Solidarity 177, 8 July 2010

In 2002, then Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith visited the deprived Easterhouse housing estate in Glasgow, an experience which he claimed led to a Damascus-like conversion from Thatcherite orthodoxy to “caring Conservatism”. Now Duncan Smith sits in the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition Cabinet as Work and Pensions Secretary and he is looking to cut at least 25% from the DWP’s budget as part of the government’s deficit reduction programme. Beyond cynical financial calculations (the government think it would be expedient to avoid potential cuts elsewhere by making deeper ones in welfare, because who...

The screenwriter, director and playwright Trevor Griffiths is 75 this year. His latest play, A New World: A Life of Thomas Paine, was produced at the Globe Theatre in 2009, while The Wages of Thin, his first stage-play, was revived in London this spring. He spoke to Pat Yarker about his background, his enduring political concerns and his current work. Trevor Griffiths worked as a teacher, a liberal studies lecturer and a further education officer for the BBC before becoming a full time writer in 1970. His best-known stage play was Comedians (1975). For his film Reds, co-written with Warren...

The European Trade Union Confederation has called a "no to cuts" day of action for Wednesday 29 September. Already Spanish unions have planned a general strike for that day. There will be a big demonstration of workers from across Europe in Brussels. Unions in other European countries will schedule actions. British trade unionists should demand that the TUC call a day of action to link up with other workers across Europe. In Britain, 29 September falls in the middle of Labour Party conference, in Manchester. The TUC should ask the Labour Party to suspend conference proceedings for an afternoon...

John McDonnell MP won the MPs' ballot this year to gain the right to present a "Private Member's Bill" - a proposal for legislation, given parliamentary time, coming from an individual MP and not the Government. He has put down the Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill, and it is due for its second reading on 22 October. John McDonnell spoke to Solidarity about the Bill and about the whole range of struggles coming up. The Bill is a very minor, technical amendment to the existing legislation, to prevent employers using the law to drag trade unions into court where there has been a minor...

Greek workers staged another one-day general strike against cuts on 29 June. Numbers on the major demonstration in Athens were, however, down on the previous day of action, and it looks as if the top trade union leaders are trying to engineer a gradual dribbling-away of the movement. Vasilis Grollios, a political researcher in Thessaloniki, told Solidarity: "The core of the militant workers want more pressure and action. But, unfortunately, nothing serious is being organised. "The major conflict recently has been about the minimum wage. "In Greece, there is a negotiation every two or three...

Until 23 June Kevin Rudd was prime minister of Australia, and the media were dismissing chatter about challenges to his position. The next day, as academic Nick Economou put it: "He's a goner. You can stick a fork in him". Rudd was toppled by a revolt of Labor MPs and replaced by his former deputy Julia Gillard. Although Rudd said he wanted to remain a minister, Gillard has excluded him from her new cabinet. Rudd was publicly reduced to tears. In Australia, as in most countries, it is very rare for government leaders to be sacked mid-term by their own parties. Bob Hawke was voted out by Labor...

The government's own official Committee on Climate Change says that "a decade has been wasted in the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions... "The policies were not delivering". According to a report published on 30 June, the problem has been the government relying on nudges, exhortation, and sweet-talk rather than "crunchy policies that provide strong incentives". In our words, rather than the official committee's: othing less than widespread public ownership and workers' control is likely to swing economic activity sufficiently away from the imperatives of short-term profit-grabbing for a...

When bourgeois apologists talk about the marvellous qualities of the free market as a regulator of economic life, remember what "the market" means in real life! On 30 June 2009 the world oil price suddenly surged, alarmingly. According to the Financial Times, market experts thought some dramatic turn in world politics must be behind the surge, and it "prompted concerns about the impact of rising energy prices on the weak economic recovery". Within days they found that the surge had been due to one individual, working for a Mayfair oil broker, who fired up his laptop after a party and traded...

At the end of June the Lib Con government announced a "temporary cap" on the number of non-EU migrant workers to be admitted to the UK. This was a sop to racism. Under the Tories’ proposals the number of "tier one" and "tier two" migrant workers allowed to enter the UK between July of this year and April of 2011 will be limited to 24,100. A permanent cap will be introduced next April, although the Tories have not yet named a figure. The classification of migrant workers into "tiers" dates from the last Labour government, although the use of such a system was already widespread amongst...