Solidarity 158, 10 September 2009

Who will win green socialism: workers, or a vague alliance?

Paul Hampton reviews “The global fight for climate justice” (ed. Ian Angus) I knew this book was going to be a mish-mash after Derek Wall wrote in his foreword that he was pleased it included a contribution from Hugo Blanco, “who was one of Che Guevara’s contemporaries”. Blanco led a peasant uprising in 1961 as a Trotskyist. Guevara was at the time a leading member of a government that was locking up Trotskyists. Perhaps Wall missed Guevara’s comment, made in December 1964: “The Trotskyists have contributed nothing to the revolutionary movement and where they did most, which was in Peru, they...

Oppose racism with workers’ unity!

The exact relationship between the fascist far right and the “anti-Muslim” English Defence League is unclear. The EDL claim, implausibly, they are not racists. Perhaps there are direct links between the EDL and the increasingly visible and self-confident British National Party, perhaps the relationship is a little fuzzier. What is clear, however, is that — de facto — a division of labour has emerged between the “respectable” face of political fascism, the BNP, which leads on anti-Muslim hatred, and the street provocations and violence of the EDL. And the EDL are stepping up their activity...

TUC: what kind of anti-fascism?

This year’s TUC has a spate of motions on the BNP. The last time the annual conference of the TUC passed a resolution dealing with racism and fascism was 2005. Then it was still possible to formulate a vague resolution condemning the BNP’s racism, labelling them as fascists and urging for “more to be done”. It was possible — but not at all accurate — to talk about the BNP as an isolated entity. It was possible to avoid specifics, for all sections of the labour movement to unite around well meaning verbiage. This is no longer the case. A succession of electoral gains by the BNP cannot be...

Is Ryanair the Tory model for councils?

Barnet trade unionists got a nasty shock on the morning of Friday 28 August, finding our borough was front page news in the Guardian newspaper: “Tories adopt budget airline service model — London borough’s radical no-frills approach could drive Cameron policy”. The reason it was a shock was because we felt we were successfully heading off the Tory administration’s mass privatisation plan, “Future Shape”. Future Shape was floated initially as a grandiose scheme that would see the council reduced to a “strategic hub”, while the vast bulk of services would be outsourced as part of a pan-public...

As we were saying: Megrahi, Lockerbie and British capital's love affair with Libya (2009)

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is the Libyan man convicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, in which 270 people died. The Scottish government's decision to return him to his home country on compassionate grounds (he has terminal prostate cancer) has generated a lot of noise on both sides of the Scottish border and both sides of the Atlantic. The FBI has condemned Megrahi's release, telling Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill: “Your action in releasing Megrahi makes a mockery of the rule of law. Your action gives comfort to terrorists around...

Vestas: "The strength of standing together"

Ian Terry, one of the workers who occupied the factory from 20 July to 7 August, spoke to Solidarity on 9 September. We're stopping the blades from going out from the St Cross factory because we believe they're our blades, from our factory, and we would like to see them put up in our country. I think it's difficult to stop them getting out, but people are motivated to do it. We're getting more and more people each day willing to help us, as local people walk past the picket [which is on the cycle path from Newport to Cowes] and talk to us about it. I also want to see an overall fight for jobs...

School students organise for new year

Tali Janner-Klausner, an activist in the London School Students' Union, talked to Solidarity about the union. How did the London School Students' Union start? LSSU was founded in February this year, at a meeting where it was agreed that we [school and FE students] needed a structure to defend our rights and work to improve education. School student activists in Edinburgh had already set up a union group, and we were inspired and encouraged by looking at the successes of the mass student unions in the rest of Europe. At the meeting, we discussed the issues that we needed to campaign on, such as...

Afghanistan: from bad to worse

On 4 September, a NATO air strike killed about 90 civilians in northern Afghanistan. According to the United Nations, NATO and US operations killed 828 Afghan civilians in 2008, and the Taliban killed 1160. Other sources give higher estimates for both NATO/US and Taliban killings. Back in 2001, as the US and its allies were preparing to bomb Afghanistan, we wrote: "The US-British alliance will not defeat, or cut the roots, of terrorist-fundamentalism. Its stated aim in Afghanistan is to replace the Taliban regime by a "broad-based" government around the king, the Northern Alliance - and...

Vestas workers keep up blockade: day of solidarity 17 September

Vestas bosses moved four wind turbine blades from their Venture Quays factory, in East Cowes, on Friday 4 September, but backed off from moving the nine blades in the St Cross factory, in Newport, after workers and supporters picketed the "marine gate" there. The blades are those left unfinished when workers occupied the factory on 20 July to oppose Vestas bosses' plans to close the factories - Britain's only wind-turbine blade factories - and to demand that the Government nationalise the factories, upgrade the production processes, and save the jobs. Since bailiffs evicted the occupiers on 7...

Post workers to ballot from 16 September

Pete Firmin, a London postal worker, spoke to Solidarity about the post and telecom union CWU's campaign against job cuts in the post. As far as I can tell, the strikes across the country in recent weeks have been pretty solid. In London, they are certainly having an effect on the mail. Understandably, many workers are now impatient for the national ballot. The national ballot on action starts on 16 September. The union has put it back a week because, it says, some branch records were not sufficiently up to date to withstand legal challenge. That may be true, but surely the national union...

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