Solidarity 497, 27 February 2019

Honda: don’t mention Brexit!

Rumours that Honda was about to announce the closure of its Swindon plant, with a loss of 3,500 jobs (up to 10,000, including the supply chain), began circulating on Monday 18 February. The next day it was all over the front pages of the serious bourgeois press. Strangely, though, Britain’s self-styled socialist daily, with close links to the trade unions, the Morning Star, didn’t put the news on its front page. Tuesday’s Morning Star (19 February) carried one short piece, tucked away on an inside page and quoting the local Tory MP Justin Tomlinson saying the closure decision is “based on...

Bolshevism, the civil war, and after

Review of In Defence of Bolshevism, £12 including UK postage. Purchase here. Mass socialist parties, trade unions, workers councils and organs of struggle are places for debate, discussion, deliberation and opposition, where, ideally, everything is openly evaluated. Their functionality requires constituencies free to transmit their will to the administrators of power, not only within these organisations themselves but also to the broader institutions and arenas in which they participate. The organisation is where members safeguard themselves by providing for the recall of those who fail to...

Richard Wright and Stalinism

Richard Wright, the American author of the novels Native Son and Black Boy, was born on a plantation in Roxie, near Natchez, Mississippi in 1908. He died of a heart attack in Paris, in 1960, aged 52. For a while, especially in the early 1940s, he was an enormously prominent and important leftwing author. Native Son was a ground-breaking book with a young Black hoodlum, Bigger Thomas, as its anti-hero. It was criticised by some activists at the time for not presenting a positive view of Black people. Indeed, Native Son is a gruelling read. Wright wanted to present Thomas, who murders two women...

Labour's antisemitism crisis: an open letter to Jeremy Corbyn

More debate on the Right of Return here . Dear comrade Corbyn, How has the crisis that grips the new, new Labour Party on antisemitism come about? How has it come to be the major scandal it is now? Yes, the charge of antisemitism is now a weapon of the Tories, the Labour right, and the media against the Labour Party. The question that matters, though, is: are they right about it? Right about the essentials, not this or that incident or extrapolation? If the charge is true, than it overshadows everything else. Antisemitism is not just a little political blemish. It poisons and warps and rots...

Labour revolt in Birmingham

Backbench Labour councillors in Birmingham have condemned their own leaders in a letter demanding that the council leaders “step back” from confrontation with two unions. The protesting councillors include several senior figures such as former council leader Albert Bore. The letter adds to pressure on present council leader Ian Ward and his deputy Brigid Jones. Three days previously, the Regional Labour Party Board voted overwhelmingly in favour of a motion calling for Labour’s National Executive to investigate their conduct of the council leaders' continuing disputes with Unite and Unison...

Industrial officials are never wrong?

“We, the lay members of PULS, stand in solidarity with our left officers and organisers. We know they will always do the right thing.” So says a recent open letter recently from “Progressive United Left Scotland” (PULS), a faction in Unite the Union launched in 2016 because of the supposed demise of the existing United Left Scotland (ULS). PULS purports to be an organisation committed to a lay member-led trade union. But if the bureaucrats are always right, who needs the rank-and-file? Although signed off by the PULS chair, the letter is in the characteristic style of Mark Lyon, who set up...

Industrial news in brief

Outsourced workers from four trade unions united for a day of action on Tuesday 26 February. Members of the IWGB at University of London, UVW at the Ministry of Justice, and PCS at the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy all struck to demand better pay and conditions, and direct employment. RMT London Transport Regional Council, which organises outsourced workers on London Underground, also supported the demonstration. Guards' jobs: nail down the deal! The breakthrough in the big railworkers’ dispute to save train guards’ jobs is a cause for celebration, but some caution...

Deliveroo anger grows

On Saturday 23 February, while working as a Deliveroo meal courier, I came across the scene of an appalling crash between one of my colleagues and a car, a few minutes after it had happened. The Deliveroo courier′s motorbike looked pretty smashed up, and the rider was lying at least five metres further down the road, possibly with broken legs and a head injury. There were many people helping, and the ambulance arrived soon, so I didn′t stick around long and don′t know the eventual outcome. I think everyone probably lived. The crash really brought home how vulnerable we, as couriers, can be...

Stop the Immigration Bill Day of action 1 March

The Tories’ Brexit Immigration Bill is set to exclude workers from the EU unless they have a job in advance at over £30,000, or come for a specific job only for twelve months. In the second case, workers will be banned from reapplying until another year has passed. In other words, obstacles will be built to those migrant workers settling, integrating, and organising in the labour movement. This Brexit Bill is an anti-migrant charter, and a cheap labour, union-busting charter. Despite all the conflicts over the Brexit deal, there is almost no Tory revolt over this Immigration Bill. And, last...

Student left will meet 2-3 March

The Student Left Network’s first national conference will take place on 2-3 March at Sheffield Hallam University. Left wing students from campuses across the country are getting together to decide how we can link up and spread our campaigns, where we should take the student movement next, share experiences and skills and debate political ideas. Workshops will include • how to organise student-worker solidarity campaigns, led by University of the Arts London Justice for Workers’ campaign • Brexit and freedom of movement with Student Left Network’s NUS Presidential candidate Justine Canady and...

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