Two PSC Executive Members Resign as the Fight for Democracy in PSC Turns Ugly

As regular readers of this blog will know, prime among our concerns is that there is an effective and democratic solidarity campaign in support of the Palestinians. If the movement isn’t democratic it won’t be effective. And today PSC is anything but democratic, except in the most formal sense.

We have in the past year published 3 articles 1 2 3 which have focussed on the increasingly successful attempts of a tiny group of what have been termed Political Freemasons, Socialist Action, to take over the political and administrative machinery of PSC.

Why have we published these concerns? Not because we want a sectarian bunfight. Far from it. But because we know that if a small and tiny unrepresentative group like SA controls PSC, then the policy and tactics of PSC will be dominated not by the concerns and needs of the Palestinians but the ambitions and tactics of the gurus of Socialist Action. The same gurus who surrounded Ken Livingstone with their placemen such as Redmond O’Neill (Venezuelan Solidarity Campaign, John Ross (gone to new pastures entirely) and Jude Woodward (gone goodness knows where!).

Indeed all the evidence suggests that it is a goal of Socialist Action to effectively take-over the functioning of a number of solidarity campaigns as part of their longer-term political goals.

The majority political group that now controls PSC Executive, if ‘political’ be the right term, all originate from the split in the International Marxist Group in 1985. The IMG split into basically three fragments. One, Socialist International (Outlook/Resistance led by Alan Thornett) became the inheritor of the 4th International mantle. Another, led by Brian Grogan ‘the Castroites’ called itself the Communist League. It was a group that effectively abandoned the concept of class. National liberation struggles where all classes participate equally (but the richest benefit most!) were the aim. It is this which explains the silence over the collaboration with Israel and the CIA by the Palestinian authority. This group is believed to have contained Trade Union Officer, Bernard and Carole Regan and General Secretary Betty Hunter. The third group is the most corrupt of all. Socialist Action was the largest fragment that resulted from the split. Led by John Ross, it submerged into the Labour Party and effectively provided Ken Livingstone’s political cabinet.

Today Socialist Action produces neither a political newspaper nor does it have any kind of web presence. It is, in the words of one attendee at the Birmingham meeting (below), a group of Political Freemasons, friends who originate in a political group whose sole purpose now is to provide for each other.

On August 8th after consultations and discussions between a number of different people, whose politics are not homogenous, a meeting was held in Birmingham at very short notice. One result was the apologies for the meeting almost outnumbered the attendees. But the resultant discussion was entirely constructive. A joint letter was produced to which 13 people added their names, including two of the original founders of PSC.

The signatories agreed that the letter would remain private within PSC and thus I will not be publishing it. It was sent to the Executive of PSC in order that it could begin a process of discussion and debate which would lead to a transformation in PSC and an awakening of the membership. Politics and strategy should be something that all the membership should discuss and not be left to a caucus within PSC’s Executive. PSC should decide its strategy not an external group who have their own fish to fry.

But more than anything else Palestine Solidarity Campaign has to reconnect with the movement. Under the current leadership, PSC has gained a reputation for being extremely sectarian to other groups on the left or in the wider solidarity movement. It has for example carved out the SWP, whose Stop the War Coalition boosted indeed built the massive Gaza demonstrations in January, from the Executive whilst at the same time reaching out to the Stalinists of the Morning Star group. People whose political lineage is that of support for the Israeli state (the Soviet Union under Stalin, in May 1948, became the first country to recognise the Israeli State as it perpetrated its massacres and expulsions).

PSC Executive has continually proved to be resistant, indeed hostile, to those seeking to go beyond routine and formal actions. It opposed Bricup initially, a group set up to campaign for an academic boycott and which has achieved more in terms of helping kick-start the Boycott movement in Britain than anything PSC has done. In the trade unions Bernard Regan, who was a member of the Executive of the National Union of Teachers, has concentrated on securing affiliations from national trade unions, primarily through personal contacts with Executive members. Whilst affiliations are to be welcomed, the price that appears to have been exacted is that PSC will support a 2 State position and expect as little as possible from those unions. There has been no debate whatsoever in PSC about our trade union work. This is the exclusive territory of Regan and friends. In particular we should not take an anti-Zionist position, question the racist nature of the ‘Jewish’ State or the role of Trade Union Friends of Israel (now renamed Tulip – a wilting flower if ever there was one).

Routine demonstrations, lots of lobbying of Parliament and MPs, is the staple fare of PSC Executive. Quite why MPs, who have little influence, most of whom will soon disappear, have been prioritised is a mystery. If you want to persuade an MP then you have to mobilise to ensure that they are bombarded by constituents not invest vast sums in lobbying Parliament.

The invasion of Gaza, which had been signalled for months, began when Israel killed over 200 Palestinian Police cadets on their graduation day. It was clear that despite the PR offensive of the Israeli government, ably abetted by the BBC of course, that the blitzkrieg on Gaza was a complete and utter political disaster. Gaza was as big a disaster in its own way as Lebanon had been in 2006. As pictures of Palestinian schools being bombed with phosphorous were shown across the world, people queued to sign petitions and give money.

Yet by engaging in routine opposition and refusing to rethink their strategy PSC Executive have completely squandered the energy and opportunities that the Gaza invasion have offered. Today it is difficult to think of one single gain that has resulted from all the activities in January/February.

For example one weakness of PSC has been in the student movement. At the beginning of the year there was an absolutely unprecedented wave of student occupations over Gaza calling on university administrations to disinvest from Israeli companies. PSC did next to nothing during this period. It did nothing to support the occupations or to provide them with speakers. It only held meetings of students after the occupations were over and as a result is left with the same pitiful organisation that it was always had in the student movement. The student organiser, Bryoni Shanks is in Socialist Action and the organiser for the Student Broad Left, which is a Socialist Action front, Ruqayyah Collector, who has only recently been appointed as Campaigns woker is also a Socialist Action member

In the meantime PSC Executive have successfully managed to insert 3 members of Socialist Action as paid staff of PSC. Betty Hunter has made it clear that the BDS Committee is to be subject to greater control by the Executive rather than the organisation becoming an enabler to a myriad of Palestine supporting organisations. At the same time, the Trade Union Action Committee, the personal fiefdom of Bernard Regan, meets but produces no minutes (at least none we’ve ever seen), organises no network of union activists (since they consist of minor trade union bureaucrats) and has no declared membership. What it certainly doesn’t contain is rank and file trade union activists.

But the TUAC do have the right to appoint 2 members of the Executive which Bernard wanted increased to five! By way of contrast the Constitution of PSC allows for 5 regional representatives to be appointed to the Executive. The Executive has prevaricated and delayed and finally come up with a torturously long bureaucratic process before a region is recognised, including the requirement of a 2/3 vote and ratification by the subsequent Annual General Meeting. Contrast this with TUAC’s ability to place 2 members on the Executive without any semblance of accountability or transparency.

The initial letter to PSC Executive, sent on 9th August, at first only produced a reaction from Hilary Wise, PSC magazine editor and another of the IMG émigrés, who was obsessed with what the attendance at the meeting was. Realising however that that this was hardly likely to impress people, the Executive decided on a reply from Betty Hunter that begged more questions than it answered. It was a pro forma response that ignored the key political question of Socialist Action’s role and who controls PSC Executive de facto.

Indeed it ignored all the 4 points made in the letter to them. These were concerning the secret memo that Bernard Regan distributed to chosen friends before the PSC AGM urging a vote for a pre-determined slate, the high staff turnover as staff were either sacked or forced out, why despite the claims about equal opportunities 3 of the staff just happen to be members of a tiny political group and concerns about why all the money collected in January has already been spent without any thought for the future. Coupled with the dismissal of the bookkeeper recently this is worrying to say the least.

But such was the rush to get Betty Hunter’s letter out that it was felt it could not await discussion at the next PSC Executive. This was despite a specific request by PSC Vice-Chair, the respected Palestinian academic Kamal Hawwash that any such response should await an Executive meeting where it could be discussed. When Kamal’s views were simply overridden and ignored, he was forced into the position of feeling he had no alternative but to resign. A second resignation, that of Zoe Mars from Brighton PSC, soon followed. Again we respect the wishes of both individuals who wished their letters to remain internal to PSC.

