Solidarity 586, 24 March 2021

Siyanda Mngaza appeal opens

Siyanda Mngaza’s hearing in the Court of Appeal opens on 23 March. In May 2019 Siyanda, on a bank holiday outing in the Brecon Beacons, was attacked by three people. Defending herself with a glass in her hand, she cut one of the attackers. She was convicted of “Grievous Bodily Harm” in March 2020, and is now serving a jail sentence of four and a half years. The third and last online meeting of a “Free Siyanda tour” will be on Saturday 27 March, 4-6 pm here .

Fighting council cuts in Nottingham

Labour-run Nottingham City Council have voted to make £15.6m cuts this year, leading to 272 job cuts, 5% of the workforce. They also want to raise council tax by nearly 5%, and are dipping into reserves to balance their budget. But they face resistance from council unions and determined pockets of the community to the proposed cuts, particularly their proposal to close John Carroll Leisure Centre in Radford, one of the most deprived parts of the city. Before the vote was taken, Nottingham City Unison set the proposals in the context of recent history: "£271m in budget savings since 2010 has...

Turkey moves to ban HDP

Procedures to ban the People’s Democracy Party (HDP) in Turkey are now moving quickly. At the beginning of March, the Court of Cassation (Turkey’s highest court of appeals) began an inquiry into the HDP, focusing on the actions of HDP parliamentary deputies during the 2014 protests against ISIS’s [Daesh's] siege of Kobanî. Then, on 17 March, the Chief Public Prosecutor submitted an indictment against the HDP, calling for the party to be banned and for 687 HDP politicians to be banned from public office. The government has accused the HDP of acting in concert with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party...

Further cuts in SEND provision

Many councils across the country — the National Audit Office estimates over two dozen — are negotiating with the government for bailouts to make it possible to balance their 2021-22 budgets. Cuts in school special needs and disabilities (SEND) spending are among those demanded “in return” by at least five councils. Details for Bury, Hammersmith and Fulham, Kingston upon Thames, Richmond-upon Thames and Stoke on Trent have been published on the Department for Education website and reported by Schools Week . Some councils now promise to meet special needs in a “more cost-effective way within...

Australian women march for justice

Around 100,000 joined March4Justice around Australia, in capital cities and regional towns, on Monday 15 March. Angry opposition to rape, sexual violence and cover-ups has erupted since the exposure of two high profile rape cases involving the national parliament. In the first case, former staffer Brittany Higgins gave a TV interview on 15 February, alleging that in 2018 she had been raped her in the office of her boss, Minister for Defence Linda Reynolds, by another staffer, and then was undermined when she reported it. Friends of a woman who suicided during Covid lockdown in 2020, wrote to...

Letter: Anti-monopoly doesn't mean backing small capitalists

I am struggling to understand what points Jim Denham was trying to make in his article 'Return of the Anti Monopoly Alliance' ( Solidarity 581 ). I am not a spokesperson for the Communist Party of Britain but I am in favour of left and socialist unity and believe this can only happen if we are open and honest with each others’ respective political positions and not construct straw windmills. Jim claims the concept of the Anti Monopoly Alliance is making “more frequent reappearances” in his favourite daily newspaper, the Morning Star . Actually, it never went away. The “anti monopoly” nature of...

Letter: Not so much vipers

Emma Rickman’s column, Diary of an Engineer, gives us a window into the male dominated workplace. And in her latest entry, 'A Nest of Vipers' ( Solidarity 585 ), she gives us a window into the minds of the men who work there. Such a workplace as depicted here, and there are many of them, is a safe space for those men who are threatened by world events to air their prejudices. It is a place to exaggerate, moan, entertain their mates and laugh in the face of their own weakness. You know, reading Emma’s column, that S did not tell his wife to “fuck off” in bed. He’s an idiot for bragging to his...

Activist agenda: Momentum's "policy primary"

From 24 to 31 March, Momentum is holding a “policy primary” — an all-members’ vote-out, by single transferable vote [vote here ], to decide what motions Momentum sends to Labour Party conference. Workers’ Liberty are supporting Momentum Internationalists’ recommendations: • The Build Back Fairer motion on social measures to restore working-class health and safety, rights at work, and living standards, in the pandemic and as it fades, passed by North East Momentum, Stevenage Momentum and Southampton Momentum • The motion from the Uyghur Solidarity Campaign on ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang/East...

"We need to develop workers' capacities"

Henry Chango Lopez (pictured above, centre, before the pandemic) is the new General Secretary of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB). He spoke to Sacha Ismail. In recent years the IWGB has had a high profile in part because it’s grown quite a lot when trade unions in general have stagnated. Why is that? It’s really just about the situation of workers at the moment, the way the economy is, outsourcing, precarious employment – these are problems that many unions have not tackled. Unions do not effectively organise workers in these situations. The problem is so wide...

Agriculture and climate: it's all about the soil

The debate in the pages of Solidarity [on animal products and climate change, here ] is, in my opinion, of profound importance. Not because of the influence of this paper but because it mirrors larger debates going on in the “climate change community”, and, more importantly in the agricultural communities. The intertwining of both the devastating effects of climate change and food security are obviously closely linked. For Marxists, it also raises the issue of what can be achieved under capitalism and what has to be put off until after a planetary seizure of power by the working class and true...

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