Solidarity 137, 21 August 2008

Against the "National Challenge"!/ Abolish SATS

Against the “National Challenge” The National Challenge scheme, launched in June 2008, is supposed to push up school standards. Schools have been threatened with being forced to convert into Academies, and could face the loss of specialist status and the removal of funding. The 638 National Challenge schools were selected on the basis that fewer than 30 per cent of their students have achieved five or more A*-C grade GCSEs, including English and maths. Now, according to the Times Educational Supplement, “300 extra schools can expect to be subject to special scrutiny under an extension of the...

Shanghai: all that glisters

The contemporary urban landscape of Shanghai very much reflects China’s opening up policy since the 1980s. Glistening skyscrapers are juxtaposed with disappearing, working class residential districts. Moreover, yet more skyscrapers are being erected (at ever-higher levels to send an explicit, skyline message of capital’s might) by impoverished migrant workers using the most basic tools familiar to early twentieth century Britain. Extreme wealth alongside extreme poverty sums up Shanghai. But unlike the major cities of India, for example, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) successfully manages...

Workers plan walk-outs against anti-union law

Noel Washington, Senior Vice-President in Victoria of Australia’s big Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) faces six months prison for refusing to talk to industrial police about what happened at a union meeting outside work hours. His court date will be announced in a preliminary hearing on 12 September 2008. Under legislation passed by the conservative coalition government of John Howard which was in office in Australia until last year, the ABCC, a special police force for the construction industry, has powers in industrial matters exceeding what the ordinary police have...

Stop scapegoating Roma!

Four months after a decisive election victory, Italy’s right-wing government has pushed through a series of racist anti-immigrant measures. The decision to fingerprint Roma people has attracted the greatest international condemnation, but the law-and-order crackdown goes much further. Illegal immigration is now punishable by up to four years in jail, and army patrols have been deployed on city streets. For many years Italy was a country from which people emigrated. Unlike, say, the UK or France it did not experience a substantial immigration in the second half of the twentieth century. Only...

Mobilise for solidarity conference in Iraq!

The “First International Labour Conference in Iraq”, called by a range of Iraqi trade-union organisations for February 2009 in Erbil (in Kurdish northern Iraq), has won support from Australian and US union organisations. The Teachers’ Federation, the Fire Brigades Union, and the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union in New South Wales have all agreed to donate to the cost of the conference and to consider the possibility of sending delegates. Australia-Asia Worker Links, an influential and active union-sponsored body based in Melbourne, has also agreed to back the conference...

No deportations to Iraq!

On 9 August thirteen refugees from Iraqi Kurdistan began a hunger strike at Campsfield detention centre with this statement: "[The British state is] trying to deport us to the most dangerous country in the world. We want people to listen to us. It is better to be dead than to return to Iraq." The protesters were then joined by 50 – 60 other detainees, all demanding refugee status. The hunger strikers were further angered by the news that Hussein Ali had committed suicide on Sunday 10 August after being deported from the UK to Kurdistan. The strike has since been called off, but supporters plan...

Israeli appeal against attack on Iran

A group of around one hundred Israeli academics and peace activists have initiated an appeal against military action by Israel against Iran. This the text of the appeal: There is no military, political or moral justification to initiate war with Iran A constant flow of information bears witness to the fact that the Israeli government is seriously considering attacking Iran, in order to disrupt its nuclear plans. We do not disregard irresponsible actions by the Iranian government — we also oppose atomic weapons in principle and support the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction from the...

Fighting the BNP: Building From the Grass Roots

Interview with an Anti-BNP Organiser Q: How did the Nottingham group come together? A: Anti-fascist work in Nottingham had dwindled to near nothing up to a couple of years ago. A number of meetings were called after the BNP's electoral successes in Barking and Dagenham in 2006. These meetings attracted up to 25 people from most left groups, even the SWP at that stage, as well as some anarchists from or around Nottingham University. Most meetings were spent with the majority arguing with the SWP over how to counter the BNP. In July 2006 it was decided that the campaign would be a working-class...

The SWP and Fighting Fascism: When Brick Lane was Left to the Fascists

The mid-to-late 1970s were something of a high point for organised fascists. The National Front could mobilise thousands of members for confrontational demonstrations. Their street stalls and paper sales littered the pavement, Their outspoken racism attracted sympathy, if not outright support. Violence, provocation and intimidation were the order of the day. It was a time when the fascists must have entertained the notion that they were going places. Maybe soon a desperate and ramshackle ruling class would employ them to throw the final blows against a militant labour movement. It would give...

Combatting the BNP: The fight for unity

The 16 August demonstration against the BNP’s “Red, White and Blue" Festival was an important and politically instructive event. Important because it marked a departure from what has passed for anti-fascism over the last ten years. Instructive because it revealed the severe limitations and sectarian lunacy of the Socialist Workers Party and their “Unite Against Fascism” front group. Anti-fascists inside the labour movement and elsewhere need to take a good look at what happened in the months preceding the demonstration and on the day itself. We should examine the work done by local campaigners...

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