Solidarity 486, 14 November 2018

Hero from Chelmsford?

Review of ′Outlaw King′ At times it seems as if ‘Outlaw King’ can’t quite work out what kind of film it wants to be. Is it a film with credible characters, a plausible plot and a serious storyline? Are those long shots of Robert the Bruce wandering through overpowering Scottish landscapes perhaps a visual metaphor for the loneliness of the human condition? Or is it a cross between a medieval ‘Saving Private Ryan’ (lots of guts and gore and mud and blood) and a Scottish version of King Arthur (good-looking bloke teams up with woman and slays his way against overwhelming odds to become the...

A Dave Spart for our times

Private Eye magazine used to carry a regular column ("The Controversial Voice", sometimes "The Alternative Voice") by a fictional character called Dave Spart who specialised in banal non-sequiturs in a parody of leftist jargon, usually ending up contradicting himself. I was reminded of Comrade Spart as I watched Aaron Bastani’s denunciation of the Royal British Legion (RBL) on his Youtube vehicle The Bastani Report , part of the Novara Media operation run by Comrade Bastani, and streamed live on 6 November. It is an incoherent stream of consciousness (complete with much effing and blinding)...

Universal Credit: a way forward

For other articles in the debate in Solidarity and in Workers' Liberty on Universal Credit, see here. The article below is the second article in the debate. Luke Hardy argues in Solidarity 482 that the Labour should “stop and scrap” Universal Credit. But that position lacks a positive alternative. The immediate implications of stop and scrap are to return to the legacy benefits including Job Seekers Allowance, Employment Support Allowance and Disability benefit — all benefits with their own levels of conditionality, poor levels of payment, and sanctioning, and further complicated by having...

LETTER: The politics of “Extinction Rebellion”

Mike Zubrowski is right to criticise as a poor form of democracy, Extinction Rebellion’s (XR) demand for a random-lot citizens’ assembly to oversee climate change policy (Solidarity 485). The problems with XR's approach aren’t limited to democracy. As Marxist filmmaker Jason Barker has pointed out XR’s demands on carbon reduction are far too vague. XR says “[t]he Government must enact legally-binding policy measures to reduce carbon emissions in the UK to net zero by 2025 and take further action to remove the excess of atmospheric greenhouse gases. It must cooperate internationally so that the...

Free speech is a left-wing issue

Above: the Catholic Church's Index of Banned Books, 1640 In the past few years the press has had a number of semi-sensationalist stories about student unions banning or wanting to ban something deemed offensive. And in some cases the issue has been real. Now an essay by the late Marxist academic Norman Geras on the ethics of revolution has been flagged up by the University of Reading as potentially subversive, so that students reading it must sign a form and pledge not to leave the text around where others might scan it. The university did that under the government’s Prevent agenda, supposed...

Iran sugar workers strike for workers’ control

Renewed strikes by the Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane Company workers in Iran have taken up the demands put forward in August 2018. The August strike was suspended after management and regime officials made a number of commitments that were then not fulfilled. On day three of the strike, 7 November, the workers warned that if the government did not "respond to their demands", "they will transfer the strike to outside the company". "There is the day-workers’ insurance, the unpaid wages... A workers’ representative has to supervise everything, from the employer to the bottom – both their work and their...

Corrections

Solidarity 485: Our article “Brazil needs our solidarity” suggested that the incursions into university campuses by militarised police in Brazil came after Jair Bolsonaro's presidential election victory, but in fact they were before. Also, it seems that our articles in Solidarity 485 and Solidarity 484 exaggerated the extent of the demonstrations in defiance of Bolsonaro after his election victory.

Schools ballot opens

On 15 November the National Education Union (NEU) will open an indicative ballot for all teacher members in state schools and sixth form colleges on the linked issues of school funding and the 2018 teachers’ pay award. The ballot will run for two months, closing in early January. For the vast majority of eligible members this will be an electronic ballot with questions and replies sent by email. The Union will be conducting a postal ballot in three areas, however, to compare the outcome of that to the electronic ballot. In the event of a decision to move to a formal legal ballot electronic...

John Roan school fight continues

Parents and school workers at John Roan School are continuing to show the way to resist forced academisation. The school in Greenwich, south east London, is threatened with forced academisation after a poor Ofsted report. A vibrant community campaign, backed up with a significant number of strikes has brought support from local politicians and media attention. This week the National Education Union (NEU) held their eighth strike day. This was reported by the Guardian and Angela Rayner, shadow minister for education, tweeted her support, stating that Labour would end forced academisation. Her...

Tube stations fightback

Workers at various London Underground stations are balloting for strikes in a variety of disputes. At Baker Street, workers are preparing to ballot to demand the reinstatement of CSA Mahoney, sacked after an outrageous abuse of the probation process. They are also demanding unnecessary disciplinary procedures against two workers, including the local RMT rep, be dropped. On the Bakerloo South stations group RMT is preparing to ballot members for strikes against short staffing. The situation is now so acute that station staff report sometimes having to work on Oxford Circus’s busy exit gateline...

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