Solidarity 323, 7 May 2014

Occupied to save the NHS!

The Lifeworks centre, an open clinic service in Cambridge for people who suffer with personality disorders, is being threatened with closure. Patients have been occupying the centre for eight weeks to stop it from closing. Lifeworks is part of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Foundation Trust’s (CPFT) Complex Case Service. It is a community service which people can use as and when they need to. Lifeworks focuses on improving social functioning and getting people reintegrated into society. Around 30 people are dependant on Lifeworks, which covers the entirety of Cambridgeshire. With cuts of £6...

The new privatisation

Social Finance and Social Impact Bonds are becoming a popular idea for public sector funding. Social Impact Bonds (SIBs sometimes called Payments for Success Bonds) began under the Labour government in 2010. Private investors lend the public sector money to meet certain social “benefits” or targets. Investing in social projects for profit is led in the UK by Social Finance UK. (Its sister organisation in the US is Social Finance US). One of its key projects is Social Impact Bonds, often using payment by results. With SIBs, Social Finance identifies an area where they believe they can help...

Ulster’s Protestant general strike

In May 1974, the Ulster Workers’ Council (UWC) “strike” put an end to Northern Ireland’s first short-lived experiment with power-sharing government. The strike was, in fact, a “lock-out”, with loyalists opposed to power-sharing with nationalists persuading people to strike with significant intimidation. It succeeded in bringing down the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland but, without any positive alternative as an aim, the strike led to more than two decades of direct rule from London. In the late 1960s, Catholic demands for civil rights created a crisis for the state in Northern...

Britain — the detention capital of Europe

In February of 2013 Alois Dvorzac, an 84-year-old Canadian national who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, died in handcuffs at the publicly-funded and privately-run Harmondsworth detention centre. Immigration officials stationed at Gatwick Airport, where Dvorzac had made a transit stop en route to visit his native Slovenia, had detained him in Harmondsworth, even though a doctor’s report declared him unfit for detention. The circumstances surrounding Dvorzac’s death did not come to light until January of this year, when HM Inspector of Prisons published its report of an unannounced inspection...

Eye-witnesses in Odessa

We publish below abridged translations of articles by Ukrainian and Russian left activists (and one by the Russian Communist Party) about last Friday’s events in Odessa, when over 40 people were killed and nearly 200 injured in the most violent fighting in Ukraine since the overthrow of the Yanukovich regime. The Eye-Witness Account The following article is taken from the website of the Ukrainian Left Opposition. It is prefaced by the comment that the site’s editorial board does not agree with all its arguments and conclusions, but it is published because of its value as an eye-witness account...

Firefighters' pensions battle escalates

Firefighters took industrial action over three days last week as the FBU’s pensions long-running battle escalated. Firefighters in England and Wales took strike action between noon and 5pm on 2 May, between 2pm on 3 May and 2am on 4 May and between 10am and 3pm on Sunday 4 May. In addition, there was a ban on voluntary overtime across England and Wales from 3pm on 4 May until noon on 9 May, and in Scotland a ban on voluntary overtime between noon on 2 May and noon on 9 May. The action was provoked by the prevarication and evasiveness of the Westminster government, despite months of fresh...

Behind the arrest of Gerry Adams

A new mural on a Belfast wall, painted in response to the arrest and detention of Gerry Adams for four days, comes close to proclaiming Adams a saint: “Man of the people: Peacemaker, Leader, Visionary”... That view of him is held by many northern Ireland Catholics. Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, member of Dail Eireann, could not have been arrested and held for four days on the mere say-so of middle ranking Northern Ireland police officers. His arrest must have been sanctioned at the highest level. Who sanctioned it? Why? Who will benefit? Sinn Fein's leaders indignantly point out that they...

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