But if Betty Hunter has been a model of evasiveness and Bernard Regan has followed a policy of silence that would put a Trappist monk to shame, since accountability is beneath him, then some of the attack dogs aren’t so restrained. In particular an ex-member of PSC Executive Dianne Langford, penned a particular poisonous missive which was widely distributed within PSC (see below). Its main claim to fame would appear to be the number of lies that one document can contain, presumably following Goebbel’s dictum that the bigger the lie the more easily it will be believed: Despite its claims:

i. I have never written to Merton PSC asking them to do anything, let alone not affiliate to PSC nationally. No evidence has or will be supplied to back this up because it doesn’t exist.

ii. Langford deliberately distorts the meaning of what I wrote on this blog in order to practice a version of political terrorism. It wasn’t PSC members who I termed ‘useful idiots’ rather that this was the attitude of Socialist Action to non-members who go along with them. The actual sentence was:

And as Lenin put it in a different context, their [Socialist Action’s] attitude to those on PSC Executive who have gone along with them without actually being members is that they are 'useful idiots'.

iii. Langford’s memory of the early 1990’s is equally faulty. Neither Roland Rance nor myself have ever demanded or argued for the funding of a tour in order to denounce Arafat and the PLO. What is a fact is that both Roland and myself, two of PSC’s founding members, argued in an emergency conference of PSC in 1993, that PSC should not support the Oslo Accords, We argued that Oslo would lead to the further subjugation and dispossession of the Palestinians. The phrase which I used in articles at the time was that the faces of the Israeli military and police would be replaced by Palestinian ones.

Oslo was an utter disaster for the Palestinians and PLO members such as the late Edward Said and its deputy Chairman, Farrouk Khadoumi, neither of whom supported or support a single state, criticised it precisely because they could foresee the consequences.

Were we wrong to oppose Oslo, an agreement which said nothing about the further expansion of settlements and which granted the PLO control over just one West Bank town, Jericho? Certainly Betty Hunter didn’t think so. Roland and myself resigned from PSC over this issue and when I met Betty at a meeting of Bricup, to which we had been invited back in 2006, she asked me why I didn’t rejoin PSC. When I mentioned Oslo she said that no one would now disagree with the position we then took!

iv. I am unaware of any ‘scurrilous’ e-mails that circulated before the last PSC AGM. Certainly I saw no such e-mails and nor do I recollect any which advocated voting for a specific slate in order to defeat an ‘opposition within PSC which I firmly believe would take us well away from these objectives’ which were ‘the need to get the focus of the campaign firmly fixed on the events in Gaza and to keep trade unions at the centre of the PSC.’ In other words it was a blatant lie given that I for one have constantly urged the necessity of getting the trade unions to mount an effective Boycott of Israel, including speaking at my own national conference (UNISON) at two of the last 3 conferences in support of Boycott.

v. Langford believes it was ‘unnecessary’ to focus on Histadrut whilst Gaza was burning, as if these were somehow incompatible. In fact the dissociation of the trade union movement from Israel’s Zionist ‘trade union’ Histadrut, which has helped build the settlements in the occupied territories, which has never once opposed that occupation, which supported the burning of Gaza and pioneered all the crucial aspects of Israeli Apartheid, is very much in line with the needs of the Palestinians. It is, after all, PACBI and Israeli Arab trade unionists who have urged that we engage in such a boycott.

Langford then suggests that it is Bernard Regan and his secretive committee who ‘deserve credit’ for ‘bringing the pernicious nature of the Histadrut to the fore.’ Quite the opposite in fact. If we and Scottish PSC had not highlighted the issue of Histadrut, Bernard’s Committee would have said absolutely nothing at all about them. It was only as a result of our motions calling for the breaking of links with Histadrut that they put forward a motion calling for the ‘review’ of links with the organisation. Indeed after Electronic Intifada had asked me to write an article on the racist history of Histadrut Bernard Regan told me at a meeting with the Israel Arab workers’ organisation, Sawt el-Amel that the article had been posted on the PSC web site. If it was posted it has subsequently disappeared.

If, instead of calling for a review of links with Histadrut, which can mean anything and nothing, PSC had called for unions to break links with this scab organisation, there is little doubt that we could have won over some unions. In UNISON I successfully spoke to an emergency motion at the AGM of the South-East Region calling for breaking links with Histadrut. It was supported by the Black Members Group and about 90% of delegates. The South-East region is not a left-wing region yet there was hardly any opposition. Yet the reality is that on Histadrut we had to fight both the UNISON Executive and PSC Executive. To have passed such a motion would have dealt a considerable political blow to the Zionists. Instead PSC has a position that merely echoes that of some trade unions, including UNISON and Scottish TUC. Instead of showing the way, PSC is following in the footsteps of those it is supposedly trying to win over!

The rest of Langford’s missive is both inaccurate and tendentious, such as the claim that there is only 1 member of Socialist Action in post at the PSC office.

At PSC’s Branch Forum this Saturday in Sheffield the issue is going to be discussed, the Executive’s letter having been sent out to all PSC branches but strangely minus the letter it is replying to!! Meanwhile the letter to the Executive has been resent this week with double of the number of signatories. One suspects that the Executive will be seeking to deflect the issue rather than deal with it honestly and up front. Either way the dilemma that has been raised by the resignation of Kamal Hawwash, whose treatment was by any standards disgraceful, remains. Is PSC going to become a genuine mass solidarity organisation which reaches out to the broadest number of people whilst not being afraid of debating things like the role of the Palestinian Authority and our attitude to it, or is it merely going to be lobby fodder for the ambitions of a secretive sect?

Tony Greenstein


>>+ resignation of Kamal Hawwash and Zoe Mars

To members of the PSC Executive, including Zoe and Kamal
Copy to branch co-ordinators

Dear EC Members,

I've seen the letter addressed to you plus copies of various emails originating from Tony Greenstein, including one urging the Merton branch not to affiliate to PSC and trying to recruit members to join the `opposition' to PSC.

On his public blog Tony Greenstein calls those who voted for you `useful idiots.' It seems to me he has adopted a position of perpetual grievance in relation to PSC since the early 1990s when he and Roland Rance demanded that PSC should use its resources on a speaking tour denouncing Arafat and the PLO. The then National Secretary of PSC, John Gee, was castigated for standing firm on the principle of self-determination for the Palestinian people. From what I have observed over many years, Tony Greenstein and others have perhaps tried to act out political disputes between factions in Palestine. Several attempts have been made to divert PSC from its task of building a mass movement in Britain that supports the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and upholds their human, civil and national rights. Where such individuals were unable to find genuine grievances on which to base their opposition they have manufactured dissent.

Prior to the last AGM scurrilous emails were in circulation indicating that a take-over was in the making – by the signatories to the letter to the EC.

Bernard Regan sent out a confidential email out of concern that there was opposition to PSC's principles of self-determination and also resentment at expanding trade union affiliations. In my opinion his concern has proved to be well founded.

At the last AGM, while Gaza was still burning, valuable time was spent debating an unnecessary resolution on the issue of the Histadrut. Demands were made that would have hobbled PSC's trade union work. Subsequent success on the part of PSC's trade union colleagues in bringing the pernicious nature of the Histadrut to the fore has shown that the movers of the resolution had no understanding of the process involved. To my mind, Bernard and his trade unions colleagues have transformed the way trade unions relate to Palestine and deserve credit for that. Issues raised by the circulation of Bernard's email have been completely eclipsed by unprecedented levels of aggressive, bullying emails, blogging and organising against the elected Executive, while caucusing by the signatories was clearly observable at the AGM.

Claims, based upon `information' taken from Wikipedia, that PSC has been taken over by a shady group, so shady `they don't even have a website,' conform to a past pattern of behaviour in which false allegations are made in order to position the signatories as a virtuous opposition and to foster internal division. My understanding is that only one member of Socialist Action is in post at the PSC office, yet this is spun as a `take-over.'

