Solidarity 451, 18 October 2017

Stop Brexit!

Opinion polling on 10-11 October showed 64% saying that the Tory government is doing “badly” in negotiating Brexit, and only 21% saying it is doing “well”. 47% said that, with hindsight, they thought the vote for Brexit in June 2016 was wrong, 40% that it was right. Only a small minority say that Brexit will make Britain better off economically — only 23% overall, and only 12% of Labour voters. 44% think Brexit will make Britain worse off. 39% expect Brexit to be bad for jobs, 22% bad. 31% expect Britain to be bad for the NHS, 25% bad. Among Labour voters, 51% expect “bad for the NHS”, 17%...

Letters

The BBC should hang its head in shame. Their documentary (aired 9 October) about the Russian Revolution was appalling. Anyone wanting to know what happened and why in 1917 will need to go elsewhere, consulting the Oracle at Delphi would be more rewarding. No kind of analysis or narrative of the events of 1917 was offered, nor any attempt to tackle important questions and certainly no attempt to offer a range of views for debate. Instead the viewer was bombarded with a venomous and, at times, monumentally stupid, lambasting of the Bolsheviks, particularly Lenin and Trotsky. The makers of the...

Joanne Landy

Joanne Landy, one of the last surviving representatives of a thin thread of living continuity between the Third Camp Trotskyists of the 1940s and politics today, died on 14 October in New York, aged 75. She was one of the early members of the Independent Socialist Club which was founded by Hal Draper in Berkeley, California, in 1964, to regroup the revolutionary socialist wing of the remnants within the Socialist Party USA of the old “Shachtmanite” Workers’ Party and Independent Socialist League. The ISC expanded rapidly into a US-wide organisation, and in 1969 renamed itself “International...

Hunt’s A&E threat

A senior figure at NHS England has suggested that Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health is considering a “talk before you walk policy” for all presentations to the Emergency Department in the NHS in England. Patients would need to either see their GP or call 111 before attending A&E. The comments have provoked a backlash, and both the Department of Health and NHS England have denied the plans to pilot such an approach. NHS England is seemingly divided and in disarray about how to deal with the sustained and severe pressure the NHS is currently facing. Contingency plans for another...

Solidarity with Mogadishu victims

Over 300 people were killed and many more injured in a massive truck bomb attack in the Somalian capital of Mogadishu on Saturday 14 October. The truck bomb was detonated outside the Foreign Ministry building on a busy road, and ignited a nearby oil tanker. The Federal Government of Somalia has said that the attack was almost certainly carried out by Al-Shabaab, a Salafist group which has been waging a war to overthrow the Federal Government since 2006, when US and Ethiopian troops drove the Union of Islamic Courts from Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab was the youth wing of the UIC, and became...

Iraqi troops out of Kirkuk!

Iraqi government forces and Shia militias have occupied Kirkuk for the first time since 2014, the year Daesh made their away across Iraq. Although Kirkuk is not part of Iraqi Kurdistan it has been under the control of Kurdish forces. In the September referendum it voted by a sizeable majority in favour of independence. Up to half a million Kurds are now fleeing Kirkuk for northern Iraq Following the referendum Kurdish peshmerga and civilians gathered arms and prepared themselves for a threatened takeover. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the largest Kurdish party and the party of the...

Egypt tortures LGBT people

The Egyptian government has conducted an intense campaign of arrests, torture and intimidation against LGBT people over the past month. Dozens of LGBT people have been arrested, and many subjected to torture in custody in the form of so-called “anal examinations”, since 22 September, when the wave of repression was launched following a gig by left-wing Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila in a suburb of Cairo. The band’s lead singer, Hamed Sinno, is openly gay and a vocal advocate of LGBT freedoms. Conservative and pro-government media outlets orchestrated a campaign of moral panic and homophobic...

Royal Mail injunction sets precedent?

On Thursday 12 October, the High Court granted an injunction to Royal Mail, stopping a strike organised by the Communication Workers Union (CWU) due to start on Thursday 19 October. In granting the injunction, Mr Justice Supperstone said “I consider the strike call to be unlawful and the defendant is obliged to withdraw its strike call until the external mediation process has been exhausted.” In October 2013, at the time of Royal Mail privatisation, the CWU signed the “Agenda for Growth” agreement with the company. Royal Mail intended this agreement to significantly decrease the number of...

Weinstein case exposes reality of work-related sexual assaults

Dozens of women have come forward accusing the famous Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein, of sexual harassment, assault and rape, with some cases dating back to the 1980s. Many women detail how he would corner them asking for sexual favours with the clear implication that he could make or break their careers. Mainstream media, celebrities, and even politicians are condemning the actions of Weinstein and sending messages of solidarity to the survivors of Weinstein’s assaults. And now the hashtag #Metoo is trending, where women from all over the world share their stories of sexual harassment...

Roll back Universal Credit roll-out

The Government is coming under pressure to halt the roll-out of Universal Credit, the new benefit which is replacing six existing ones: Jobseekers' Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Housing Benefit, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Income Support. Created by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government as part of the Welfare Reform Act in 2012, Universal Credit was launched in 2013 as a pilot in a single area, the former textile town of Ashton-under-Lyne just to the east of Manchester, and has since been extended across the country, with full implementation for new...

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