Solidarity 573, 25 November 2020

When in our predecessor paper Workers’ Action (no.117, 1978) Colin Waugh wrote about Marcus Garvey he noted, I think rightly, that Garvey is a figure known now more by reputation than by belief. In the recent Black Lives Matters demonstrations, “Garveyism” as an entire political outlook has certainly been marginal. But “Garveyite” beliefs persist. His legacy is probably more readily accessible to people in the popular consciousness via Roots Reggae and Hip Hop. Garvey led for a short period the largest black organisation of its day, the United Negro Improvement Association And African...

The young Friedrich Engels, born 200 years ago on 28 November 1820, was a troublesome youth for his parents. He persisted in arguing for the rights of the poor, attending meetings of the radical Young Hegelians and contributing to a journal based in the Rhineland edited by an obvious troublemaker called Karl Marx. In 1842 he met Marx for the first time. A deep lifetime friendship would soon evolve. In the same year his exasperated father packed him off to England, to work in the family firm of Ermen and Engels in Manchester, at that time the industrial heart of Victorian Britain. A dose of...

For updates and developments a year on, in 2021, see here . I attended the London Tate workers' demonstration against job cuts on 12 September, and was subjected to vicious and politically shameful abuse by a Stalinist, Dominic Cerasoli (not a Tate worker or PCS member). I have waited a while to publish what happened for various reasons. On the demo as it marched away from Tate Modern along the South Bank, just after midday, I was accosted by someone I didn't recognise at the time who repeatedly called me a “nonce”. He made unambiguous references to children being nearby and me supposedly...

Mike Perkins, a long standing supporter of Solidarity and Workers’ Liberty, died on 9 November aged 88. Mike joined shortly after his retirement from work, some 20 years ago. Through his union, Unison, he was on the trade union education course at Southampton College. Run by a socialist tutor, the course was lively, relevant and political, rooted in the class struggle and related political issues. It was 1997. The Labour Party had won the election, but were led by pink-Tory Blairites who had captured control. These issues were discussed on the course, with a number of members continuing that...

In October, after a long-running struggle by workers at Ukrainian public mining company KZRK, the workers reached an agreement with management. Now the management is seeking to rob the workers of the gains they won by taking a number of key activists to court. The KRZK workers have fought hard, and been at the forefront of a recent flurry of workers’ struggles in Ukraine. The labour movement internationally must help them win. For a detailed report and solidarity, see the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign here .

A new campaign was launched on 14 November, called ZeroCovid . It takes up full isolation pay and public-sector Test and Trace, two of the demands raised by campaigns like Safe and Equal , and it is backed by a number of left-wingers, notably in and around the SWP. Yet its chief demand is a “full” and indefinite lockdown of everything which is not “absolutely essential” until we get to zero or “near-zero” infections. And its second demand is for international travel to be “reduced to an absolute minimum”. As we shall see, that means closing borders. The model for ZeroCovid “working” is New...

The resistance to the Nazis from within the German working class itself is a subject much overlooked in mainstream narratives around World War 2. The typical narrative that most people in Britain will come across is one of a relatively homogenous fascist population (minus Jews, homosexuals, Romanis, disabled people, etc.) that was overcome by the “good guys” of world politics at the time, chiefly Churchill and his plucky band of Brits. So the myth goes. Anti-Nazi Germans by Merilyn Moos offers a compelling left-wing alternative to this narrative. How could militants from the most advanced...

Reports that the Labour Party leadership is moving towards reforming Ofsted and SATs testing in primary schools, rather than scrapping them, as promised in the 2019 election manifesto, should give activists and educationalists cause for alarm. Kate Green, the shadow education secretary, in an interview with Schools Week , has said she wants to lower the stakes in primary testing, but does not commit to scrapping the statutory tests. The statutory tests have nothing to do with improving children’s education. They are about measuring schools and school workers to make a competitive, semi-market...

On 23 November, students at Cambridge University were the latest group to declare they will refuse to pay their rent for their university accommodation until certain demands are met. Cambridge rent strikers join groups at Manchester (who are also occupying a university building) and at Bristol currently not paying rent; other student groups have either pledged to strike in January or are planning to strike if demands are not met (York, Edinburgh, Goldsmiths). Cambridge are demanding: a 30% rent reduction; all students allowed to study remotely should they wish to; no Covid-19 job losses; no...

On Wednesday 25 November, food couriers in Sheffield will carry out an all-day, all-out strike. Their demands, aimed at all food platforms, are for a living wage plus costs, a fair process on terminations from platforms, and a hiring freeze. In recent weeks, many couriers across Uber, Stuart and Deliveroo, have found themselves being terminated with no right of appeal. In many of these cases the reason for the termination is computer error. For example, Uber requires riders to submit selfies during a shift in order to prove that they have not rented out their account to a third party. But Uber...