In the recent past PSC successfully withstood a real take-over attempt by an organisation that sought to impose undue influence and demanded seats on the Executive. What is happening now is redolent of that time. Yet for all their concerns about a `take-over,' the signatories to the letter were silent when a serious take-over attempt was actually in progress.

It is true that PSC is vulnerable to vexatious opposition and take-overs. Only by sticking to our principle of putting the Palestinian people's interests first and always respecting their self-determination can our campaign soar above all efforts to undermine our solidarity work. Efforts to destroy solidarity with the Palestinians and to create disunity amongst ourselves will always intensify in times of acute danger for the Palestinians.

Sarah Colborne has worked unstintingly for PSC for ten years, as a volunteer for most of that time. Although a talented organiser and speaker, she has been self-effacing and has never pushed herself forward to hold any position in the organisation nor sought to promote herself. I remember when we set up the London Branch of PSC about eight years ago Sarah was one of a group, including Jenny Najar, who established a revitalised core of volunteer grassroots activists, of which Jenny briefly was the chair. Jenny should be well aware that Sarah has never sought to impose policies counter to those of PSC, unlike Jenny's co-signatories. It is strange that several of the signatories to the letter are themselves `reputed to be' members of small left-wing organisations, which is, of course, in itself, unproblematic.

While complaining about `lack of transparency' the signatories to the letter fail to disclose to whom their communications have been addressed, making it difficult to answer people's concerns. I am worried about the issues of data protection and confidentiality that this raises, as it is not clear how the recipients' addresses have been gathered. Breaches of this sort undermine the confidence of the membership in the ability of the office to keep their details safe in a professional way and I believe this has been the object of the exercise.

As a member of the EC for several years I know that there are constitutional obligations regarding fairness in the employment and management of staff and I was a member of the EC when these guidelines were painstakingly drawn up with the involvement of Jenny Najar.

The allegation that there has been a high turnover of staff at the office is completely false and vexatious. Martial Kurtz, the longest-serving staff member, has been in post for several years and Steve has also been employed long term. Like Sarah, Martial put in years of voluntary work before being appointed to the staff. All staff posts have been enabled by hard-won funds raised by members of the EC, particularly by Betty and, latterly, with the help of affiliated unions.

The PSC is a grassroots organisation that relies on dedicated volunteers. The General Secretary in particular carries a heavy burden of work, including, as mentioned above, raising large sums of money through events such as major art exhibitions and concerts that promote Palestinian culture. It is a disgrace that a person of such integrity as Betty, who has performed her role without regard to her own personal health or private life, should be subjected to a constant barrage of unfounded accusations and attacks from the signatories to this letter. As General Secretary she has endured years of harassment from individuals and groups of people who seem, bizarrely, to be disgruntled at PSC's growth and influence.

It is distressing that a handful of members who were unsuccessful in the election to the EC have chosen to ally themselves with efforts to undermine and divide PSC. Recently, a meeting was organised in Birmingham entitled `Reclaiming PSC for its Members,' yet only selected members were invited. I would question whether such behaviour is compatible with continued membership of PSC.

I note that the authors of this letter have adopted a more pusillanimous tone than material formerly circulated. But it is still nonsensical and pettifogging and can have no other intention than to knock PSC off course at time when the Palestinians need a strong, united solidarity movement in Britain rooted in the notion of self-determination and the Right of Return.

I implore the EC, branches and membership to stand firm against these efforts to damage the PSC and its solidarity work.

Yours sincerely,

Diane Langford

24th August

Dear signatories to the letter dated 9th August,

We will be very happy to discuss these issues at the Branch Forum on 12th September. Some of these points ave already been dealt with at the Branch Forums this year in Cambridge and London.

1. Interference in the democratic process at the PSC AGM

The PSC AGM including the elections, was conducted in a democratic way in accordance with the constitution. National affiliated organisations over 100,000 do have three votes. These amounted to 6 organisations at the 2009 AGM, a total of 18 votes.

Many emails were circulating before the AGM referring to the political positions of candidates. The email you refer to was a personal one, and not in contravention of any PSC rule. Clear agreed procedures for the AGM 2010 on 6th February will be published in plenty of time for the next AGM which will again focus on how we can build the most effective solidarity with the Palestinian people.

2. Fairness, accountability and equal opportunity in recruitment processes.

All of the permanent posts you mention were advertised to members, supporters and interested organisations. Our recruitment processes are fair and in accordance with equal opportunities. If we were to ask candidates for any post for their party political affiliations then this would be against equal opportunities.

The practice of putting accusations against named staff members in emails and on websites which go to many people including non members is discriminatory and unfair.

The staff do not make policy but must agree with the aims and objectives of PSC and are accountable to the EC. The EC are accountable to our membership through the AGM.

3. High staff turnover

In January the PSC staff, EC and membership responded brilliantly to the demands generated by the Gaza campaign. This was supplemented at national level by many volunteers who helped us to cope with new membership and other aspects of our work to support branches and members in taking up the defence of the people of Gaza. We now have a significant number of regular volunteers who help the staff and the EC to ensure that the work of PSC is increasingly effective.

We started a review of the staffing last December and have a stable and committed staff:

Sarah Colborne – Director of Campaigns and Operations -since April 2009
Steve Sibley – Administration Manager and Volunteer Coordinator
Martial Kurtz – National organiser
Ruqayyah Collector – Campaigns and Communications Officer (4 days) – since July 2009

The requirement for permanent part time book-keeping and data processing is currently under review.

4. Financial management

Yearly accounts are being prepared now. A budget will be prepared for the EC and membership.

At the Branch Forum we had a brief discussion on the need for fundraising. The point was made that the additional funds we gained in January because of increased interest during the Gaza crisis were allocated to immediate campaign demands such as the demonstrations as well as additional literature, improved Palestine News etc.

Finally, the PSC EC is anything but homogeneous, it includes people with a broad range of political perspectives and backgrounds all dedicated to helping to build a broad and mainstream organisation in support of the Palestinian people. We were elected at the biggest AGM yet, with about 250 members present from around 25 branches and we will be accountable to the membership at the next AGM. The EC will be considering these issues as part of its normal business when it meets on 5th September. We would like to point out that if any contact details have been taken from the PSC office, this would raise data protection issues.

Yours sincerely,

PSC EC

Mike Goodman - An Appreciation for a childhood friend and comrade

Au Revoir Mike

It was with great sadness that I learnt from my mother last weekend of the death of Mike Goodman, the former Director of Release and leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council. Mikes death at just 54 is so untimely. Mike lived just around the corner from my house in Dunbabin Road, Childwall, Liverpool, the heart of the once large and vibrant Liverpool Jewish community.

We first met in 1964 at what was then known as the Delamere Forest Jewish School for Delicate Children. Mike was anything but delicate! We shared a room and even then Mike was a flamboyant and unforgettable character. I left to begin secondary education at Liverpool’s King David Jewish School and Mike joined me a couple of years later. The school still exists but most of its children are not Jewish.

The school was then a bilateral grant-maintained school and Mike was classified as educationally backward and put in the secondary modern stream. Mike was a living example of how working class children were written off as incapable of academic achievements but Mike, by dint of his own natural ability, as well as hard work and determination, nonetheless gained the necessary qualifications to go to Brunel University.

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I was expelled from the King David in 1970. My offence was a compound one of going on the anti-Springbok demonstrations against the South African rugby team despite the headmaster, Jonathan Beebe's strict instructions. For that I was suspended, caned and forced to see an educational psychologist, since Beebe was of the view that anyone who challenged his authority must be mentally deranged. The psychologist however was of the opinion that my headmaster was more in need of his attention! After another fight with the head, after 3 of us had been caned for throwing stink bombs at Speech Day in the Philharmonic Hall, the guest of honour being the Israeli Ambassador, I was eventually expelled. The reason I mention this is that Mike made a point, years later, of telling me how appalled he had been at my treatment and expulsion and what it said about the kind of education that the King David provided.

