce a politically controlled and disciplined population which would serve the needs and interests of the capitalist system. It should also be remembered that since 1997 Blair’s government has led this country into five wars, Sierre Leone, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq twice, most under the fiction of the ’war on terror’, none of these acts of aggression have been in the interests of the vast majority of the British people. In 1933, with the full backing of German big business, Adolf Hitler was elected as Chancellor of Germany. His propaganda included the illusion that Germany was threatened by communists, greedy trade unionists and international Jewry. Within a short time Hitler’s government had introduced the Enabling Act which gave his ministers the power to adopt laws without consultation with the Reichstag. (Parliament). With the Reichstag fire provocation and constant anti-communist and anti-Semitic propaganda Hitler had created the atmosphere whereby the attack on civil liberties and democratic rights could begin in earnest. His aggressive foreign policy meant that by March 1939 the German army had entered Czechoslovakia and on the 1st September of that year Germany attacked Poland under the pretext of ‘self defence’. World War Two had started. the desire of the competing capitalist countries to redivide the world had begun. A desire which was to lead to the slaughter of millions of workers. In retrospect people around the world asked how on earth could the German people have let this all happen? In future years will the people around the world ask how on earth could the British people let this happen?