Solidarity 382, 28 October 2015

A Guardian article of Friday 23 October, by the paper’s political editor Patrick Wintour, continued the recent trend of red-baiting smear stories in the national press. It “revealed” that Jennie Formby, National Political Officer of Unite, had asked questions about the expulsion from the Labour Party of four members or co-thinkers of Workers’ Liberty — Vicki Morris, Liam McNulty, Daniel Randall, and Edward Maltby. Jennie asked why membership of Workers’ Liberty should be a barrier to Labour Party membership when Workers’ Liberty is no longer registered as a separate political party with the...

The capitalist housing market predominantly separates “nice” areas from “rough” areas. In the “nice” areas, people pay higher prices; bigger and posher houses and better shops and amenities and transport facilities are built. In the “rough” areas, only cheap and poor-quality housing is built; shops, amenities, and transport remain poor. The social divide, once established, tends to grow. But the market has cross-currents. Inner cities combine bits where rich people afford high prices to be near to city-centre facilities, and nearby bits where poor people can’t afford not to pay for cramped and...

Putting my finger on exactly when or how I became a socialist is far from easy. I grew up in a working class family. My dad was a printer, and he worked long weeks at the printing press, for many years rotating between day-shifts, late-shifts and night-shifts. He hated his job. As I got older, I began to pay more attention and realised quite how exhausting and onerous the work he did was. When he was made redundant I was in my late teens, and was very aware that losing his sense of security and purpose was hugely damaging to his self-esteem and sense of self-worth. I also grew up in quite a...

The u-turn on South African tuition fees gives us reason to be in good spirits as the UK student movement mobilises and sets outs its demands for a free, fully-funded, accessible education system. With the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) national demonstration for free education and living grants on 4 November and the NUS-called student walk-out on 17 November, it’s worth asking: how will we win? When George Osborne’s July budget scrapped maintenance grants for the poorest students, it was rightly said to be one of the most regressive policies in the budget. Maintenance grants...

Merseyside Labour Left came out of the Corbyn campaign and has kept organising. At our next general meeting, I think we’ll constitute ourselves as a Momentum group, although there’s some discussion about how that’ll work. We have working groups which form left caucuses in each local Party. We have quite large caucuses in some constituencies, others where we have only a small group. We’ve set up working groups for various things. One project is a local labour movement conference, to be held on 28 November. Another working group is organising social events. The local labour movement conference...

The governing party of South Africa, the ANC, has been shaken by a powerful student movement, and has been forced to make significant concessions. Following running battles between #feesmustfall demonstrators and riot police in Cape Town and Pretoria, the ANC announced a freeze on tuition fees for 2016. With inflation running at regularly high rates of around 5% this will represent a real terms cut in tuition fees. This concession has not stopped the protests and many campuses remain shut, with students demanding a fully-funded free education system. This is not a flash in the pan movement...

Belgian trade unions are mobilising against ruling class plans to “do a Thatcher”, cutting pensions and workers’ rights, and removing the automatic link between inflation and wage increases. Following the election of a right-wing Flemish nationalist dominated government last year, Belgian trade unions — divided by political affiliation and linguistic groups — formed a common front and conducted a wave of national demonstrations and regional strikes culminating in a highly effective and well supported general strike on 15 December. The trade union bureaucracy then entered into long and...

During October nine Israelis and 60 Palestinians — including 15 children — have died in violence connected to a spate of Palestinian knife and car attacks. The immediate reason for the spike in violence and renewed Palestinian street protests seems to have been rumours that Israel intended to change long-standing arrangements for worship at Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Provocatively, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, a member of the right-wing Likud party, said recently on television, “My dream is to see the Israeli flag flying over the Temple Mount … It’s the holiest place for...

Two hundred and seventy jobs are directly at risk after Tata Steel announced plans to “mothball” its Dalzell and Clydebridge plants, the final remnants of the Scottish steel industry after the Tories’ de-industrialisation of the 1980s. Hundreds more jobs in local communities which depend on the plants and their workforces are also at risk. The Scottish Labour Party has responded with a range of slightly confusing demands on the SNP government in Holyrood: - Use public procurement powers to ensure that Scottish infrastructure projects place orders with the two plants. - Support short-time...

The SNP will be moving an amendment to the Tories’ Trade Union Bill that the Bill does not apply to Scotland. Of course, the amendment will be defeated. The SNP knows that. In fact, the SNP tabled the amendment at the second reading of the Bill but did not even bother pushing it to a vote. And these are the people who used to denounce Scotland’s then 50 Labour MPs as “the feeble fifty”! Some ‘constitutional experts’ now argue that, having already tabled the amendment but not pushed it to a vote, the amendment cannot be tabled a second time. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant to...