Solidarity 481, 10 October 2018

Falling off a pensions cliff

Protests are growing among women now in their early 60s who find their state pension age receding fast as they get older. Although Britain’s first old age pensions, from 1908, were payable only over 70 years old, for many decades after Labour’s welfare-state reforms from 1945 the pension age seemed fixed at 65 for men and 60 for women. With more working-class people living longer, the Thatcher and Major Tory governments started the axe. From 1995 the law was changed. Blair and Brown let the Tory changes proceed, and then in 2011 Cameron made them markedly worse. In the supposed name of...

Fight for £10 and union rights!

Workers from McDonalds, Wetherspoons and TGI Fridays all took part in an international co-ordinated day of action for £10 per hour and union rights on Thursday 4 October. In London they were joined by Deliveroo and Uber Eats riders, and supporters from across the labour movement. At their rally and demonstration in Leicester Square they were joined by traffic wardens in Camden Unison, who are also currently on strike for a £11.15 an hour. Solidarity action took place in cities across the UK. The first Wetherspoons strike was also coordinated from two sites in Brighton. Around 250 people made...

Student news: reading groups and strike ballots

Workers’ Liberty students have been busy running stalls at Freshers Fairs across the country in the last month. We are organising campus meetings on left antisemitism as well as weekly reading groups, some on our new book In Defence of Bolshevism. Alongside other student activists who attended last month’s Student Activist Weekender, we are busy campaigning for a yes vote in the UCU pay ballot. Email us if you’d like a copy of the National Student Left Bulletin, produced by attendees of the Student Activist Weekender. On November 17-18, student activists from across the country will come...

Immigration after Brexit

A long-awaited government White Paper on plans for post-Brexit immigration law, to be published this autumn, was heavily trailed during Tory Party conference. If the Tories have their way, it will be far from business as usual on travel and immigration between the UK, Europe and the rest of the world after January 2021. New laws would establish a single immigration system. Migrants from the EU will be treated in the exact same way as non-EU migrants. The system will favour so-called high-skills migrants, from wherever they come from in the world. The government has indicated that it will scrap...

The Daily Mail of the left

[The French daily] Le Monde recently published a long article on what they call the “anti-immigrant/anti-migrant” left”: a “left” in favour of national sovereignty and closing borders. The French daily cites the German Aufstehen movement of Sahra Wagenknecht, the “ambiguities” of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, and Danish Labour and ‘populist’ left forces. Lo and behold the Morning Star, Britain’s leading organ of the pro-Brexit left, has just published this (in the Saturday/Sunday print edition): Title: “Time to get tough with the EU and our own anti-democrats”. Blurb: “The benefits...

Uniting Jewish and Arab workers in Israel/Palestine

Yacov Ben Efrat and Assaf Adiv are leading members of the Organisation for Democratic Action (ODA-Da’am), a socialist organisation active in Israel, which produces the magazine Challenge . They are also founder members of the Workers’ Advice Centre (WAC-Ma’an), a trade union centre which organises both Jewish and Arab workers, including Palestinian workers in the occupied territories. They corresponded with Daniel Randall of Workers’ Liberty about the class struggle in Israel/Palestine. The interview was facilitated by Roni Ben Efrat of ODA. For more information on ODA, visit their Facebook...

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