Solidarity 144, 15 January 2009

In Greece, the fires of December have burned out, the students returned home for the holidays and, for now, the streets are quiet. But the underlying grievances that propelled thousands of youth and striking workers into clashes with the state remain, so 2009 looks set to be another turbulent year. The unrest was sparked by the police shooting of a 15 year old boy, Alexis Grigoropoulos, but rapidly mushroomed into a mass movement behind the slogan “Down with this government of thieves and murderers!” I asked a relative living in Piraeus for his impressions of the major causes of the uprising...

Kate Ahrens has been on the National Executive Council of Unison for two years and is now standing for election again as part of a joint left slate. She represents workers in the union’s health sector and has been in the forefront of the pay battle. Kate is also a Workers’ Liberty member. Solidarity spoke to her about her hopes and plans for the union and the left. S: Can you tell us about your experience on the NEC in the last two years where the left have been in a minority? The current NEC is deeply polarised; plenty of discussions initiated by left NEC members get ignored, dismissed and...

Nominations have closed in the election for general secretary of Amicus/joint general secretary of Unite. The choices are not inspiring: • Incumbent Derek Simpson, who has been a mainstay of support for New Labour, selling out his members and witch-hunting left activists. But Simpson has received only 40 percent of the nominations from branches and workplace reps. • The even more right-wing Kevin Coyne, the current North West Region regional secretary, who is second in terms of nominations. • Laurence Faircloth, the South West regional secretary, who is officially backed by the Unity Gazette...

At the beginning of the year, RMT London Underground Cleaners’ Secretary, Clara Osagiede was disciplined on trumped up charge of gross misconduct by her employer, the contractor, ISS. Another RMT rep, Mary Oboakye was sacked because, while she waited for the tube-train doors to open, she rested her eyes, injured in an industrial accident two days previously — for which she was unable to take more time off work because she would have received no sick pay. This was an attempt to break the power of the cleaners to collectively resist the bosses! Both of these women have been courageous in their...

One of the most startling experiments in physics, in terms of the results it produces, is the “double split” experiment. Many of us will have carried out this experiment in a school laboratory. Click here for part 2 of this article. If you take a light source and direct a narrow beam towards a card with two even narrower slits, the light produces a pattern of interference. The millions and millions of tiny particles of light — photons — interact with one another to produce a potentially bewildering effect. Now, if you have a special source that can produce just one light particle at a time and...

In December a group of students, University workers and local trade unionists gathered outside Balliol college to protest against the poverty wages cleaners, porters and other low paid workers receive there. The demonstration was around a hundred strong in one of the busiest streets in central Oxford and illustrated the unity and strength of our campaign. The college is coming to the end of a review process over implementing a living wage. We don’t place a great deal of hope in Oxford dons solving workers’ issues in the college, which centre not only around wages, but around treatment in the...

As Solidarity went to press, there was speculation the Government would delay its expected 15 January announcement on whether it would allow a third runway at Heathrow, amid mounting opposition from a variety of sources. 12 January saw a many-hundred strong invasion of the airport by climate change activists; the next day Gordon Brown faced opposition in the cabinet and a grilling from the Parliamentary Labour Party. Heathrow expansion would be a disaster from the point of view of stopping dangerous climate change; evidence presented by a wide range of environmental organisations suggests that...

The last two months of 2008 saw a huge wave of struggles in Ireland, with protests by students, pensioners and teachers against attempts by the Irish government to make the working class pay for budget short falls in the current economic crisis. Now the government of Taoiseach (prime minister) Brian Cowen, a coalition of his right-wing Fianna Fail party and the Irish Greens, is proposing €20 billion (£18 billion) in spending cuts, and says that a majority will have to come from cuts in public sector pay. There is speculation about pay cuts of five or even 10 percent. The main opposition party...

National military service, abolished in Britain in 1960, is still compulsory in Israel. From the age of 18, Israeli-Jewish men are legally obliged to serve three years in the Israeli Defense Force, whereas women must serve two. Although it is possible to apply for exemption on religious, physical or psychological grounds — and while Israelis may apply to perform non-combatant roles within the army — there is still a social stigma attached to not becoming a “warrior” and doing your patriotic duty to protect your country. Following this compulsory national service, men up to the age of 45 may be...

Australia may remind you of a lot of other movies – westerns, safari movies, even cartoons, since so much of the characterisation is overblown, even clownish. There are scowling villains, smirking ones, a damsel in distress - Luhrman has thrown just about everything into this long, sprawling saga. It’s set in Australia but it could be happening anywhere, as the setting, Faraway Downs, implies. Its theme is Good versus Evil, the oldest story in the book. It also takes in romance, the Stolen Generations, and the World War II bombing of Darwin by the Japanese. It’s had its detractors. What...