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In 1969 both of us went on a Zionist Federation sponsored school trip to Israel. This was two years after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and our hosts were at pains to persuade us how Arabs were treated equally in Israel. Although Mike didn’t become a vociferous anti-Zionist like myself he saw through the lies and self-serving justifications we were offered and was appalled, even then, at the fact that Israel had become for a second time the colonial occupier of others’ lands. This was a time when it was widely believed that in 1947-8 the Arabs of Palestine had left of their own accord rather than being expelled.

Zionism was for the Jewish conformists, the good boys and girls of an insufferably middle-class Jewish community that has long since withered on the vine.

We attended a number of National Union of Students conferences together and in Easter 1979 we both stood on a joint ticket for NUS Executive. Mike was elected Vice President Education but I wasn’t. Mike’s great passion, even then, was the legalisation of cannabis and he didn’t only take an academic interest in it! Many a conference we spent getting stoned in the balcony.

Mike was also President of Brunel University Student Union and I remember the nights we spent getting stoned when I stayed in the guest rooms of the President, who had an extra flat to himself.

Mike represented the best of diaspora Jewry – always critical, always intolerant of the machers and the Jewish chauvinists, the Zionist conformers who accepted their propaganda on a plate and never sought to question anything. Despite his health problems, Mike lived a full life and was someone who was never at home with the stultifying conformism and state worship of modern day Anglo-Jewry. To the end he was a dedicated anti-racist, the type of person who no longer has a home in the Labour Party.

Tony Greenstein

For further appreciations and a moving obituary and tribute.

Salam Fayyad - A 'Prime Minister' elected by Bush, Obama, the World Bank and IMF

This is an important article which I have reprinted from Electronic Intifada. A new 'Palestinian Authority 'prime minister' has been imposed on the Palestinians of the West Bank. He hasn't of course been elected. Indeed he was one of 2 people (the other Hannan Ashrawi) who were elected as representatives of the 'Third Way' movement in 2006. The third way is appropriate because of course this was also the term used to designate Mussolini's fascist movement - neither capitalism nor communism was the theory. And it also held its attractions for Tony Blair as well as a variety of small fascist groups in Britain. In reality Fayyad has been elected by the World Bank and the IMF, both of which he worked for. He represents a Palestinian dictatorship and the hideous statelet that he is trying to create would be independent in name only. The billions of dollars poured by international donors into the Palestinian Authority by international donors has gone into mega corruption and the proliferation of militias that are under the overall command of the CIA's man in Ramallah, Mohammed Dahlan. That is the reality of the 'peace process.' Tony Greenstein

Liberation, not a fictitious Palestinian "state"
Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 2 September 2009

Appointed PA prime minister Salam Fayyad has been showered with Western support as the US pushes for the creation of a fictitious Palestinian state under Israeli control.

Late last month, Salam Fayyad, the appointed Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister in Ramallah, made a surprise announcement: he declared his intention to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before the end of 2011 regardless of the outcome of negotiations with Israel.

Fayyad told the London Times that he would work to build "facts on the ground, consistent with having our state emerge as a fact that cannot be denied." His plan was further elaborated in a lengthy document grandly titled "Program of the Thirteenth Government of the Palestinian National Authority."

The plan contains all sorts of ambitious ideas: an international airport in the Jordan Valley, new rail links to neighboring states, generous tax incentives to attract foreign investment, and of course strengthening the "security forces." It also speaks boldly of liberating the Palestinian economy from its dependence on Israel, and reducing dependence on foreign aid.

This may sound attractive to some, but Fayyad has neither the political clout nor the financial means to propose such far-reaching plans without a green light from Washington or Tel Aviv.

Fayyad aims to project an image of a competent Palestinian administration already mastering the craft of running a state. He boasts, for instance, that the PA he heads has worked to "develop effective institutions of government based on the principles of good governance, accountability and transparency."

But what is really taking shape in the West Bank today is a police state, where all sources of opposition or resistance -- real or suspected -- to either the PA regime, or the Israeli occupation are being systematically repressed by US-funded and trained Palestinian "security forces" in full coordination with Israel. Gaza remains under tight siege because of its refusal to submit to this regime.

In describing the Palestinian utopia he hopes to create, Fayyad's plan declares that "Palestine will be a stable democratic state with a multi-party political system. Transfer of governing authority is smooth, peaceful and regular in accordance with the will of the people, expressed through free and fair elections conducted in accordance with the law."

A perfect opportunity to demonstrate such an exemplary transfer would have been right after the January 2006 election which as the entire world knows Hamas won fairly and cleanly. Instead, those who monopolize the PA leadership today colluded with outside powers first to cripple and overthrow the elected Hamas government, and then the "national unity government" formed by the Mecca Agreement in early 2007, entrenching the current internal Palestinian division. (Fayyad's own party won just two percent at the 2006 election, and his appointment as prime minister by PA leader Mahmoud Abbas was never -- as required by law -- approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council, dozens of whose elected members remain behind Israeli prison bars.)

From 1994 to 2006, more than eight billion US dollars were pumped into the Palestinian economy, making Palestinians the most aid-dependent people on earth, as Anne Le More showed in her important book International Assistance to the Palestinians after Oslo: Political Guilt; Wasted Money (London, Routledge, 2008). The PA received this aid ostensibly to build Palestinian institutions, improve socioeconomic development and support the creation of an independent state. The result however is that Palestinians are more destitute and aid-dependent than ever before, their institutions are totally dysfunctional, and their state remains a distant fantasy.

PA corruption and mismanagement played a big part in squandering this wealth, but by far the largest wealth destroyer was and remains the Israeli occupation. Contrary to what Fayyad imagines, you cannot "end the occupation, despite the occupation."

A telling fact Le More reveals is that the previous "programs" of the PA (except those offered by the Hamas-led governments) were written and approved by international donor agencies and officials and then given to the PA to present back to the same donors who wrote them as if they were actually written by the PA!

Everything we see suggests Fayyad's latest scheme follows exactly the same pattern. What is particularly troubling this time is that the plan appears to coincide with a number of other initiatives and trial balloons that present a real danger to the prospects for Palestinian liberation from permanent Israeli subjugation.

Recently, the International Middle East Media Center, an independent Palestinian news organization, published what it said was the leaked outline of a peace plan to be presented by US President Barack Obama.

That plan included international armed forces in most of the Palestinian "state"; Israeli annexation of large parts of East Jerusalem; that "All Palestinian factions would be dissolved and transformed into political parties"; all large Israeli settlements would remain under permanent Israeli control; the Palestinian state would be largely demilitarized and Israel would retain control of its airspace; intensified Palestinian-Israeli "security coordination"; and the entity would not be permitted to have military alliances with other regional countries.

On the central issue of the right of return for Palestinian refugees, the alleged Obama plan allows only an agreed number of refugees to return, not to their original homes, but only to the West Bank, particularly to the cities of Ramallah and Nablus.

It is impossible to confirm that this leaked document actually originates with the Obama administration. What gives that claim credibility, however, is the plan's very close resemblance to a published proposal sent to Obama last November by a bipartisan group of US elder statesmen headed by former US national security advisors Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Moreover, recent press reports indicate a lively debate within the Obama Administration about whether the US should itself publish specific proposals for a final settlement once negotiations resume; so there is little doubt that concrete proposals are circulating.

Indeed there is little of substance to distinguish these various plans from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's concept of "economic peace" and a demilitarized Palestinian statelet under overall Israeli control, with no right of return for refugees. And, since all seem to agree that the Jordan Valley -- land and sky -- would remain under indefinite Israeli control, so would Fayyad's airport.

Similar gimmicks have been tried before: who remembers all the early Oslo years' hullabaloo about the Gaza International Airport that operated briefly under strict Israeli control before Israel destroyed it, and the promised Gaza seaport whose construction Israel forbade?

There are two linked explanations for why Fayyad's plan was launched now. US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has repeatedly defined his goal as a "prompt resumption and early conclusion" of negotiations. If the kinds of recycled ideas coming from the alleged Obama plan, the Scowcroft-Brzezinski document, or Netanyahu, are to have any chance, they need to look as if there is a Palestinian constituency for them. It is Fayyad's role to provide this.

