Louise Nousratpour in Blackpool
Monday May 29, 2006
The Morning Star
NATFHE general secretary Paul Mackney condemned the "idiot wind" of government privatisation at the weekend when he addressed the lecturers' union's final conference.
"We've seen privatised FE before and more of it is about as welcome as snakes in a pram," Mr Mackney warned delegates during his address on Saturday.
"The new adult education is wide open to greed and sleaze with its emphasis on privatisation.
"Urging colleges to seek funding from philanthropic millionaires is like recommending oral sex with a shark," he said amid roars of laughter.
Mr Mackney, who will be retiring this year due to a heart condition, stressed that "what we want is solid state funding from a progressive taxation system, not charity from the rich who maintain their wealth in tax havens."
He also attacked university bosses' refusal to meet their workforce's demand for a 23 per cent pay rise over three years - to compensate for a 40 per cent pay decline in the past two decades compared with average earnings - which lies at the heart of the current pay dispute.
"The lethal combination of hypocrisy accompanies 'feline obesity,' with many vice-chancellors awarding themselves substantial pay rises whilst denying such increases to their front-line staff," he noted.
Mr Mackney rejected "offensive" suggestions that lecturers who are refusing to mark final exams as part of their action over pay have no regard for their students.
Earlier in the day, during her address to conference, National Union of Students president Kat Fletcher insisted that her members "stand by you every step of the way."
The NATFHE leader also took a strong line on the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israeli forces, noting that he had been sent over 5,000 emails, many of which accused him of anti-semitism and ordered him to stop a proposed motion on a boycott of Israeli goods, which will be debated today.
"The Palestinian people need support and solidarity as never before and I will not be bullied into silence," he insisted, launching a scathing attack on the international community for imposing sanctions on Palestine.
Finally, Mr Mackney called on members to take their fighting spirit against low pay, the illegal Iraq war and racism into the new union UCU, which will be formed by a merger of NATFHE and AUT on Thursday.
Lecturers step up pay dispute
Louise Nousratpour in Blackpool
Monday May 29, 2006
The Morning Star
OUTRAGE: Education workers protesting outside the ICC in Birmingham, last year.
NATFHE delegates vowed yesterday to step up industrial action to force "greedy hypocrite" employers to make a fair pay offer.
Lecturers, who had hoped that a marathon 23-hour negotiation session with employers last week would produce an offer worthy of a debate at their union's conference, expressed outrage at the employers' refusal to table a deal.
They vowed to march on London on Thursday - the day when NATFHE and sister union AUT merge to form the new UCU - to demand fair pay.
NATFHE head of universities Roger Kline accused bosses of deliberately refusing to make an offer so that delegates could not discuss it at conference.
"But they misjudged the mood of our members, which is to not only maintain but to step up the action," he insisted.
"I have not received one single letter or email from any member asking me to ballot members on the bosses' initial 12.6 per cent three-year offer - which was rejected by union negotiators - or to end the dispute," he said.
"So the support for action is still rock solid," Mr Kline insisted.
Delegates heard that, during the negotiations last Thursday and Friday, employers had tabled various "inadequate" offers which had been rejected by union negotiators.
These included a two-year settlement of 9 to 11 per cent on the pay scale, which NATFHE national officer Andy Pike stressed would have been worth below 8 per cent in real terms.
Although it was a two-year deal, employers wanted to pay it out over three years - with commitments from union officials that no action would be taken in the third year.
"Bosses claimed that they could not afford anything more, so we asked for an independent financial review of their kitty," Mr Pike explained.
"They refused to meet this demand or put out a fresh offer.
"So the dispute will go on until we are made a satisfactory offer with no strings attached."
In the light of the new development, delegates vowed to stick to their original call for a 23 per cent pay rise over three years.
AUT and NATFHE members have been involved in a series of actions short of strikes for over eight months, including a refusal to mark final university exams.
Executive member Jill Jones moved a motion expressing the union's determination to fight the dispute "to the bitter end."
It was passed unanimously.
"Our members are facing daily threats of pay deductions and lock-outs, but support for continued action is solid," Ms Jones said.
Executive member Mary Davies condemned employers' "unacceptable" demand that union members should give up their right to take action in the third year of a deal.
"And, if they think pay docking will result in us caving in, they should think again.
"We will not be bullied into submission," she added to cheers.
Southern region delegate Michael Jardine hailed the National Union of Students' support for the lecturers' dispute.
