Solidarity 257, 19 September 2012

Hillsborough: state cover-ups and police corruption

Can any of us really believe the protestations of politicians and cops in the last week that they have been “shocked” by the findings in the Hillsborough report? If they were genuinely shocked at the changed statements, the catalogue of lies, the obstruction of justice, and so on, this points to a level of incompetence among them that is difficult to comprehend. If they are just saying it because it’s the right thing to say, and in fact knew about or suspected the extent of the cover-up, then we can only conclude that the go-to response of the British ruling class when the integrity of its...

We need to talk about Kelvin

As is now very well known, the response of the Sun newspaper to the Hillsborough disaster was to mount a front page attack on the fans. Under the fateful headline “The Truth” the paper printed the vilest lies about the victims of the horrific event. The supporters, it was alleged, urinated on police, stole from their own dead, beat up rescue workers, and caused the problems in the first place through widespread drunkenness. The editor of the paper and the man who decided on the headline was Kelvin McKenzie. On 10 September McKenzie issued the apology he had spent the last 23 years aggressively...

Teachers' action should escalate to strikes

On 26 September school teachers, members of the NUT and NASUWT unions, begin non-strike industrial action across England and Wales. The action is a sort of work-to-rule. According to official union strategy, it is intended as a lever to make education minister Michael Gove agree to talks with the union on working conditions, pay, pensions, and jobs, and will be followed by national strike action if after a while Gove does not do that. Most immediately, however, the action is a lever to impose liveable working conditions in schools, to enable teachers to get on with teaching with less...

Make the labour movement fit to fight

The 20 October TUC demonstration is a chance to send a spectacular message to the government — a message of opposition, of disaffection, of discontent. Socialists should fight to make the demonstration a platform to amplify and build solidarity for ongoing industrial disputes, and articulate a positive political message — a radical, working-class socialist alternative to the government’s austerity project. Since the huge demonstration on 26 March 2011, union leaders sold out the public sector pensions dispute, leaving workers facing the prospect of working longer, paying more, and getting less...

Cuts deepen the crisis

In the UK, wages accounted for 70.6 per cent of GDP in 1975. Recent figures from a UN agency show that fall to 62.6 per cent by 2010, the largest drop of any advanced economy except the US. The government wants to go further along the same road. Real wages have been falling since 2009, and are set to carry on falling. Far from doing anything to reverse that trend, the government now (17 September) talks of cancelling the automatic upratings which are supposed to ensure that benefits at least keep up with price rises. Why? To boost profits at the expense of wages and social provision. The...

Galloway on rape: not an aberration

George Galloway's comments on rape, in connection with the Assange controversy, have outraged many on the left who have not paid much attention to Galloway before. That is good. They have even sparked criticism, perhaps opportunistic, from some whose general stance over the years has been to defend Galloway and promote him as a leader of the left. But what is important to understand is that Galloway's latest outbursts are not an aberration, but entirely consistent with his broader politics. In terms of economic policy, Galloway was never better than a middle-of-the-road Labour careerist. His...

Assange: safeguards and assurances?

The crux of this matter appears to be resting on whether Assange would be safer from extradition to the US in Sweden. His detractors claim that he would be, and claim that Assange’s defence to the contrary is a smokescreen to avoid the rape charges. Several counter arguments have been presented. The first of these notes Sweden’s unblemished human rights record and their ratification of the European Convention of Human Rights (Owen Jones, The Independent, 17 August). Jones and others have failed to mention the fierce criticism the Swedish authorities came under when in 2001 they handed over two...

US labour party is no fantasy

Eric Lee ( Solidarity 255) creates a straw man when he counterposes a mass revolutionary party as the fantasy alternative to a “realistic” orientation to the US Democrats. The issue is whether the US working class has an independent political voice — a labour party. He ignores the most recent attempt to create a labour party and the lessons to draw from it. In 1996 I attended the Founding Convention of the Labor Party in Cleveland. The new party was supported by a number of the smaller US unions — the Oil and Chemical Workers, the United Electrical Workers, the Farm Workers and others — and by...

Palestinian workers strike

On Monday 10 September taxi, bus and truck drivers, around 24,000, struck throughout the West Bank. In the cities thousands of protesters filled the streets to support the strike and protest against the economic crisis, the result of unpaid pledges by the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Finance Ministry recently reported an estimated a shortfall of $1.2 billion — a quarter of the annual budget. PA employees, almost a sixth of the West Bank population in employment, have not been paid their full salaries since June. Civil servants have struck before. Unrest has grown in recent months...

New push for QCH dispute

Workers in dispute at the Queensland Children's Hospital construction site in Brisbane, Australia, are looking to industrial action at other sites and workplaces to add the final extra squeeze to the pressure on the main contractor, Abigroup, and force it to settle. Delegations from the site will be going out to talk with workers elsewhere and make the case for solidarity. In dispute since 6 August, the workers are standing firm despite receiving no strike pay and not even being able to collect donations through a bank account. All donations have to be in cash or in supermarket vouchers...

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