Solidarity 253, 1 August 2012

Earlier this month Italy’s final appeal court upheld a previous guilty verdict on twenty-four of the most senior police officers involved in the planning and execution of the shocking acts of police violence at the 300,000-strong G8 protests in Genoa in 2001. Following the demonstration, around four hundred highly trained thugs of the state machinery were set loose for three days. A hundred and fifty of the occupants of the Diaz schoolhouse were beaten to within an inch of their lives on the dishonest pretext that the building was a haven for black block anarchists bent on further rampage...

With interest rates on Spain’s and Italy’s debt remaining high, it is clear that yet another plan by the European Union and European Central Bank supposed to solve the dance of death in Europe’s economies has failed. Governments become less able to get credit because they are dragged down by collapsing banks; banks are collapsing because the government bonds which make up a large part of their assets lose value; the spiral is speeded by dwindling output because cuts are pushing economies into slump. ECB president Mario Draghi declared on Thursday 26 July that the ECB was “ready to do whatever...

The Spanish miners’ strike against a cut in the subsidy to the industry is now in its tenth week. Support in Spain and internationally is growing all the time. When the miners’ march (the “Black March” or “Marcha Negra”) from the coalmining regions to Madrid reached the capital on 19 July they were greeted by thousands of supporters and well-wishers in a clear demonstration that their strike is now seen as the spearhead against the government’s austerity policies. In a reference to Spain’s all-conquering national football team sections of the crowd were heard chanting “This is our national...

Moshe Silman, a benefit claimant and protestor, set himself on fire before a social justice demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel, on 14 July. He died six days later. In a letter he read out before he died, he accused the Israeli government of “taking from the poor and giving to the rich”. Despite being incapable of working due to a stroke, his claim for housing benefit had been denied. Silman’s tragic death — a “political suicide” — is part of the growing and explosive re-emergence of Israel’s social justice movement, which first rose to national political prominence a year ago when it mobilised...

The main issue facing Iraqi workers is the government’s attempt to impose a new labour code. Workers have been working without an official labour code since the fall of the Ba’athist regime. Effectively people have been working on the basis of established traditions, conventions, and practises rather than a legal code. There was a draft in 2004, but in our view this was worse than the 1936 labour law of the old monarchy! The new labour code also perpetuates Saddam Hussein’s 1987 ban on unions and collective bargaining in the public sector. The new draft includes 156 articles, and we have...

An eyewitness report from Quebec. At the end of May there was a new period of negotiations between the government of Quebec and the student associations. The negotiations lasted from Monday 28 to Thursday 31 May. The government hastened to end them, claiming that the student representatives were “intransigent” and it was impossible to reach an agreement with them. The real reason was the Liberal government that did not want to reach a satisfactory agreement. To keep the increase in student fees is an ideological question for this deeply neoliberal bourgeois government; to give up on it would...

The government’s White Paper “Care and Support”, on reforming adult social services, was launched on 11 July. It is full of supposedly innovative ideas but without any money or commitment. The government keeps repeating that it will put £300 million into adult social care between 2013 and 2015. The majority of this money is to implement the innovative ideas with none left to cover shortfalls left by cuts to a system that was already on its knees. The government’s answers to problems involve the appointment of principal social workers in local authorities (with a very ill-defined role), social...

On 14 July up to 100,000 people attended the annual Durham Miners’ Gala. These included a noticeably uncomfortable Ed Miliband, the first Labour Party leader to address the event since 1989. As Miliband sat on the platform he was obliged to listen and applaud speakers including striking Spanish miners describing their militant battle with the Rajoy government, the labour lawyer John Hendy arguing for the repeal of the anti-trade union laws, and the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union general secretary Mark Serwotka, who rebuked the Labour leader for his opposition to the pensions...

Britain's “double-dip recession” has extended into the third quarter of 2012, with economic output falling by 0.7 per cent in the second quarter. (In the two preceding quarters it fell by 0.4 and 0.3 per cent.) In the first half of 2012, service sector output dropped by 0.1 per cent, industrial production by 1.3 per cent and construction output by 5.2 per cent. Whatever the spin about the negative impact of the Royal Jubilee, the reality is a capitalist crisis made worse by economic policies supposed to solve it. Are the Tories incompetent? Do we care? What is certain is that they are more...

An estimated 25,000 people attended London Pride on 7 July, including delegations from many trade unions. The march was lively and colourful, and despite (or perhaps because of) the fiasco around its organisation, there was an atmosphere of political discussion about the nature of the event and the direction of LGBT politics in London. Workers’ Liberty held a “Proud to be Radical” meeting in central London following the march, with speakers including RMT member and LGBT activist Paul Penny, sex worker activist Thierry Schauffhauser, and Unison rep Lynne Moffat. The meeting discussed the work...