Solidarity 305, 27 November 2013

Young people are being used as a battering ram to attack the pay, conditions, and rights of all working-class people. Despite the supposed upturn in the UK economy, youth unemployment — especially long-term youth unemployment — remains at record levels. In the third quarter of this year (July-September), the unemployment rate for those aged between 16 and 24 and not in full-time education was 19% — 664,000 people, many of whom would still be looking for their first job. Although slightly lower than the figure for the preceding quarter, this was still a higher figure, by around 16,000, than a...

Andy Shallice, an socialist activist based in Sheffield, spoke to Solidarity about the background to David Blunkett’s recent attacks on Roma migrants living in Page Hall, Sheffield. In the original Radio Sheffield interview Blunkett did [about frictions between Roma and other communities living in Page Hall] there were no quotes about race riots. Yet the Daily Telegraph picked up on this in their subsequent report of the radio interview. To me the reporting is part of what the right wing press will be doing for the next six months up to the European elections. It is what Blunkett said about...

We have been waging a campaign against work accidents which are rampant in Turkey. Central to the campaign is a petition to be finally submitted to parliament. Hundreds of UID-DER activists worked hard during the campaign which has the main slogan: “Work Accidents are not Destiny, Stop Workers Dying of Work Accidents!” During the campaign about 500,000 people have been contacted face to face. We have already surpassed our specific goal which was 100,000 signatures. To appeal to workers, the activists worked under all kinds of hardships in working-class neighbourhoods, at factory entrances, so...

The “personal” problems of Paul Flowers, former chairman of the Co-operative Bank, have created a major political storm. The Tory press has been scandalised by revelation that Flowers bought and used Class A drugs. Flowers had had to resign as a local councillor over other problems, and had a record of dubious expenses claims. Earlier this year, the Co-op announced that it had made a pre-tax loss of over £709 million, with the profits it had made in its supermarkets wiped out by bad debts in its banking arm. Before Flowers’ other issues came to light, he had already been criticised for his...

After a spike because of the 2011 public sector pensions dispute, the level of strikes in the UK fell to a seven-year low in 2012. Royal Mail, a key bastion of public sector unionism and industrial strength, was privatised in October 2013 without any effective resistance. A strike planned for 4 November was called off and anyway was called after the privatisation had gone through. At the Grangemouth oil refinery and petrochemical plant, arguably the most economically significant workplace in Scotland, bosses were able to inflict a crushing defeat on a well-organised, industrially-powerful, and...

Saturday 30 November will see the founding conference of Left Unity . Left Unity was launched in late 2012 by Kate Hudson and Andrew Burgin. It reached a wider audience after film maker Ken Loach and left-wing academic Gilbert Achcar sent an open letter to the Guardian in March 2013, promoting Left Unity as a new party to challenge Labour from the left. The organisers of Left Unity claim to have struck a chord with the public — thousands have signed up to the appeal and even more have “liked” it on social media. There’s some truth to this claim; the media publicity has undoubtedly given Left...

On 22 November something odd happened. The Daily Express published an article which implicitly criticised one of Michael Gove’s key reforms to education and quoted, approvingly and prominently, the condemnation of this policy by Labour Education Minister, Tristram Hunt. The article also reported the comments of NUT Deputy General Secretary Kevin Courtney to support the thrust of their story. The cause of all this an “exclusive” by the paper, about: “A failing academy advertises for Maths teachers who have just FOUR Grade C GCSEs”. It seemed fairly clear that the paper wanted to endorse Hunt’s...

The Defend the Link campaign, boosted by a decision from the Labour Representation Committee conference on 23 November to build it “as widely as possible”, is circulating a “model response” to the interim report by Ray Collins on the Labour-union link. Collins was asked to write the report by Labour leader Ed Miliband after Miliband’s 9 July speech calling for a change in union-Labour relations in the wake of lurid allegations about the Unite union’s activities in Falkirk CLP. Both a police and a Labour inquiry have found nothing against Unite, but Miliband is pressing ahead. Responses to...

Ifa Muaza, a refugee from Nigeria, has been on hunger strike for over 80 days after his request for asylum was rejected by the Home Office. Muaza is being held at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre, near Heathrow. His lawyer argues that keeping him in detention amounts to a death sentence, and staff at the centre have been warned to expect a detainee to die. Muaza says he came to Britain after being threatened by the Islamist militia, Boko Haram, in Nigeria. He says that he was pressured to join the jihadist organisation, and that if he refused, he would be killed. Boko Haram have an...

International climate talks in Warsaw ended in disarray on Sunday 24 November. NGOs and trade union delegates walked out in disgust at the lack of ambition and progress. After international unions, Greenpeace, WWF, ActionAid, FoE, Oxfam, Aksyon Klima Pilipinas and other NGOs had walked out, a statement said governments “cannot be trusted to do what the world needs”. The tone of the event was set by right wing governments backtracking from even the modest commitments made previously to tackle climate change. David Cameron has promised to “get rid of the green crap”, while governments in Japan...