Solidarity 088, 23 February 2006

by Sofie Buckland, Cambridge University On March 7, members of the lecturers’ unions NATFHE and AUT will strike for one day as the start of an ongoing campaign to demand a decent pay offer from university employers. Both unions will begin a national boycott of assessments, exam and coursework from March 8. The unions are demanding that a third of the new income from top-up fees be used to improve pay, a demand which is supported by non-teaching unions on campus. This amounts to a 23% increase over three years – a very moderate demand when you consider that even Tony Blair admits that lecturers...

According to the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight the British National Party has launched a trade union which they have, unfortunately, chosen to call Solidarity. “The Union for British Workers” was registered with the trade unions Certification Office at the end of last year. If it gets off the ground — and that is a big if — it will of course be a scab union. The stated aims of the “union” is to “improve the relations between employers and employees throughout all industries served by the union”. For years they BNP have got their members to infiltrate existing unions. There have been many...

Eight cleaners working on the Central Line face the sack after travelling to work at a station for which they had not been given tickets. Unlike London Underground staff, cleaners on the Tube do not get provided with free travel across the network by the contractors they work for. They only get travelcards for the zones in which they are supposed to work. In this case, the workers were ordered to go and clean another station, out of their usual zone, but not provided with tickets to get there. When they were “caught” by ticket inspectors and“reported” to their employer, the result was...

Women truck drivers who use the port of Folkestone are celebrating a breakthrough this week in their world-wide “Right to Pee” campaign. Following pressure from the TGWU the Harbour Master at the cross channel port has announced the opening of a women’s toilet. The new facility at the HGV parking area will also be protected for women’s use by a special key system. Local T&G branch secretary Rachael Webb, said the inspiration had come from women bus workers in Bristol who started the campaign with a resolution to the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF). “It comes to something when...

by a TGWU member Supporters of the Broad Left have won a decisive victory in the elections for the executive of the Transport and General Workers Union. The group of right-wingers, Stalinists and careerists centred upon John Aitkin and Barry Camfield has now been firmly defeated, giving the left a majority of 29 to 8 (with 3 not aligned to either group) on the union’s General Executive Council. John Aitkin himself failed in his bid to get back onto the executive, as did his leading supporter Geordie Landles, despite having the support of the Region 1 (London) “machine”. The Marxist Tom Cashman...

by Matthew Thompson, Stockport DWP PCS Branch Secretary (personal capacity) You might think that people claiming benefits would want to be able to speak to someone in a local office about their case. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) however claims that claimants now prefer to deal with call centres and fill out forms online. The drive to centralise benefit processing in a small number of large workplaces stems from the need to cut 30,000 jobs by 2008 as part of Gordon Brown’s plan to reduce the number of civil servants by 100,000. What then has been the response of the Public and...

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty unequivocally supports women’s rights, freedom and equality. Similarly, we unequivocally oppose racism and homophobia.We say no socialism without liberation, no liberation without socialism. Some others on the “left” are not so straightforward. They equivocate on these issues when the oppression comes from “other cultures”. Janine Booth argued against this “cultural relativist” approach in a talk she gave in July 2005. WHEN Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, a Sikh woman, had her play, Behzti (Dishonour) staged, protesters demanded that it be banned on grounds of religious...

A call from the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq To all women’s, progressive, secularist and labour movement organisations Make International Women’s Day on 8 March a day of saying no to Islamic sharia law in Iraq Iraqi women are facing a historic threat. The US/UK occupation has strengthened political Islamist groups, who now constitute a majority in the US-installed parliament and have a dominant position in the new constitution based on ethnic division and the principles of Islamic sharia law. After decades of erosion by Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s secular personal status law has now been...

by john coan BRITISH National Party councillor Angela Clarke has resigned her seat on Bradford council. A by-election has been called for the seat in Keighley West and will be held on 23 March. Clarke has pledged to maintain her presence on Keighley council despite resigning her seat on Bradford Council where she was deputy leader of the BNP group. Clarke's resignation came after a week of confusion where she resigned, and then retracted her resignation saying she had been verbally abused by a fellow BNP member. When news of the row was broken by the Keighley News Clarke sent an e-mail to...

Darren Bedford takes a look at the increasingly audible working-class voice in British music. It’s been a long time since the British music scene has been graced with such a plethora of honest artists singing frankly about working-class life, cutting through the glam-bullshit of most American indie rock and certainly through the musically unadventurous monotonous garbage that is most British pop music. I say “plethora”, but we’re really only talking about a few bands here. It’s good listening nonetheless. One such band is Staines’ Hard-Fi, whose debut album Stars of CCTV was a smash hit and...