The second explanation relates to the ongoing struggle over who will succeed Mahmoud Abbas as president of the PA. It has become clear that Fayyad, a former World Bank official unknown to Palestinians before he was boosted by the George W. Bush Administration, appears to be the current favorite of the US and other PA sponsors. Channeling more aid through Fayyad may be these donors' way of strengthening Fayyad against challengers from Abbas' Fatah faction (Fayyad is not a member of Fatah) who have no intention of relinquishing their chokehold on the PA patronage machine.

Many in the region and beyond hoped the Obama Administration would be a real honest broker, at last bringing American pressure to bear on Israel, so that Palestinians might be liberated. But instead, the new administration is acting as an efficient laundry service for Israeli ideas; first they become American ones, and then a Palestinian puppet is brought in to wear them.

This is not the first scheme aimed at extinguishing Palestinian rights under the guise of a "peace process," though it is most disappointing that the Obama Administration seems to have learned nothing from the failures of its predecessors. But just as before, the Palestinian people in their country and in the Diaspora will stand stubbornly in the way of these efforts. They know that real justice, not symbolic and fictitious statehood, remains the only pillar on which peace can be built.

Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

A version of this article first appeared in The Jordan Times and is reprinted with the authors' permission.

Jews who sell to Arabs are enemies - More Nazi Rabbis

Yes incredible as it is, these biblical racists going by the name of 'rabbi' wish to continue the ethnic cleansing under a religious badge. But be grateful - Hillel Weiss of Bar Ilan University doesn't think this merits the death penalty!! I suspect that even in Nazi Germany selling to a Jew wasn't a capital offence although it certainly merited time in a concentration camp which could often prove fatal.

Below is from an article in The Jerusalem Post, Israel's oldest newspaper and now free of Conrad Black! Just one question. If such things took place in Britain and it was non-Jews who were considered 'traitors' for selling to Jews, would that be anti-Semitic? Tony Greenstein

By Matthew Wagner , THE JERUSALEM POST September 2, 2009

A Jew who sells land to an Arab in Israel should not be allowed to lead prayers in synagogue, should not be given the right to make a blessing during the Torah reading, should not be counted among the quorum needed for public prayers and is considered an abettor to the enemies of Israel, according to a halachic decision issued on Monday night by a group of rabbis calling themselves "The New Sanhedrin."

Prof. Hillel Weiss, a spokesman for the Sanhedrin, said that while the seller of land to Arabs is helping the Jewish people's enemies, this does not mean that he or she is guilty of a sin that entails the death penalty.

Rabbis who participated in a meeting that took place in the capital's Pisgat Ze'ev neighborhood on Monday evening included Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, Rabbi Ya'acov Yosef, son of Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and former United Torah Judaism MK Rabbi Menachem Porush, 93.

In their decision, the Sanhedrin explained the historical background. "In recent years a phenomenon has arisen in which Arabs are buying houses and land in Jewish neighborhoods and in this way are gradually buying up these neighborhoods."

Sources connected with the Sanhedrin said that the halachic decision was a response to sales of land and apartments in French Hill, Pisgat Ze'ev and other Jerusalem neighborhoods to Arabs.
The security barrier which is being completed in Jerusalem and which separates Palestinian and Jewish areas might be part of the reason for the rise in demand by Arabs for homes in Jewish neighborhoods. Many Arabs do not want to be stuck on the wrong side of the barrier.

Eliyahu, who said that he did not sign the halachic decision, explained that the phenomenon of Arabs buying Jewish-owned land had grown as a result of European and Saudi funding supporting the move.

"Every community has the right to use sanctions against members who sell land to Arabs," said Eliyahu.

"The influx of Arabs to Jewish neighborhoods lowers the value of homes and introduces negative cultural influences. A Jew who facilitates this is transgressing the commandment to love one's neighbor like oneself, even if he only rents to them."
Eliyahu said that in his own city of Safed, a Jew who sold to an Arab was boycotted by the community. "He owned a grocery store and people boycotted it."

Halacha forbids the sale of land in Israel owned by Jews to non-Jews. However, there is nothing in Jewish law that prevents someone who does so from participating in prayers.
Holy city twist: Upwardly mobile Arabs moving into neighborhoods built for Jews
BEN HUBBARD Associated Press Writer
9:25 AM CDT, September 5, 2009

This July 30, 2009 photo shows Israelis sitting in a coffee shop as Arab women walk past in the French hill neighborhood of northern Jerusalem. A small but growing number of Arabs is moving into Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Most come for the better services and reasonable rents, but they represent a potentially volatile twist in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over the holy city.

Yousef Majlaton moved into the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev for such comforts as proper running water and regular garbage pickup. But he represents a potentially volatile twist in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over the holy city.

The hillside sprawl of townhouses and apartment blocks was built for Jews, and Majlaton is a Palestinian.

Pisgat Zeev is part of Israel's effort to fortify its presence in Jerusalem's eastern half which it captured in the 1967 war.

But Majlaton, his wife and three kids are among thousands who have crossed the housing lines to Pisgat Zeev and neighborhoods like it in a migration that is raising tempers among some Jewish residents.

It wasn't so much the politics of this contested city that drew Majlaton to Pisgat Zeev, however; it was the prospect of escaping the potholed roads and scant municipal services he endured for 19 years while renting in an Arab neighborhood.

"You see that air conditioner?" he said, pointing to the large wall unit cooling his living room. "In the Arab areas, the electricity is too weak to run one that big."

Majlaton, 50, says some Jewish neighbors are warming up to him, but the influx bothers others, who say they're thinking of moving out or refuse to sell or rent to Arabs.

This is much more than a simple matter of real estate. Demographics could figure heavily in how Jerusalem is partitioned in a future peace deal. If that happens, it is expected the city will be split along ethnic lines — Jewish neighborhoods to Israel, Arab neighborhoods to Palestine.

Palestinians see east Jerusalem as their future capital. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows the whole city will remain united as Israel's capital.

Palestinians have long accused those among them who sell land to Jews of betraying their homeland, and last week similar language was heard from a group of rabbis. Meeting in Pisgat Zeev, they issued an edict denouncing Jews who sell land to Arabs as "traitors" and barring them from participating in communal prayers.

"This is a war, and if the Arabs conquer one neighborhood, they will conquer others and they will strangle the Jews," said Hillel Weiss, a spokesman for the "New Sanhedrin," which takes its name from the supreme court of ancient Israel.

In 2007, the latest year with available statistics, about 1,300 of Pisgat Zeev's 42,000 residents were Arabs. In nearby French Hill, population 7,000, nearly one-sixth are Arabs, among them students at the neighboring Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Neve Yaakov, with 20,000 people, had 600 Arabs, according to the Israel Center for Jerusalem Studies, a respected think tank.

Weeks after the 1967 war, Israel annexed east Jerusalem with its major Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites in a move recognized by no other country. It continues to build housing in sensitive areas in defiance of U.S. protests.

Netanyahu says Arabs have the right to live anywhere in the city, and so should Jews, though the Old City's Jewish Quarter is closed to Arabs.

Jerusalem's mayor and city councilors are all Jewish. Almost all the city's Arabs refuse to vote or run in municipal elections, saying that would be recognition of Israeli rule. But it deprives them of clout in competition for city spending.

Today, while west Jerusalem is overwhelmingly Jewish, the eastern half is an ethnic checkerboard. More than 180,000 Jews live there, most in places like Pisgat Zeev but also in enclaves in Arab areas. Nearly all the city's 220,000 Palestinians live in eastern neighborhoods.

Ironically, much of the Arab migration was set off by the separation barrier which Israel started building through the West Bank in 2002 during a wave of suicide bombings. Its Jerusalem segment meanders to scoop up as many Jewish areas as possible and make several Arab neighborhoods a part of the West Bank.

The wall stranded tens of thousands of Jerusalem Arabs on the "West Bank side," and many moved to Arab neighborhoods on the Jerusalem side for easier access to jobs and schools. But a housing shortage in those districts is pushing the overflow into Jewish areas, residents and real estate agents said.

These areas are "less crowded, you can live in a house, and there are streets, parks and places to play," said Moukhless Abu el-Hof, an Israeli Arab lawyer who owns a home in Pisgat Zeev. "In the Arab neighborhoods, there's nothing."