"The employers' despicable behaviour is directly to blame for disruption to students' education due to our dispute - not us," he insisted.
"They will not succeed in driving a wedge between us and our students, who fully back our claim."
London delegate Steve Cushion urged members across Britain to join Thursday's demonstration to "reject the employers' pathetic offer through a united, determined, mass action."
The march will assemble at 12.30pm at London South Bank University in Keyworth Street.
Monday May 29, 2006
The Morning Star
OUTRAGE: Education workers protesting outside the ICC in Birmingham, last year.
NATFHE delegates vowed yesterday to step up industrial action to force "greedy hypocrite" employers to make a fair pay offer.
Lecturers, who had hoped that a marathon 23-hour negotiation session with employers last week would produce an offer worthy of a debate at their union's conference, expressed outrage at the employers' refusal to table a deal.
They vowed to march on London on Thursday - the day when NATFHE and sister union AUT merge to form the new UCU - to demand fair pay.
NATFHE head of universities Roger Kline accused bosses of deliberately refusing to make an offer so that delegates could not discuss it at conference.
"But they misjudged the mood of our members, which is to not only maintain but to step up the action," he insisted.
"I have not received one single letter or email from any member asking me to ballot members on the bosses' initial 12.6 per cent three-year offer - which was rejected by union negotiators - or to end the dispute," he said.
"So the support for action is still rock solid," Mr Kline insisted.
Delegates heard that, during the negotiations last Thursday and Friday, employers had tabled various "inadequate" offers which had been rejected by union negotiators.
These included a two-year settlement of 9 to 11 per cent on the pay scale, which NATFHE national officer Andy Pike stressed would have been worth below 8 per cent in real terms.
Although it was a two-year deal, employers wanted to pay it out over three years - with commitments from union officials that no action would be taken in the third year.
"Bosses claimed that they could not afford anything more, so we asked for an independent financial review of their kitty," Mr Pike explained.
"They refused to meet this demand or put out a fresh offer.
"So the dispute will go on until we are made a satisfactory offer with no strings attached."
In the light of the new development, delegates vowed to stick to their original call for a 23 per cent pay rise over three years.
AUT and NATFHE members have been involved in a series of actions short of strikes for over eight months, including a refusal to mark final university exams.
Executive member Jill Jones moved a motion expressing the union's determination to fight the dispute "to the bitter end."
It was passed unanimously.
"Our members are facing daily threats of pay deductions and lock-outs, but support for continued action is solid," Ms Jones said.
Executive member Mary Davies condemned employers' "unacceptable" demand that union members should give up their right to take action in the third year of a deal.
"And, if they think pay docking will result in us caving in, they should think again.
"We will not be bullied into submission," she added to cheers.
Southern region delegate Michael Jardine hailed the National Union of Students' support for the lecturers' dispute.
"The employers' despicable behaviour is directly to blame for disruption to students' education due to our dispute - not us," he insisted.
"They will not succeed in driving a wedge between us and our students, who fully back our claim."
London delegate Steve Cushion urged members across Britain to join Thursday's demonstration to "reject the employers' pathetic offer through a united, determined, mass action."
The march will assemble at 12.30pm at London South Bank University in Keyworth Street.
Against All Odds
Louise Nousratpour
Tuesday March 8, 2005
The Morning Star
In August 1910, European socialist leaders like Clara Zetkin, inspired by the struggles of US women factory workers, officially declared March 8 International Women’s Day to give voice to the most legally and socially oppressed member of society.
Some 70 years later, in the valleys of Zagros mountains in western Iran, Kurdish women walked in their European sisters' footsteps to claim their right to equality. Fawzieh Nousratpour is one such revolutionary, who did her bit to further the cause.
"Friends and family call me Oze - short for Fawzieh," she explains.
Born in Sanandaj, Oze was a secondary school teacher and a member of communist party Komala when the 1979 revolution broke out in Iran. She was 26.
“As a teenager, revolutionaries such as Che Guevara and Soviet novels like Maxim Gorky’s Mother had a profound impact on my view of life. I had a very romantic idea about the guerrilla movement. My hero was Leila Khaled and my dream was to join the ranks of socialists.
“With my first salary as a teacher, I bought a pistol to practice my shooting skills and to get ready to join the resistance movement. A couple of year’s later, revolution swept the country. We had high hopes for the revolution, but all those hopes were brutally crushed when the Ayatollahs ceased power.”
The million-dollar question left over from the 1979 revolution is why did a largely progressive and socialist movement resulted in a reactionary Islamic rule? I ask if Oze would like to give it a try.
