Solidarity 603, 11 August 2021

On 2 August Israel’s Supreme Court proposed a compromise in the Sheikh Jarrah court case. A Jewish settler group, claiming ownership on pre-1948 authority, seeks to evict Palestinian families from houses in the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem in which they were settled by the Jordanian authorities when Jordan controlled East Jerusalem, before 1967. The judges proposed that the Palestinian families pay a token annual fee to the settler group and in return get permanent and inheritable rights to live in the houses. The settler group demands that the families give signed recognition that...

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has now opened up an attack on the very existence of independent trade unions in Hong Kong. On Saturday 31 July, the main Hong Kong teachers' union, the HKPTU, was accused by the Communist Party and Chinese state media ( People’s Daily and Xinhua) of being a “malignant tumour” that needed to be “eradicated”. A couple of hours later, the Education Department of the Hong Kong government announced it had broken off all relations with the HKPTU, refusing to talk with them – in effect withdrawing recognition. On 10 August, after a series of retreats, the HKPTU...

Dale Street ( Solidarity 601 ) is right to take issue with the entirely uncritical hagiography to newly-elected GMB union general secretary Gary Smith offered by a group of “GMB comrades” in their article of the previous week ( Solidarity 600 ). Reading the comrades’ paean would give readers the impression that Smith was a radical class fighter, if not quite a revolutionary socialist then very near to one, and someone who has dedicated himself to an unambiguous one-man mission to turn the GMB into a militant, class-struggle union. Smith is exactly what Dale Street has, in previous articles...

This year marks the centenary of the partition of Ireland and the creation of the Northern Ireland (NI) state. It comes after a rare period of relative peace in the territory, and Unionists might have hoped that the celebrations could have been less contentious than previously. In fact the stability of both NI and Unionism have been thrown into question by the emerging impact of Brexit. The imposition of a customs border in the sea between Britain and NI, in flat contradiction to explicit promises made by Boris Johnson, has become a flashpoint for loyalist insecurity and anger. Street rioting...

Millions of Americans who loathe Donald Trump are giving up on the chances that he’ll be prosecuted for anything, despite the numerous crimes he committed before, during and after his term in office. The charges of tax fraud against the Trump Organisation for example have so far only ensnared the hired help, with none stuck on Trump himself. Although around 600 of his followers have been charged with participating in what has become known as the 6 January insurrection, its chief instigator remains untouched. If Joe Biden and others were correct in saying that the invasion of the US Congress...

In 1909, as now, right-wing politicians in the USA were pushing new voter-suppression laws; and at that time vast voter suppression was already routine, against African-Americans in the Southern states. The Socialist Party was still weak (2.8% of the poll in the 1908 presidential election), as was the US union movement, but the SP discussed the threatened block to political advance by electoral means as did the much stronger German Social Democratic Party at the same time. This was the contribution ( International Socialist Review , October 1909) by James Connolly, active in the USA between...

Over the longer term, several studies suggest that the biggest factor reducing Covid toll so far has been lower income inequality . In separate studies Annabel Tan and others , and Tim Liao and others have found that for US counties; Carlos Oronce and others and Youyang Gu , for US states; Frank Elgar and others , for countries (among 84 that they studied). There are obviously many other factors: vaccines, of course, and judicious lockdowns and quarantines which can usefully slow (but on all evidence, not end ) Covid spread. Hospitals get less swamped, and, in the meantime, more people get...

“Despite their courage and sacrifice throughout COVID-19, council and school workers have been offered 1.75%. With inflation at 3.9%, that’s a real terms pay cut.” With those words, the public services union Unison is launching a consultation with a strong recommendation to reject. On 27 July the Employers’ Side of the National Joint Council (NJC) wrote to the unions with a final pay offer for 2021. • An increase of 2.75% for those on pay point 1 • An increase of 1.75% for everyone else • Completion of the outstanding work of the joint Term-Time-Only review group • Discussions on joint...

In the run-up to Labour Party conference on 25-29 September, one area where the left (and the Labour right, too) remains split is on the question of Proportional Representation. There has been a major organised push to get PR motions on the conference order paper this year. Some on the Labour left oppose PR on the grounds that it would make the process of getting a Labour government more complicated, and that the whole idea is often packaged with support for a “progressive alliance”, some sort of electoral non-aggression pact between Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP...

The Unite union is balloting its members at the Rolls Royce plant in Barnoldswick for strikes, with the vote due to close on 13 August. A group of 17 engineers at the plant have already launched a new strike from 9 August, following a planned shutdown of the plant. Prior to the shutdown, the engineers had struck for two weeks, concluding on 23 July. The first day of the new round of strikes was marked with a protest at the plant. Workers at the plant previously struck in 2020 against Rolls Royce’s plans to offshore work, thereby cutting jobs. The strikes ended with a settlement including a...