Solidarity 373, 19 August 2015

The left should find better allies than Cage

We published this article on the organisation Cage in 2015. With Cage's involvement in 2021-2 protests against the Nationality and Borders Bill, the issues it raises are still unfortunately relevant. [August 2015:] Following the passing of a motion at NUS conference, in April 2015, resolving to work with Cage, the student left has been discussing its view of this organisation. Omar Raii argues that Cage is not an organisation we should support students working with. Issues of the role of the bourgeois state, freedom of speech and Islamism have never been more pressing. David Cameron recently...

Why the Times hates democracy – and Jeremy Corbyn

The Times is establishing itself as the leading advocate of direct action to stop Jeremy Corbyn leading the Labour Party, or leading it for long. Its regular anti-Corbyn editorial diatribes have included a call for Labour MPs to overthrow Corbyn if he is elected, and now (18 August) a call to suspend the election on grounds of supposed irregularities. “Democracy” plays a central role in all this. The Times argues that a victorious Corbyn should be overthrown because he stands outside “Labour's democratic traditions”; and now it has suddenly discovered that the party's new system of electing...

Fascists seen off in Liverpool

The anti-fascist demonstration against National Action’s “white man march” in Liverpool on Saturday 15 August, was a resounding success. The demonstration saw hundreds of loud and proud anti-fascists heavily outnumbering about 20-25 racists trying to organise a march in the city. The fascists were completely unable to organise from the outset, and were besieged several times, including a inside a pub and behind the shutters of the train station’s lost luggage office. They recieved little to no support from the public and were eventually escorted away by swarms of police officers. A Unite...

CEO pay 184 times average

CEOs of FTSE100 companies saw their average (mean) pay increase to nearly £5 million in 2015. Although this was only a slight increase on 2013, these executives have seen their pay go up by over 20% since 2010. Within these figures there are even higher rates of pay. Top of the heap for the second year running is Martin Sorrell, CEO of the public relations and advertising company WPP, who saw his remuneration go up from £30 million in 2013 to £43 million in 2014 — not bad for a company that produces nothing useful at all. In 2014 chief executives earned 184 times what the average worker in...

IDS on your bike, we deserve the right to strike!

On Saturday 8 August, more than 15 activists with Right to Strike took a trip to Chingford to serve Iain Duncan Smith with a high court injunction. Tories and bosses are so keen to take high court injunctions out against our democratically decided strikes that we thought we’d give them a taste of their own medicine. The Tories are proposing that unions in key sectors must get 40% of their members to vote yes in a ballot (not just of those that vote) to have a legal strike. Turns out Iain Duncan Smith only got elected on 31% of the electorate, and the whole government on only 24% of the...

Corbyn: the times they are a' changin'

Jeremy Corbyn spoke to Solidarity during the 2015 Labour leadership election campaign. The campaign has got lots of people, from many different backgrounds, involved and excited. Win or lose how will those people be kept mobilised and organised? Yes, fantastic mobilisation of people around this campaign, which is exciting, because its about hope. Its about inclusion. It's about saying we can all do things strongly together, whatever our ethnic background, faith, or anything else. Whatever the result, we're going to stay together. We'll have to have regional conventions [after the election is...

Leaving the vulnerable to charity

Kids Company — a charity that provided practical, emotional and educational support to deprived and vulnerable inner-city children and young people, in London, Liverpool and Bristol — closed its doors on 5 August due to a lack of funding. Founded in 1996 by Camila Batmanghelidjh, Kids Company attracted significant “celebrity” and governmental support — in 2013 23% of its income came from central and local government and much of the rest from high-profile supporters, including Prince Charles, Coldplay, Richard Branson, J.K. Rowling and others. Why did it fail? The simple answer seems to be a...

Yes to automation, under workers' control

Bruce Robinson replies to me on automation ( Solidarity 372) that he opposes, not all automation or sidelining of traditional skills, but automation of complex and skilled processes (as in the chemical industry) and driverless vehicles. I’ve spent most of the last week or so at a picket line outside a container terminal in the port of Brisbane. The terminal we’ve been picketing has driverless vehicles (automated stacking cranes) which run on rails; the next-door terminal, just over a fence, has driverless vehicles without rails (automated straddle carriers). I’ve heard from miners on the...

The shop stewards who represent the future

Martin Thomas reviews a new book by Paul Hampton – Workers and Trade Unions for Climate Solidarity: Tackling climate change in a neoliberal world. Under the carapace of often sluggish official union responses, a network of “thousands of union [workplace] reps [is] making a substantial contribution towards curbing carbon emissions across the UK”. The movement to have workplace reps active on environmental issues, or to elect special environment reps, was stimulated by official union and Labour government policies, and in some workplaces even by bosses wanting to show a green face. But Paul...

Race, class and the English worker

A review of Satnam Virdee's Racism, Class and the Racialised Outsider. Virdee covers two-hundred years of working-class history, but not as we know it. This is history, he says, “through the prism of race”, a contribution towards “unsettling the academic consensus which equates the history and making of the working class in England with the white male worker.” From the movement to abolish slavery to the rise of black self-organisation in the British labour movement in the 1980s, taking in the struggles of Irish and Jewish workers, the rise and fall of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.