Jewish resident Shlomi Cohen, 37, said the Arab influx made him sell up and move elsewhere in Pisgat Zeev. "If an Arab comes to live in the building and someone wants to buy and he knows there is an Arab there, he will not buy," he said.

Yael Antebi, editor of the Pisgat Zeev community newspaper and a Jerusalem city council member, said Arab and Jewish teens sometimes brawl, Arab youth often harass Jewish girls, and parents fear their daughters will date Arabs.

Majlaton and his wife are both Hebrew-speaking Christians. He said his new neighbors cold-shouldered them when they arrived in 2002, but gradually became friendlier.

He said he has since helped about 30 Arab families to move in and gets calls from prospective renters almost every day.

While his primary motivation was quality of life, he says living in Pisgat Zeev is "a nationalistic act" — a way to cement Arab presence in the city of his birth.

He said Palestinian leaders should follow his lead.

"They should bring all the Arabs to Pisgat Zeev," he said. "I'll help them find homes one by one."

_____
AP correspondent Amy Teibel contributed to this report.

New Labour Proposes to Abolish ALL Disability Benefits - DLA and AA included

What kind of 'Labour' Government are the Trade Unions Funding?

Having already abolished Incapacity Benefit, with barely a squeak or murmur from the trade unions or labour movement, New Labour has signalled that it wants to scrap ALL disability benefits.

On July 14th New Labour published a Green Paper, Shaping the Future of Care. Reading through the spin and waffle, the message is clear. DLA is ‘inefficient’ ‘poorly targetted’ [because it’s not means tested!] and has to go.

In fact DLA is the best benefit there is. If your needs are great enough, if you cannot care and need help with bodily functions for part or all of the day (and night) you are eligible for DLA. There are 3 bands – lower, middle and higher. Receipt of DLA does not overlap with other benefits and is not counted as taxable income. The result is that people who are the most vulnerable and sick in this society see a small increase in their standard of living.

This is what New Labour hate most of all.

The proposal is to use the money for ‘individual budgets’ run by private companies, whereby the disabled, in agreement with the local authority, can spend the money in particular ways. Many people now in receipt of DLA/AA will be ineligible. The whole system will be discretionary and, of course, liable to cuts. Anyone with any experience of the already existing system of individual budgets knows what a nightmare the whole system is.

New Labour's Green Paper openly talks about abolishing Attendance Allowance which is paid to those 65 and over (AA is the equivalent of the care component of DLA). Instead they intend to force the elderly to pay £20,000 to insure themselves!! In conformity with New Labour's belief in spin they talk in the paper of 'disability benefits' as well as Attendance Allowance - a clear sign that it is not just AA which is in their sights. And of course the Green Paper dresses up its purpose with the usual New Labour waffle such as proclaiming that "our aspiration (is) to build a stronger, fairer Britain."

Well quite - abolition of disability is no doubt part of the 'aspiration' to building a fairer Britain in the eyes of New Labour's Paw Law Commissioners such as Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper.

Anyone who believes that New Labour is anything other than an alternative party of capitalism is living in another world. The Attlee Government of 1945-51, which was a right-wing cold war Labour government, nonetheless introduced the building blocs of the welfare state which New Labour is intent on demolishing. They introduced the National Assistance Act intended to act as a safety net for those who fell below a certain level of income. New Labour has virtually abolished Income Support. Successive Labour (and even Tory) Governments have introduced disability benefits. New Labour is determined to abolish them.

New Labour prefers stuffing the mouths of bankers with gold and then expecting the poorest and most deprived sections of the community to pay for it. Meanwhile the leadership of the Trade Unions, like the three wise monkeys, hear nothing, see nothing and say nothing. And more to the point - do nothing.

DLA at the moment is used to pay for the extra costs that result from being disabled. For example my own son is autistic. One of the consequences of this is that he is always breaking things, including windows! DLA is used to remedy this. It also enables him to be taken out by his parents, to enjoy videos and DVDs and live as near as possible a normal life including holidays. This is the kind of thing that New Labour is determined to prevent and in its place will be a free-market, bureaucratically driven National Care Agency which will determine what the needs of the disabled are.

People have been confused because the Green Paper only mentions Attendance Allowance and ‘disability benefits’. However the latter is a clue. If you are going for equivalent of the care component of DLA for the elderly, it makes sense to do so with those under 65. Of course New Labour will try and spin this away so that is why it needs a massive movement to prevent this in its tracks.

Coincidentally the TUC is organising a ‘Poverty Conference’ on Monday October 19th. it is appropriately titled, because it displays the TUC's normal poverty of ideas. Entitled An Alternative Vision for the Welfare State it is organised in conjunction with the Unemployed Workers Centres Consultative Committee.

Earlier this year I resigned from the above committee because in reality it is just the plaything of TUC bureaucrats and staff. It is led by the Unemployed Centres Combine chaired by one Kevin Flynn of Gateshead Unemployed Workers Centre, which also does nothing. Every New Labour attack on benefit claimants so far has been met by silence or worse complicity.

Speaking at the TUC’s Anti Poverty Conference, will be a number of different welfare charities such as Child Poverty Action Committee. CPAG, like most charities, is politically clueless. Having previously welcomed all Gordon Brown’s initiatives such as the tax credit system, as a means of combatting child poverty, a goal which is ever more elusive, they are now paralysed like rabbits in the headlights as New Labour begins taking the axe to the fundamentals of the Welfare State.

This of course is apart from the fact that certain disabled charities like Disability Alliance actually support the government’s proposed abolition of AA/DLA. These charity heads, who have grown fat on the backs of those they purportedly serve, are now rolling over to accept New Labour’s latest spin. Also speaking alongside them will be Jonathan Rutherford of the New Labour think-tank Compass as well as Mark Serwotka of PCS, the Civil Service union. Serwotka has a reputation as a left leader of a militant trade union but when it comes to implementation of benefit cuts and Employment Support Allowance, PCS has gone along with the government without a whimper.

That is why, as Secretary of Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre, I am calling on people to help organise and join a picket of the TUC in Great Russell Street, London outside its Poverty Conference on Monday October 19th at 10.00 a.m.

Below are links to more information plus a faq sheet on what the Government’s Green Paper means in practice.
1 2 3

What exactly is the Green Paper about?
The green paper is about the problem of paying for care as the UK’s population ages. It proposes setting up a National Care Service, like the National Health Service, to provide a universal system of care throughout the UK. Much of the document is devoted to discussing how to pay for this service, including:

making everyone pay a flat rate of £25,000 before or after they die, whether they ever need care or not; or

making everyone over retirement age pay into an insurance scheme; or

making people pay for part of their care depending on their means.

This is in addition to the proposal to take disability benefits off claimants and hand them over to the care service.

The National Care Service would only deal with your care needs. If you had to go into residential care you would still have to pay for accommodation, heating, lighting, food, clothes, toiletries, etc.

But at least under this system everyone would have the right to the care they need, even though it might mean getting rid of disability benefits, right?

No, not at all. Everyone would have the right to have their care needs assessed but only the most severely disabled would actually receive any care.

The way it would work is that under the National Care Service everyone in the UK would have their care needs assessed using the same criteria wherever they live. This might be done by a national body – it’s easy to imagine a company like Atos who currently do benefits medicals being employed to do the assessments – or it might be done by local social services departments all working to the same system.

As a result of the assessment, some people would be awarded a ‘personal budget’ – a cash amount that could be used to meet their needs. Many people, however, would receive no care whatsoever, because their care needs would be below the threshold set nationally or by individual local authorities.

For example you might be assessed as needing help with washing, dressing and undressing because of arthritis. But you’d be very unlikely to actually get this help from the National Care Service. Resources would be reserved for those with higher needs than yours.

One of the concerns of disability agencies, including RNIB, is that many people who are currently entitled to DLA or AA would not be entitled to a personal budget from the National Care Service. At the moment, most local authorities do not currently provide help for people who ‘only’ need help with washing and dressing.

Still, those with the highest care needs would be able to purchase whatever they wanted with their personal budget, wouldn’t they?

No, not at all. How the budget would be spent would depend on what agreement individuals were able to reach with a social worker.

