Solidarity 082, 20 October 2005

Sally Murdock reviews Serenity Serenity is set 500 years in the future. A brutal military totalitarian force called the Alliance has taken control of the universe. Captain Malcom Reynolds and his crew of fellow free thinkers on the Firefly class ship Serenity are renegades in this new order. With Serenity, director Josh Whedon (Buffy) has made a film version of his relatively unpopular but in my view outstanding cult TV sci-fi series called Firefly. That series was an unusual amalgamation of sci-fi and western genres. It employed stunningly different visual backgrounds, mixing unpretentious...

A national campaign has been launched against City Academy schools. These are (usually new) schools which are, in return for minimal financial sponsorship are managed entirely by businesses or religious groups outside of any local community control. The campaign wants to press the TUC, the NUT and other teaching unions to launch a national conference and demo as agreed at last month’s TUC conference. Contact the campaign via Birmingham NUT at banut@btclick.com The Abortion Rights Campaign is organising a meeting on “Defend a woman’s right to choose!” on Wednesday 26 October, 7-9pm, Committee...

GMB Shout is the LGBT group set up by activists in the GMB. It meets in London and organises around GMB equalities events. There’s no formal recognition by the GMB. GMB Shout! now has a confidential helpline. The number is 020 7801 2780. This has been set up for LGBT GMB members so you can leave messages, for any number of reasons. For example, it could be used as a first point of contact for a new network member. Or, if you are unable to attend meetings, then you could provide us with your views and ideas on agenda items, or you could suggest venues for our events or ideas for future...

On Saturday 22 October in London, and 29 October in Leeds, members, sympathisers, and friends of the AWL are meeting for the second in our new series of monthly day schools. We decided on these day schools at our conference in May this year, as a way to increase the collective intellectual and political life of the AWL — and thereby make us more effective in that part of our activity which is, necessarily, made up of what AWLers do as individuals or very small groups in their workplaces, trade union branches, colleges, and neighbourhoods. The first one was on "Marxists and the trade unions"...

By Mike Rowley Thames Valley Strategic Health Authority plan to use Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust as a pilot project for private management in the NHS. If NHS management are successful here there will be one county-wide PCT, run by the private sector. Other Heath Authorities (and the Government) will be looking to do the same elsewhere in the country. Plans to privatise services provided by the PCTs by 2008 were announced by the government in July. Among the bidders in Oxfordshire are Group Four (who used to run nearby Campsfield immigration prison!) and United Health Care (a US firm). The...

The export of cotton from the US South was a major factor in the growth of British industry during the 19th century. The blockade of Southern ports by the Union navy resulted in a major crisis. By July 1862, Britain’s supply of raw cotton stood at one third of the normal level. Three quarters of British cotton-mill workers were unemployed or on short time. For this reason, and because of their general hostility to democratic ideas, the British ruling class leaned heavily towards the Confederacy. Leading members of Palmerston’s Whig government, including Chancellor of the Exchequer and future...

By Sacha Ismail In my first article, I described how the bourgeoisie of the Northern United States formed a coalition with other social layers to defeat a pro-slavery rebellion and destroy slavery in the US South. This article looks at the US working class during that period. The making of the American working class It was only when the Napoleonic Wars and the Anglo-American war of 1812-15 cut off the import of manufactured goods from Europe that the US’s industrial revolution really began. US factories lacked the reservoir of cheap labour, made up of dispossessed peasants and ruined...

By Daniel Randall (NUS National Executive, personal capacity) In my last column I wrote about the need for students to unite with workers on their campuses to fight back against attacks they both face. But student-worker unity cannot stop here. It must extend beyond the boundaries of our campuses and into wider struggles in society. After some procrastination (including one National Executive meeting that lasted six hours but failed to discuss a single motion), the NUS finally — at the beginning of October and two months into the dispute — came out in support of the Gate Gourmet workers. When...