Solidarity 363, 6 May 2015

Election silence on climate change

Almost all the main parties say they think climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humanity and that something must be done about it. Yet in the election television debates climate change was largely ignored by politicians of all stripes, never mind by media hacks and commentators. There are real differences on the issue, given edge by the run up to the Paris climate talks in December. The Tories boast in their manifesto that theirs has been “the greenest government ever”, which would be laughable if the issue were less important. Blue and yellow have not made green over the last...

Fighting union busting

Trade unionists have known for decades that employers operated blacklists, whereby records were kept on militants and activists (and, indeed, not particularly militant or active trade unionists) in order to exclude them from employment. The practice was especially rife in the construction industry, where simply raising a concern over health and safety could be enough to ensure that you never found work. Countless working class lives were destroyed by the blacklist. For many years a central blacklist was managed, operated and sold to major employers by an outfit called the Economic League...

Five years too many!

The writers of the Bible talk of seven years of plenty, followed by seven of famine; those of the Quran, of those 14 years and a 15th of plenty. For both books it is the story of a fate which people can only endure, not change. The five lean years since 2010 were made not by an unalterable god, but by the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, serving the super-rich for whom those have been five fat years. The wealth of the 1,000 richest households has more than doubled since 2009. The lean and the fat were made by human action. Human action will decide whether the next five are hungry again for...

Is Tower Hamlets really an Establishment conspiracy?

None of the socialist organisations politically defending ousted Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman seriously analyse the judgement made against him by election commissioner Richard Mawrey. None mention George Galloway previously hailing a judgement by Mawrey (against the Labour Party and in favour of Galloway’s Respect) in 2007 — in a speech republished in full on the Socialist Worker website! Socialists have no confidence in bourgeois judges, but the idea that Mawrey is a ruling-class assassin or bug-eyed Islamophobe is absurd. The pro-Rahman left's main argument is that he is the victim of a...

Left calls on Syriza to defy ECB and IMF

According to Stathis Kouvelakis, a left-wing member of Syriza’s central committee, writing on 3 May: “The latest from the negotiations between Greece and the Eurogroup in Brussels is that breakdown seems quite close. “The IMF is in the frontline, asking for further deregulation of the labour market and opposing the government’s plan to reestablish collective bargaining. According to the usually well-informed right-wing paper Kathimerini the demands of the IMF also include further cuts in pensions and oppose any raising of the minimum wage.” Yet the Syriza-led government is rapidly approaching...

NUM connects with Ukrainian miners

Britain’s National Union of Mineworkers has recently sent two delegations to meet miner trade unionists in Ukraine. One was to an all-Ukraine miners’ union congress in Kyiv on 21 April, the other to a meeting with West Donbas union leaders on 28 March. The Ukraine Solidarity Campaign here comments that this sets “an example to our trade union movement in providing real solidarity with our brothers and sisters of the Ukrainian labour movement”. NUM secretary Chris Kitchen has written to the TUC: “As the TUC will be reporting on developments in Ukraine I wish to set out the position of the NUM....

A minority Labour government? Yes, but with left policies

Probably neither Tories nor Labour will have a clear majority after 7 May. The new administration will be either a coalition, or a minority government dependent on deals with other parties. Constitutionally, David Cameron remains prime minister until a new government is formed, however badly he does on 7 May. Coalitions and minority governments have been common in British political history, and are the rule rather than the exception in many countries. The difference this time is that the jockeying for position after election day may be long. Tory leader David Cameron centres his case against...

Universities: a special boom

In 2010, when the Tory government reduced universities’ direct funding and replaced it with a licence to charge students £9,000 fees, it looked like that move might bring cuts in universities. In fact universities are about the only area of apparently public endeavour to have had a boom — of a special sort. The Financial Times (17 April) reports: “Across London, from the Olympic Park in the east to White City in the west, universities are breaking new ground... [with] campus extensions, building projects and acquisitions already worth a combined total of more than £4 billion”. It is not just...

How are students going to vote on 7 May?

In 2010, most students voted Lib Dem, right? A survey of student voters by a graduate research company suggests otherwise. In fact it contains a number of surprises. The research by “High Fliers” into student voting has definite limitations in terms of getting a complete picture. They polled 13,000 students, but only at the thirty poshest universities, and only final year students. How exactly these two things, particularly the second one, would affect the results is not obvious. These universities are, however, where most left-wing student activism and organised discussion takes place. In...

Reverse disability benefit cuts

In the run-up to this week’s General Election, the Tories have consistently failed to answer questions as to where exactly they intend to cut the welfare budget in order to hit their target of reducing it by £12 billion in the first two years of the next Parliament. One of the areas in which cuts are already being made is benefits for sick and disabled people. Incapacity Benefit has already been replaced with Employment and Support Allowance – an even tougher regime than IB for those unable to work because of a health condition with testing administered by private sector providers – and now in...

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