Solidarity 245, 9 May 2012

Film maker Callum Macrae has made two influential films about Sri Lanka. He has been nominated for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. He spoke to Solidarity . Under the guise of rehabilitation and reconstruction the Sri Lankan government is attempting a Sinhalisation of the north of the country — an attempt to destroy the Tamil community. Thousands of Tamils remain displaced while Tamil property is taken over and given to the military. The army is opening hotels in the north. You can go whale spotting with the Sri Lankan navy. You cannot go to the east, where the final battles took place [in the 2008...

Paulin, an activist from the Greek left group OKDE, spoke to Solidarity after Greece’s 6 May election, which resulted in a parliament where, so far, no party has been able to form a government: Syriza, after the announcement of the results, said they will try to form “a left government”. But it is very difficult because the KKE has said that they will not participate in any government. Also the Democratic Left, a split from Syriza last year, will not participate in government. Syriza changed its face before the election and accepted ex-members of PASOK into what it called a “Syriza United...

The election results in France and Greece (6 May), and the forced resignation of militantly neo-liberal Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte (23 April), have thrown economic policy in the eurozone into flux. There are four main distinct approaches in play. The debate between them has scarcely started in the British labour movement, where even the would-be Marxist left has so far mostly limited itself to a sort of conservative syndicalism: opposing cuts in Britain, advocating more militant tactics, applauding resistance elsewhere in Europe, and commenting that the EU leaders are making a mess of...

The labour movement in Barnet and Camden celebrated last week as Tory Brian Coleman lost his London Assembly seat. If incoming London Mayor Boris Johnson has any sense he will also remove Coleman from the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, cheering up the Fire Brigades Union as well. Coleman, self-styled “King of Bling”, is notorious for his rudeness to residents and even fellow Conservative politicians, for his greed at public expense — exorbitant taxi fares a speciality — and for his right-wing policies: he once boasted there was nothing he wouldn’t privatise. But Coleman is only...

Demaine Boocock was a delegate from a Southport sixth form college to the 2012 conference of the National Union of Students. She explains how she got politically active. I thought the student protests in 2010-2011 were cool and supported them, but I was never involved. People talked about it at my high school and were pissed off at tuition fees but that was the extent of my knowledge. I only got involved in student politics through getting involved with Workers’ Liberty and subsequently NCAFC. Our student union is more like a student council. It’s not a political body and the vast majority of...

I think Martin Thomas’ take on the political situation in the Netherlands ( Solidarity 244) is basically right. One caveat: I don’t think the Socialist Party (SP) is quite as narrowly nationalistic as suggested. Its Euro MP, Dennis de Jong, has been making headway in putting forward initiatives at European level, for minimum corporate tax levels, for example. And I think the SP’s position on Greece has been pretty good, opposing the prevailing Greek-bashing and opposing the bailouts purely on the grounds that they’re really bailouts for French and German banks and impose unacceptable suffering...

Dave Spencer died on 24 April 2012, at the age of 71. Dave was one of the very first people to join the Workers’ Fight group, forerunner of the AWL, when it “went public” in the British labour movement in October 1967. Below some of Dave's comrades share their memories of him. Dave and I were comrades together in the proto-AWL prior to a split in 1984, when Dave left with a group of people around Alan Thornett who he didn’t agree with politically. He spent a lot of his time after that complaining in various left publications about the “bureaucratism” of the “Matgamna sect.” He also did the...

On 10 May the PCS civil service union is striking against the government’s “work longer, pay more, get less” changes to public sector pensions. The lecturers’ union UCU is also striking, in further education colleges and post-1992 universities. Members of the Unite union in the health service will be staging protests and industrial action. There is talk of a further strike, maybe involving the teachers’ union NUT, in late June. To make 10 May a relaunch, and not just a swansong, PCS needs to genuinely place itself on a “war footing”: * vigorous recruiting of new members; * a levy to help fund...

Conceding defeat in the contest for London mayor, on 3 May, Ken Livingstone said: “This is my last election”. As with many things Livingstone says, it’s not true. Livingstone is a candidate on the “centre-left” list in Labour’s National Executive this year. Though many of those who have nominated him will confirm privately that Livingstone is utterly unreliable on the Executive, they think they have no choice but to have him on the list, because he’s a potential winner and a reliable right-winger might replace him. But in the mayoral contest Livingstone won much less than the Labour vote...

Labour and the SNP were the winners in last week’s Scottish council elections. Lib Dems and Tories were the losers. Labour won an extra 58 seats, giving it a total of 394 in Scotland as a whole. The SNP won an extra 57 seats, giving it a total of 424. The Lib-Dems lost over half their seats, slumping to 71. The Tories lost 16 seats, leaving them with 115. Labour failed to make inroads into the SNP vote — most of their gains were from the Lib Dems — and the SNP did win some seats from Labour. SNP results were no repeat of last year’s Holyrood elections, and they came nowhere near winning...