If you have ME/CFS, for example, you may rely on your DLA or AA to pay for alternative therapies such as acupuncture, homeopathy, herbalism or chiropractice or you may use it to pay for dietary supplements that you know help you. However, professionals may dismiss these as quack remedies and you may not be able to use your personal budget for those sort of things. It wouldn’t be your cash to spend as you choose, in the way that DLA and AA are.

Won’t there be some sort of transitional relief for current claimants?

Yes, there may be. But you might not like it.

One proposal is to ensure that all current claimants get a care package of at least the value of their current disability benefits payments. But the amounts paid for DLA and AA wouldn’t get you very much care.

Middle rate care DLA and lower rate AA are worth £47.10 a week, for example. This might get you help with washing and dressing in the morning and getting into bed at night for two, or at the most three days a week. The other four or five days you’d have to manage alone.

If your care needs are at night, your benefits would pay for one night a week for someone to sleep in your house and not even a single night for someone to stay awake.

Lower rate DLA wouldn’t pay for even two hours of care a week. In fact it might not get you any hours at all, but instead be used to pay for aids or adaptations.

OK, this doesn’t sound great, but this is only a discussion document, isn’t it?

Yes it is, but green papers are the first step on the road to new laws. If politicians sense from the responses – or the lack of them - that disabled people and disability organisations won’t put up too much of a fight then they’ll see that as a green light for abolishing DLA as well as AA.

You keep going on about ‘disability benefits’ but what exactly are they?

Good question. We only keep going on about them because the green paper does. In all, the term ‘disability benefits’ appears 35 times in the green paper. There is no legal definition of disability benefits, as far as we are aware, but most people would agree that the main ones are DLA and AA.

So you’re just scaremongering really aren’t you, because the green paper doesn’t actually refer to ending DLA, does it?
No, it doesn’t go in for that kind of plain speaking. Instead, it talks about ‘integrating‘ ‘disability benefits, for example Attendance Allowance’ and ‘disability benefits such as Attendance Allowance’ into the care system.

We understand why people might think why our concerns are just pointless speculation and prophecies of doom. But people said the same thing before employment and support allowance was introduced and the reality is now beginning to look worse than the prophecies.

And bear this in mind. This green paper was many months in the making. It’s signed by no fewer than six secretaries of state, including the acknowledged master of spin, Lord Mandelson. It’s also signed by the chief secretary to the treasury and has an introduction by Gordon Brown himself. You can be quite sure that every phrase in this document has been carefully chosen.

If DLA had been specifically listed as a benefit that was to be axed the government, and particularly the new secretary of state for work and pensions Yvette Cooper, would have expected a much angrier response from disability groups. The use of the imprecise term disability benefits, on the other hand, allows the government to gauge the level of organised opposition before denying or revealing that they wish to axe DLA.

And remember, by passing enabling legislation which gives the secretary of state the power to withdraw any benefits and merge the funds into the National Care Service the government can pave the way for getting rid of DLA without openly admitting their intention. By the time they do admit it, it will be far, far too late to do anything about it.

I’m not convinced - I still don’t believe they would dare to get rid of DLA, so why should I get involved in this campaign?

Well, we salute your optimism. But one reason might be simply that if you’re a claimant yourself you know what a desperate struggle it is to live off benefits. Why would you not offer to support to sick and disabled claimants currently getting AA? Why would you decide that it’s absolutely fine to snatch benefits away from sick and disabled claimants as long as they’re ‘only’ old people?

At the worst you’ll spend a few hours of your time sticking up for some of the least well off in society. In fact a very recent report found that the UK’s pensioners are the fourth poorest in Europe. Yet these are the people who are being told they must suffer cuts in their already low incomes so that investment bankers, for example, can continue to enjoy massive bonuses without having to pay higher taxes.

You might even give politicians the idea that it’s not so easy to push the sick and disabled around after all.

But surely it doesn’t matter what labour proposes, they’ll be out of power by the end of next year, won’t they?

Most people seem to think so, but why would you expect the conservatives to be against the idea of cutting benefits?

Labour and the conservatives have co-operated closely over welfare reform up until now – hence the smooth introduction of employment and support allowance with its harsh new work capability assessment. The only disagreement between the two seems generally to be that the conservatives don’t think that labour go far enough with some reforms. That’s why investment banker and get the sick back to work guru David Freud deserted labour and joined the tories.

There is every reason to suppose that if the conservatives win the next election they will be as keen as labour to cut the cost of benefits rather than, say, raising the rate of tax paid by the very well off. The green paper even points out that ‘If we do not reform the system, in 20 years’ time the cost of disability benefits could increase by almost 50 per cent.’

One thing we can say with certainty, since the publication of the green paper there has been no undertaking from the conservatives that they would oppose getting rid of disability benefits.

If both parties are in favour of axing DLA and AA then there’s no point in protesting, is there?
Yes there is. There are over 4.5 million people in the UK who get DLA or AA and most of them are entitled to vote. In addition, millions have a partner, parent, carer or someone else whose life is closely bound up with theirs and who would also suffer if disability benefits were axed. Together, they make up a very large slice of the electorate.

In addition, there are literally thousands of disability organisations in this country, from the very large ones such as RNIB and RNID to very small local groups. Together, they form a very influential lobby group. No party would lightly go into an election with a huge range of disability groups condemning their proposals for disabled people.

Just as importantly, no MP or challenger wants to fight an election with a local campaign against them mounted by local disabled people. Even Labour MPs in formerly safe seats will be counting every vote. They can probably be relied on to put pressure on ministers to drop policies that are filling their post bags with letters of protest.

But you’ll never get disabled people or their organisations to act together, will you?
No, we won’t. Not on our own – we’re a tiny organisation and we aren’t set up to be a campaigning body. But our campaign will only begin if a thousand people sign up to it. A thousand people each prepared to devote a little time to applying pressure and to encouraging others to join in could genuinely begin to influence the national disability organisations and that might well start to frighten politicians.

What does your campaign actually involve . . . will it include chains and padlocks?

We’re aiming to get people to email MPs, disability groups and others with their concerns. We also want to araise awareness of the plans to abolish disability benefits in discussion forums and local media. We’ll be asking campaigners to demand that organisations that represent them put up a genuine fight against these proposals.

We won’t be asking anyone to chain themselves to anything – though if you do, please send us a pic.

Sign up to our campaign to fight the threat to DLA & AA

But haven’t all the disability groups been “bought” by the government?

Sadly, there are a number of disability bodies who rely increasingly on funding from the government. And there are some who seem to care more about being on first name terms with ministers than they do about representing their members.

But most disability organisations are hard working, decent but woefully underfunded and overstretched bodies. Some are already speaking out against the proposals to axe DLA and AA. Many others simply don’t understand the benefits system and generally try to have nothing to do with it because it’s too confusing and they don’t have the specialist staff. All that may be needed is for enough of their members to start contacting and educating them in order to get them to act.

Some will undoubtedly prefer to steer clear of controversy altogether. But most agencies depend primarily on donations and subscriptions from individual members for their funding. And all rely on being able to claim that they represent the interests of their particular group. None of them will feel comfortable about being publicly and repeatedly condemned for failing to stick up for the very people they claim to represent, because that could have a direct effect on their income and jobs.

This is all very well, but why should we trust anything you say when you’re just out to make money from people claiming DLA & AA?
It’s absolutely true that an important part of our income comes from people subscribing to the Benefits and Work website for information about claiming DLA. But you don’t have to trust us at all. We’ve published links to the green paper itself and to other sites with information about it, so you can make up your own mind.

But in our own defence we should point out that between us we have many years of experience of the benefits system as welfare rights workers, trainers and writers and that one of us is legally qualified.

We started this campaign because we are so outraged that the government wants to make people with mild to moderately high care needs give up their benefits in order to pay for the care of the most severely disabled. We think there are better ways to fund the cost of care, like making bankers with million pound bonuses pay much higher taxes. And we’re astonished that there has been so little reaction to these proposals.

