Solidarity 267, 5 December 2012

Help us raise £15,000

Money’s tight for all of us at the moment. Particularly in the holiday season, most working-class people will be counting every penny. If there is any money spare to donate, there’s a lot of pressure to donate it to a more obviously “charitable” cause. That pressure is understandable. No matter how committed you are to socialism, there’s no denying that socialist revolution is a long way off in this country, and that £10 donated to a homelessness charity or a food kitchen has a far greater chance of immediately improving the lives of some of the most downtrodden, alienated, and vulnerable...

To raise wages, cut into profits

Research by accountancy firm KPMG (of all people) has revealed that five million workers in Britain are paid less than a living wage. 24% of workers in Northern Ireland, and 23% in Wales, earn less than a living wage. 90% of bar staff and 85% of restaurant waiting staff earn less than a living wage, as do nearly 800,000 retail workers. As these are the jobs where many young people and working students are able to find work, young workers are overwhelmingly faced with poverty pay. Capitalism needs to keep workers going. If we are too sick to keep turning up to work every day, capitalists can’t...

Councils can block cuts

If Southampton’s new Labour council fails to make cuts as required by the coalition government, then, says Mike Tucker ( Solidarity 266), “commissioners will come in and run the council”, and after that “the Conservatives could come back into power”. Under the Local Government Act 1999 s.15(6), Eric Pickles, as the minister, can personally or through “a person nominated by him” take over “a specified function of the authority” if he is satisfied that the council is failing to make “arrangements to secure continuous improvement in the way in which its functions are exercised, having regard to a...

Fascism is different

Jon D. White of the SPGB is right that socialists should be staunch advocates of freedom of political expression, organisation, and free speech in general — even for our political opponents. We oppose state bans and official “censorship”, even of fascist groups, but why should we be obliged to support publications controlled by our unions (student unions or trade unions) giving fascists publicity through interviews? White’s letter (“Wrong on free speech”, Solidarity 266) misses the point about the unique character of fascism as a political form. Our opposition to giving fascists a political...

Leveson Report: the verdict

With the publication of Lord Justice Leveson’s report, the debate on the behaviour of the British press has shifted focus. The question of whether and to what extent elements of the press abused their power and damaged innocent people is largely settled. The public debate now is centred on whether the Leveson report proposes effective ways of preventing similar abuses happening again. Leveson found that the existing system for addressing press conduct, the Press Complaints Council, is useless and, in practice ignored by the very people who drew up its code of conduct. He proposes a new self...

Learn from this by-election

Labour activists should not be complacent about Labour’s victory in the three by-elections on 29 November. All three were in safe Labour seats. That Labour won when in opposition to a coalition government whose economic strategy is both hurting and not working in its own terms reflects no endorsement on the parachuting-in of candidates or on “one nation” blather. The party with best cause to be pleased was UKIP: second in Rotherham, with 22%, and in Middlesborough, with 12%, and third in Croydon North with 6%. Probably few UKIP voters knew about or specifically voted for such UKIP policies as...

Stop South London health cuts!

The current crisis in South East London’s NHS was caused almost entirely by unsustainable Private Finance Initiative debt held by South London Healthcare Trust. Last summer the government placed SLHT in “Unsustainable Provider Status” (a category invented by Andy Burnham). That allowed axe-wielding bureaucrat Matthew Kershaw to get to work dismantling the whole health economy of South London. Writing the report alone has so far cost the taxpayer £2 million and he has massively extended his remit, using the funding crisis in SLHT to recommend cuts across South London. Whatever happens in South...

Singapore bus strike

Hundreds of migrant Chinese bus workers in Singapore have struck for higher pay. Singaporean authorities have charged four workers with leading an illegal strike. If found guilty, they face imprisonment for up to a year, or a fine of S$2,000, or both. Around 200,000 migrant workers from mainland China work in Singapore, including 450 out of 2,000 drivers at the SMRT bus company. Over 200 workers have so far participated in the strike. Strikes in “essential services” are illegal in Singapore. The country’s last legal strike was in 1986. Mainland Chinese authorities have expressed concern for...

Balls and £10 billion new cuts

George Osborne’s spending review, on 5 December, is due to cut another £10 billion from welfare, by cutting benefits in real terms (i.e. chopping the inflation-linked increases which would otherwise come). He will try to balance this with a “tax-dodging clampdown” which he promises will raise another £10 billion from the rich. That £10 billion, however, will be a matter of promises and hopes, whereas the £10 billion taken from the poorest is clear-cut arithmetic. Despite, or rather because of, all the cuts, the government’s budget deficit is increasing, not decreasing. In January-October 2012...

School cuts

Struggling schools face a new cut of £1 billion, as the Tories attempt to claw back an overspend in its budget for expanding the Academies programme. Academy conversions have accelerated dramatically since the Coalition came to power, with an increase of over 1,000%. A special fund was set up to encourage schools to sever their ties to local authorities and convert to Academies, but due to the overspend, local authority schools are effectively being punished for not converting by having their budgets raided to plug the gap. Education Secretary Michael Gove is a belligerent proponent of the...

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