Solidarity 324, 14 May 2014

The disaster in Rana Plaza on 24 April 2013, where at least 1,138 Bangladeshi garment workers died, has spurred more people to fight for better conditions for the world’s 75 million garment workers. On the one-year anniversary, fashion industry figures organised the first annual and international “Fashion Revolution Day” (FRD). UK events included a debate in the House of Lords; “fash mob” in Carnaby Street by London College of Fashion students; and Twitter Q&A with experts, including the IndustriALL Global Union General Secretary talking about a new trade union organising drive in Bangladesh:...

On Wednesday 7 May, around 50 LGBT campaigners organised a protest at the President of Uganda’s visit to the UK. President Yoweri Museveni was being welcomed by government officials as part of a Ugandan business forum, and was giving a speech near Westminster. A number of groups, including Out and Proud Diamond, an African LGBTI group, Stop AIDS, and the Peter Tatchell Foundation were present for the protest. Unions also sent delegations, most visibly the RMT. The protestors made sure that the whole speech was interrupted with drums, vuvuzelas, and loud chanting. Protestors demanded the repeal...

Perhaps even two years ago I had never actually heard of such a thing as a “Food Bank”, and even then, despite growing financial difficulties, I would not have expected to need it. However, times change — albeit in a more or less predictable direction, in many cases — and I have since joined the percentage of the population that does need to use food banks. Three times now I have visited the People Before Profit Food Bank on New Cross Road, south east London. I signed up as a member with a minimal donation (£1) which I pay again each time I visit, with an occasional added contribution of spare...

At the gates of the homes, at the gates of the palaces that we have conquered everywhere in the city where the riot drags on cold, dull and strong, everywhere at the doors of our homes the machine-gun in the dark cowers. Dull, to bring death; blind, low, at the base of the earth, blind, cold, of steel, of iron, with the metal of their hate elemental, with their steel teeth ready to bite, their clockwork, wheels, nuts, springs, their short black mouths on the mounts squat ... Oh, the tragic machine, the thing of steel, of iron, inert, which mutilates seconds, which digests seconds — tac-tac-tac...

The Ulster Protestant General strike against power-sharing government had a poor start. On the morning of 15 May most people turned up for work. “It wasn’t organised,” admitted Harry Murray a union rep at the Belfast shipyard. “The people weren’t educated.” According to Don Anderson: “Murray thought his own wife was joking that morning when she asked him why he was not at work. Nor did [UWC member] Bob Pagels’ wife take him seriously, at least not until she went into the kitchen of her Belfast home to make breakfast to find there was no electricity. She thought a fuse had blown. When the truth...

What does UKIP stand for? 1. UKIP are a bosses party in favour of tax cuts for the rich. They want to abolish inheritance tax and cut taxes for business. They would axe public services, reduce state pensions, and cut funding to schools and colleges. 2. Nigel Farage claimed £2 million expenses from Europe for the last four years. He registered an off shore Trust Fund in the Isle of Man to avoid paying taxes 3. UKIP want the health service fully opened up to the market. They are against publicly funded and run healthcare, and support people opting out of NHS services and paying to skip A&E...

UKIP could top the poll in the the European parliamentary election on 22 May, a vertiginous rise that has been analysed in recently published Revolt on the Right by Nottingham University academics Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin. The book raises two issues worth further discussion on the left: can UKIP be considered fascist; and are UKIP attracting working class voters away from Labour? Ford and Goodwin rightly conclude that UKIP are different to the overtly fascist BNP. UKIP leader Nigel Farage was recently mobbed by demonstrators in Scotland chanting “fascist scum off our streets”‘ Similarly...

Rhodri Evans ( Solidarity 323) is wrong to simply say: “That socialists will have to vote Labour and step up the fight in the unions”. That might have been sufficient in 1991 but it hardly deals with the complexities of the situation we now face. Workers’ Liberty has analysed the Blairite restructuring of the Labour Party and increasingly recognised the diminished scope for party members and union members to affect policy. Indeed from 1999-2010 we stood candidates against Labour, sometimes in alliance with other socialists, sometimes alone. In 2010 it was argued that we could reckon upon some...

David Cameron has threatened new anti-union laws to make it harder for unions to call lawful strikes. Cameron said: “When strikes are going to take place that are hugely disruptive to other people’s lives they should at least have the support of a good share of the members of that trade union.” He is reported to be considering a proposal from London mayor Boris Johnson that strike ballots must secure an absolute majority, rather than just a majority of those voting, to provide a mandate for legal strike action. New anti-union laws of this kind have long been called for by Boris Johnson, and...

The details of the latest scandal surrounding the contracts worth billions for the 2015 "Expo Exhibition" in Milan — revealing a network of many of the same individuals and forces at the heart of the "Bribesville" scandal that brought the first post-war Republic to ignominious collapse in 1994 — have underlined once again the squalid depths of corruption defining the Italy's economic and political system and state in its entirety. The news could only have rubbed salt in the wounds of the tens of millions left defenceless before the unending scorched-earth austerity. The political parties and...