Social and Economic Policy

Dave Osland ( Solidarity 390) is right that Jeremy Corbyn’s and John McDonnell’s opposition to austerity is to be welcomed, and opens many more exit doors from the Thatcher-Blair-Brown-Cameron neo-liberal consensus than anything previously-established powers of the Labour Party had come up with for decades. He is also right that Corbynomics is far from “Leninism”, “all power to the Soviets”, or even “socialism in the strict sense of the term, namely the dominance of social ownership of the means of production”. However, he indicates that this remoteness from socialism proper, this closeness...

Most of us mere mortals only have to deal with the Land Registry on the rare occasion we are buying or selling a house (and given current house prices we can dream on). But supposing you have a house and for whatever reason you needed to find who owns the land your house stands on, or the open land, wasteland or coppice at the back of your house? Easy (or rather, c’est facile). You go to the local Mayor’s office and he or she will get out a huge book of maps which show all the land ownership (its fancy name is a cadastre) in your local area. Even better — you won’t be charged for this, the...

Someone (possibly Stalin) once said “When one man dies, it’s a tragedy. When a million die, it’s a statistic.” But, to Professor Sir Michael Marmot, a million deaths is not just a statistic. A million people have died prematurely in just the last five years in Britain, according to the renowned epidemiologist Michael Marmot, author of The Health Gap, who has spent a lifetime trying to counteract such cynicism. For him, the deaths of millions worldwide from same cause, inequality, are millions of tragedies which could and should be prevented. Marmot was a medical student in the 60s when he...

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will set out the Government's tax and spending plans when he delivers the annual Autumn Statement to the House of Commons on 25 November. As well as outlining how the Government intends to meet its target of cutting an extra £20 billion from public spending by 2019-20, the equivalent of Departmental budgets falling by between twenty-five and forty per cent over the next five years, Osborne is also expected to list ways in which the Treasury will look to minimise the impact of the £4.4 billion in cuts to tax credits paid to low-paid and part-time...

Over recent months Jeremy Corbyn, now Labour Party leader, and John McDonnell, now Shadow Chancellor, have made four major statements on economic policy. Corbyn issued a document, The Economy in 2020, on 22 July, as part of his Labour leader campaign. McDonnell spoke at Labour Party conference on 29 September, and wrote articles for the Guardian website on 12 August and 12 May. They are a step forward from what we had from Ed Miliband, let alone what we had from Gordon Brown or Tony Blair. McDonnell and Corbyn commit clearly to restoring union rights and to renationalising rail. They advocate...

I agree with the main points made by all contributors in the discussion on gentrification ( Solidarity 378, 379, 381, and 382). I particularly endorse the condemnation of the vandalism inflicted on the “Cereal Killer” cafe. The futility and stupidity of this “action” by a bunch of apolitical louts masquerading as anarchists reminded me of the equally futile and pointless spate of cottage-burning by a small group of Welsh nationalists calling themselves the “Sons of Glyndwr” back in the 80s. Their targets were second homes bought by English people. This campaign of arson, which went on for a...

It is alarming and deeply disturbing to see that some people, many of whom should know better, have swallowed George “high-vis” Osborne’s fantasy-speak about building a “Northern Powerhouse”. This is more amazing when you consider that ever since the Industrial Revolution there has always been a “Northern Powerhouse”, and it was the Conservative Party and Thatcher that destroyed it. Without the coal, iron and steel, shipbuilding, engineering and textiles of northern cities like Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and Newcastle (to which Scotland and South Wales must also be added), Britain...

The capitalist housing market predominantly separates “nice” areas from “rough” areas. In the “nice” areas, people pay higher prices; bigger and posher houses and better shops and amenities and transport facilities are built. In the “rough” areas, only cheap and poor-quality housing is built; shops, amenities, and transport remain poor. The social divide, once established, tends to grow. But the market has cross-currents. Inner cities combine bits where rich people afford high prices to be near to city-centre facilities, and nearby bits where poor people can’t afford not to pay for cramped and...

Chancellor George Osborne looks set to go ahead with cuts to tax credits which will see the income of low-paid workers drop by an average of £1,300 next April, despite opposition from Tory backbenchers and voters such as the woman who confronted a Government minister over the issue on BBC TV's Question Time. The changes to tax credits would save around £4.4 billion, or just over a third of the £12 billion the Treasury is seeking to cut from the welfare budget. Tory backbench opposition to the cuts stems from electoral calculations by MP's in marginal seats (it is significant that the measure...

The attack by Class War on the Cereal Killer shop in Shoreditch has been rightly condemned as self-indulgent, misguided and ineffective in articles by Gemma Short and Martin Thomas in Solidarity . Martin has gone further by writing — under the heading “The enemy is capital!” — to give a generally favourable view of gentrification in its impact on working-class communities in London. Where it causes their displacement, it can be resisted, he glibly asserts. Some of the effects of the movement of better off people into an area can indeed be positive. But alongside these there are necessarily...