Solidarity 490, 9 January 2019

Charter for the wealthy

The immigration lawyers’ association has described the Tories’ Immigration White Paper, published in December, as “a charter for the wealthy”. It threatens to fulfil the right-wing Brexit promise to extend to EU migrant workers the existing hostile treatment of their non-EU counterparts. Skilled workers, defined as those with the equivalent of A¬Levels and above, and earning over a salary threshold, will be able to apply for medium¬term work visas. The overall cap on numbers and the requirement for resident labour market tests will be removed for these workers. They will need employer...

“A crushing blow for human rights”

The Stansted 15 have spent their Christmas break awaiting sentence, having been found guilty under terrorist¬related legislation carrying a maximum life sentence. On 28 March 2016, activists locked themselves onto the front wheel of a Boeing 767 that the Home Office had secretly chartered to forcibly deport 60 refugees and migrants to Nigeria and Ghana. They included a woman whose husband had threatened to kill her because of her sexuality and two people who have since been identified as victims of trafficking. The action stopped the flight and allowed some of the migrants time for their...

Build Labour fight against Brexit

The Another Europe is Possible conference in December voted to set up a new, freestanding Labour anti¬Brexit initiative. This campaign, “Stop Brexit – Labour for a Socialist Europe”, set up a steering group at the conference and will be holding its first public event, an organising summit, on 12 January (3-5pm, at SOAS in London). Activists in local Labour Parties and Left Against Brexit-type groups are also preparing to hold local meetings to support the initiative in a number of cities. The constituency of Labour members and supporters who are left¬wing and antiBrexit is vast but largely...

Open letter to Corbyn: fight Brexit!

“I think we need to respect the referendum. As I say, I think that there is a deal which can be struck within Parliament that brings everybody together, that respects the views and wishes of communities whether they voted Leave or Remain” —Rebecca Long-Bailey, Shadow Secretary for Business, Sky News, 16 December. Comrade Corbyn! The 2016 referendum vote that the UK should withdraw from the EU, after 45 years membership, plunged Britain into a prolonged political crisis. Today, less than three months before Britain is due to leave, that crisis has not yet been resolved. The 2016 vote plunged...

The Morning Star resurrects “Blue Labour”

What a pre-Christmas treat the Morning Star gave us! More than a whole page given over to an anti- EU tirade under the snappy headline “Brexit offers the possibility for socialists to lead a political transformation – The immediate task before us is to leave the EU and break the constraints on democracy that it represents”. And if that wasn’t enough to stir the patriotic hearts of all loyal readers, the author closes with the clarion¬call: “No deal is the real deal and the left should unite in pursuit of that end. You might call it government of the people, by the people and for the people.”...

Let boat people in!

Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott’s interview on Radio 4 Today, 28 December, marked a new, abject low in the Labour leadership’s timidity and triangulation over migration policy. A sharp rise in migrants attempting to cross the Channel in flimsy boats and dinghies – a desperate, dangerous prospect that police have likened to “trying to cross the M25 at rush hour on foot” – saw forty people, including children, rescued from boats in the early hours of Christmas Day. The best response our Shadow Home Secretary could muster was: it would be “quite wrong” to intentionally leave people to drown...

NUS leaders plan coup this month

On 15 January, the Trustee Board of NUS, the National Union of Students, will meet to vote to approve the calling of a Company Law meeting. This will be made up of an appointed person from each student union (likely to be the President or CEO). Our source says delegates will be encouraged to “attend” remotely and vote via email to guarantee no disruption from students. Company Law meetings are usually only used to ratify constitutional changes passed by National Conference. The “reforms” being pushed by NUS leaders on pretext of a financial crisis could be ratified and set in stone by such a...

Orban rewrites history

The Orban government in Hungary has removed the statue of Imre Nagy in Budapest in a overnight secret operation. Nagy was the liberalising Stalinist who was returned to power by the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He was overthrown by the Russian invasion which put down the revolution, and then executed in 1958. Nagy is not our hero. For most of his career he was a Stalinist apparatchik. But for many Hungarians he is a symbolic martyr of the Hungarian revolution. In 1989, he was rehabilitated under popular pressure and 200,000 people turned out for his reburial. That was a key event in the...

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