“I think decisions made at the Guadeloupe conference in late 1978 - just before the revolution boiled over - played a key part. There ambassadors of the US, Britain and France threw their weight behind Khomaini, who was at the time in exile in Paris and virtually unknown to the majority of people in Iran. The imperialist powers knew that a theocracy would be a serious thorn in the side of the Soviet - more so than the Shah‘s regime ever was.
“Tens of thousands of communists were slaughtered and the revolution was lost,” she sighed, adding: “The US-led imperialists are still playing God in oil-rich Middle East. It seems that the Islamic republic has served its purpose and the US is anxious to remove it, just as it did Saddam. But any such invasion would spill disaster for people in Iran.”
She explains that the Kurdish parts of Iran were the final frontier of the revolution. There was a strong secular and socialist movement, with peshmargas - Kurdish for guerrilla - controlling cities and villages up until late 1983.
Oze volunteered as a teacher in schools set up by Komala in the liberated areas to tackle illiteracy. Later, she joined the undercover unit, shifting illegal documents between the Kurdish province and Tehran.
“I did this for a year. It was an extremely sensitive and dangerous operation. Sometimes I would have to take one of my children with me to appear less suspicious. But in summer 1982, the whole operation was exposed and we were forced to retreat to villages near the boarder.”
Now a primary teacher in Gothenburg, Sweden, Oze recalls that fateful summer when she had to leave her toddlers with her parents and flee her home town for the last time.
At the time, only the men in Komala engaged in military campaigns, she tells me, “But as the number of women peshmargas grew so did the debate about our right to military training. There were a handful of reactionary individuals, who threatened to lay down their guns if we were armed. To which we responded: ‘Good! One less reactionary man and one more gun to arm a revolutionary woman.'," she recalls the tongue-in-cheek comment and laughs heatedly.
She was one of the leading campaigners in calling for equal rights to military training and in autumn 1982, the first women unit was formed. Oze was one of the 13 women chosen from a list of volunteers. After a month of training, they set off on a campaign aimed at raising political awareness among women in the villages.
“It was winter when we first set off. I remember the snow and the piercing cold as we marched from one village to the next, singing military songs and chanting slogans,” she says, gently humming one of those melodies under he breath.
The women peshmargas held meetings in the local Mosques, highlighting women’s right to engage in all aspects of social and family life. They discussed arranged marriage, minimum age for girls to marry, birth control, and other equality issues.
“We were the perfect example of how women could and should join the struggle. That is why our campaign was so effective. We especially inspired the young women, many of whom joined the party.”
Does she remember encountering hostilities from chauvinist and reactionary elements in society as a woman?
“Reactionary tendencies had weakened in the post-revolutionary climate of Kurdistan and such incidents were very rare,” she explains. “A common struggle for freedom and equality had pulled people together and the communist movement had a strong presence in these areas. Peshmargas were revered as heroes and we, as women, were treated no different.”
Why did the left movement was so influential in the Kurdish province?
She argues that the new Islamic regime “failed to gain support in those areas mainly because people there were not religious and a theocracy did not respond to their bread and butter concerns. In the same breath, left prisoners freed from the Shah’s jails during the revolution resumed activities in the liberated areas and successfully rallied people to their cause.
“Peshmargas would hold discussions on atheism and gender inequalities in the local Mosques, yet never once were we thrown out or even branded kafir - Arabic for unbeliever.
“Komala was finally forced out in autumn 1983. I was nearly nine months pregnant with my third child when we were forced to retreat into Iraq - on tractors.”
Looking back at her life as a revolutionary woman, does she have any regrets?
“I have no regrets,” Oze says firmly. “I felt part of a greater movement fighting for the good of everyone and nothing can beat that. I’m disappointed at what is happening in the Kurdish areas today, with reactionary elements being fanned by nationalist groups in the pay of US imperialism.
“I am also angry that even in Sweden - famous for its gender equality achievements- we are still treated as second class citizens. I am not naïve, I know that there can be no equality without socialism, but that does not mean we cannot push the boundaries under capitalism.
“We still need to raise the consciousness of working women and rally them to our cause. This is why it is important to mark International Women's Day and campaign to make it a holiday.
“As the greatest Soviet champion of women’s rights, Alexander Kollonti, said: ‘The requirements of working women are part and parcel of the common workers’ cause’.”
* Oze now resides in Gothenburg with her husband and three children.
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