Solidarity 172, 30 April 2010

Whittington Hospital: Karen Jennings shows how not to fight

Karen Jennings, Head of Unison Health, spoke at a recent meeting held in North London for workers at the Whittington Hospital who are facing the closure of their A&E and maternity services. The meeting was designed to get more workers involved in the Defend the Whittington Hospital Coalition, and build their confidence to mount a fightback from within the hospital against the proposed cuts. You would have thought that Jennings would have made an attempt to boost the confidence of the workers and the Whittington Unison branch. In fact, she did the exact opposite. She started by saying that...

UNISON Health Conference: calm before cuts storm

The Health Sector conference of UNISON on 19-21 April saw only very superficial discussion of the upcoming threat to the NHS and its staff. Indeed, the agenda sped by so quickly that nearly all the timetabled business was completed a day early. It was called under the banner of “A Million Voices for the NHS”, but the voices of the delegates were generally quite muted. We described it in our bulletin as the calm before the storm. Delegates had their heads down, numbed perhaps by the scale of the cuts to come, a pay freeze, redundancies and an attack on our pensions. Even general secretary Dave...

Childcare battle in Hackney

An activist from Friends of Hackney Nurseries spoke to Solidarity Hackney is relatively well-endowed with nursery places. A lot of that is to do with struggles that were fought and won in the 1970s and 80s by feminists and community activists, who set up community nurseries and got funding for them. Since then it’s been a constant struggle to defend those gains. Our campaign, Friends of Hackney Nurseries, has reactivated recently in response to big cuts planned by the Learning Trust (LT). The LT is the body that looks after education for Hackney Council, which is convenient for them, as it...

"De-Labour-ising" Labour?

“The ultimate fulfilment of the New Labour mission.” BBC political reporter Nick Robinson says: “That is how one senior Labour figure described... the prospect of a Lib/Lab deal in the event of a hung Parliament.” According to Patrick Wintour in the Guardian of 20 April: “Beneath the dispute is a concern that some figures are using Labour’s campaign as a vehicle to bring about the formation of a progressive coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. “Some cabinet members were deeply concerned...” In the late 1990s, as Blair pushed through his “coup” in the Labour Party, it was often...

Why a coalition government will be bad news

Unless opinion shifts drastically in the next few days, no party will have an overall majority after 6 May. There will be strong pressure from big business for a coalition government. The immediate political answer from socialists does not depend much on the details. We would advocate Labour seek to form a minority government. From that position it should rally support by pro-working-class measures. When eventually brought down by the Tories’ and Lib-Dems’ unwillingness to let the pro-working-class measures through, it should seek on that basis to win a majority in a new election. Others than...

Lib Dems: ducking the Academies issue

Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems supports the Academy school system. It seems he is not confident enough in his support to find out what one group of teachers at an Academy think of working at their school. On 21 April Clegg was due to visit Crest Boys’ Academy in Brent. But his visit was cancelled. We don’t know why... but perhaps it was because the majority of teaching staff at Crest Boys’ Academy were on strike over redundancies. The school is run by E-Act (previously Edutrust) a so-called “social enterprise” company. These redundancies are happening at a time when E-Act’s Chief Executive, Sir...

General Election: how to get ready for after 6 May

Two months ago David Cameron’s Tory Party was heading for a general election win decisive enough to push through its programme of “deep” cuts and extensive privatisations. Labour then narrowed the gap in the polls. But that minor reversal in Labour’s fortunes had more to do with dismay at the Tories’ unashamed agenda of cuts than with positive support for Labour’s own programme. That too promised cuts, less cuts but cuts all the same. In the last weeks before 6 May there has been a Lib Dem surge. A hung Parliament is widely predicted. Some working-class voters may have been persuaded that...

Stranded abroad by volcanic ash? Can't get to work? Tough!

Penny-pinching and sheer bloodymindedness has been the response of some bosses towards workers stranded abroad due to the recent volcanic ash cloud. “Act of god” or not, they want to dock workers’ pay. During the heavy snowfalls of 2008/9 and 2009/10, employers all over the UK docked pay from workers prevented from getting to work, prompting RMT general secretary Bob Crow to refer to them as “throwbacks to the worst excesses of the Victorian mill-owners.” That statement was closer to the mark than the meek official response from the TUC to the volcanic ash crisis. They comment: “it seems...

Jersey cuts: politics for the struggle

The enthusiastic demonstration and rally in defence of public services on 24 April was Jersey’s first since the 1920s. But critical questions face the movement behind the protest. The march, called by the teaching union NASUWT, was against £50 million in cuts on the island. It came at a time when teachers, nurses and uniformed services are all at various stages of organising industrial action over an imposed pay freeze. Unite announced in the rally that it will now seek to become more political and will back candidates for election to the island’s Senate. But what form will this take? Funding...

Pulling together the left after 6 May

Pete Firmin is a Communication Workers Union activist and joint secretary of the Labour Representation Committee. He talked to Solidarity about the conference. "After the Election, Join the Resistance", which has been planned by LRC for 15 May (from 10:30 at ULU, Malet St, London), and is co-sponsored by the Socialist Campaign to Stop the Tories and Fascists and other groups. We're hoping the conference brings together activists from the unions, from within the Labour Party, from other struggles, against the war in Afghanistan and so on. We'll be in a new political situation after the election...

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