But if you’re right, and we are just hard-faced business people trying to protect our income, then maybe you should be really worried. Because business people wouldn’t invest a lot of time, effort and money into a campaign like this – which will make no money whatsoever – unless they thought the threat to DLA was a very real threat indeed to their business.

OK, fair point. But as a claimant it’s safer just to keep your head down, isn’t it, rather than getting involved in protests?
We can see why people feel that way.

After all, politicians have invested many millions of pounds and years of effort into encouraging society to view those who claim incapacity and disability benefits as workshy frauds.

They happily allow the media to incite hatred towards sick and disabled claimants in a way that would see editors and producers imprisoned if they used similar language in relation to any other minority group. Indeed, it’s very often politicians who provide the soundbites and misleading statistics that fuel another round of claimant bashing

So it’s not surprising that many sick and disabled people are left feeling ashamed and afraid of admitting they claim benefits. And as the recession deepens, scapegoating of claimants as a drain on hardworking taxpayers will only increase.

And that’s the problem: if you don’t raise your voice in protest now it will just carry on getting worse. Benefits will be cut and cut again. Private sector companies will be given greater powers and bigger cash rewards for pushing people into unsuitable and unsustainable employment. And more and more stories of benefits scroungers will be fed to the media to encourage hatred of sick and disabled people, ensuring that they don’t ever organise themselves to resist.

Does that sound safer to you? Or would you rather take a chance and help make things change? And imagine how proud you'll feel if the campaign succeeds in saving DLA and AA and you've been part of it.

Sign up to our campaign to fight the threat to DLA & AA

One example of the success of New Labour's spin in the following article by Debbie Andalo in the Guardian of August 6 2009 which claims that disabled organisations are backing New Labour. Though it is a lie that they represent disabled people in receipt of DLA or AA.

Disabled people could reap huge benefits from the proposed national care service. But issues of how funds would be allocated were again top of the agenda

Disabled people and those organisations that represent them are backing the vision of a new national care service outlined in the green paper Shaping the Future of Care Together published earlier this month. But they believe that the document focuses too much on the needs and demands of a care and support system created by an increasing ageing population rather than those of younger people with a disability who need long-term support, according to the views expressed at a roundtable convened to debate the green paper.

The event was the second roundtable organised by Society and sponsored by the Department of Health. The first, held a week earlier (Society, 29 July), was devoted to the implications of the proposed national care service for an increasing ageing population. The latest roundtable, which included a minister and representatives from user groups and other organisations representing disabled people and their carers, focused on how a new national care service would meet the needs of adult disabled people.

There was also widespread criticism of the name "national care service" and the language used in the green paper, with its emphasis on "care" and being "looked after", which participants said is patronising to young adults who are seeking support to live as independently as possible. The words that resonate with today's young disabled adults were "entitlement, rights, equality, inclusion and diversity", the roundtable was told.

Participants attending the event were also concerned about the tone of the green paper, which they thought suggested that disabled people were a "burden" that had "investment implications." One participant said: "We have missed a massive opportunity to see care and support as an investment. We need to do far more to identify and communicate the cost benefits of caring because at the moment it's seen as a primary burden."

One participant said the opportunity to take part in the Big Care Debate, the title the government has given to the public consultation on the green paper, was a "oncein- a-generation opportunity to transform social care services" and offered the opportunity for a "massive cultural change". The consultation runs until November and will help inform a care and support white paper due to be published next year.

The proposals, the participant added, will give people with a disability "wraparound services", with greater personal choice and greater control. The green paper, the speaker said, "embodies the disability movement … and its vision about what it is to be disabled and what rights and equalities are all about. It's a massive capturing of a strand of thinking that some people have been arguing about... for many years, and here we have moved it into mainstream government policy. We shouldn't underestimate the importance of that cultural shift."

Single needs assessment
There was universal support at the roundtable for the green paper's proposal to create a single needs assessment for a disabled person that would be "portable" – recognised by any local authority wherever an individual lived in England. Seen as a landmark in social care policy, the new assessment would break down one of the biggest barriers to social and economic mobility cited by people with a disability. One participant described it as a "huge leap forward."

The government is optimistic that the change will help bring an end to the current "postcode lottery", where the amount of care and support an individual receives varies according to where they live – even if they have the same level of need.

But participants were less optimistic than ministers because the green paper failed to offer any details or promises about the services an individual could expect and what would be provided under the new system. One participant said: "People need to know what they have a right to and then pass that duty on to the local authority. There needs to be a nationally resourced, allocated system – everything else follows from that."

The roundtable was also worried about another key proposal. Under the new system the government would establish the level of need at which somebody qualifies for state funding. It would also decide what proportion of their care would be funded by the state, and what percentage, if any, would be met by the individual. But the green paper is undecided about how much money a person would be entitled to in order to meet their care needs.

It puts forward two ideas, which are part of the present public consultation. The first option is that it would be up to an individual local authority to decide how much money a person should receive. This option, according to the green paper, would give councils flexibility in deciding how much of their total budget to spend on care and support; it would allow a council to raise funds through council tax to help meet the costs. The disadvantage, says the green paper, is that this system still has the potential to create a postcode lottery because the amount of money a person receives could vary according to where he or she lived – even if their level of need was identical.

The second idea is that the government, rather than a council, would decide how much funding a person would be entitled to. The advantage of this scheme is that it is likely to bring an end to regional disparities as an individual would be entitled to the same budget to meet their level of
need wherever they lived. The down side, according to the green paper, is that local authorities would be committed to rigid care budgets that do not reflect the fact that the cost of providing care is very different in different parts of the country. Local authorities would also lose the flexibility to raise additional money through council tax to supplement central government funding.

Opposition to central funding
The roundtable was told that some local authorities have already warned that they would oppose any new national care service being "imposed" on them. One participant pointed out: "There are difficult issues around how we run local government finance and how money is resourced … some local authorities have [already] expressed strong views on this." Another recalled how he was at a recent meeting where a representative from the Local Government Association (LGA), which represents local councils, "made it absolutely clear that a national service wasn't on, and that there had to be local discretion because conditions, circumstances and costs were different." The participant was worried that if the influential LGA decided to "challenge one of the really valuable things about the green paper" it would win.

However, another participant pointed out it would be naive to think that any national model of care service would bring an end to regional inequalities. The person said: "Let's be real about it – the NHS is a national service but we still get a postcode lottery … don't fool yourself that a national structure brings equality."

Another issue that dominated the debate, and which was also a key concern of those who attended the first roundtable, was worry over proposals to change the system of disability benefits to fund the new national care service. The roundtable was assured that the disability living allowance (DLA) – a non means-tested benefit paid to disabled people of working age – would remain intact. But, the roundtable was told, there was no such guarantee for attendance allowance (AA) – a non means-tested benefit paid to the over 65s to help with the additional costs of being disabled that are not met by their care plans. One participant was opposed to any benefit disappearing: "For AA and DLA to be put at risk is a terrifying prospect." Another added: "DLA and AA are the original personal budget – and I would be terrified if they were to be merged into some local authority government system [of care and support]."

But one participant said during times of limited resources it was important to consider what presented better value for money and maybe there was a need to "move money from A to B" to get that. The speaker added: "We can enshrine rights until the cows come home, but the quality of provision is the thing that makes the difference."

The roundtable was conducted under the Chatham House rule: quotes are non‑attributable to any of the participants
At the table

Lord (Victor) Adebowale, chief executive, Turning Point
Professor Peter Beresford, director of the centre for citizen particpation, Brunel University
David Brindle (chair), public services editor, The Guardian
Baroness (Jane) Campbell, health and social care policy adviser
Caroline Ellis, deputy chief executive, Radar
Jane Finnerty, member, public affairs committee, National Federation of Women's Institutes
Lorraine Gradwell, chief executive, Breakthrough UK
Phil Hope MP, minister of state for care services, Department of Health
Alexandra Norrish, head of social care strategy, and head of the green paper team, Department of Health
Dame Philippa Russell, chair, Standing Commission on Carers
Patrick Vernon, chief executive, The Afiya Trust
Dame Jo Williams, co-chair, Learning Disability Coalition
http://www.guardian.co.uk/careandsupportreform/roundtable-moving-forward

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