Solidarity 431, 1 March 2017

24 September 2016 gave me a condensed snapshot of the problems which are now generating unease among Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters in the Labour Party. It was the opening day of Labour Party conference. A fringe event sponsored by the pro-Corbyn movement Momentum was just setting up. I knew already that the organisers of the event, The World Transformed, had banned stalls inside the meeting place for left-Labour newspapers and groups. We set up a stall for Solidarity and Workers’ Liberty on the pavement outside the event. We were asked by stewards to move across the road. They were worried about...

On Wednesday 22 February the Supreme Court ruled that the government can impose a £18,600 income limit for UK citizens to bring their non-EU spouses into Britain. Though the Court branded the income limit “particularly harsh”, chastised the Home Office for not taking its legal duties in regards to children, and recognised that the limit had caused hardship for thousands it found that “the minimum income threshold is accepted in principle”. 41% of the British working population, rising to 55% of working women, would be excluded from bringing a non-EU spouse to Britain under the income limit by...

The new head of the Met Police, Cressida Dick, is no departure from tradition for the police. Dick was the designated senior officer in the control room in charge of deciding if a special shoot-to-kill policy was needed on the day that Jean Charles de Menezes was shot and killed in 2005. De Menezes was an innocent man who was shot six times when trying to board a train at Stockwell tube station in south London. A 2007 inquiry found that Dick was not personally responsible but found a catalogue of failings. Yet Dick shows her own colours when in the inquest she stated “if you ask me whether I...

The government wants to reverse the effects of a court ruling which expands the number of people who can claim Personal Independence Payments (PiP). PiP is a non-means tested benefit, meant to provide extra money to people living with serious illnesses, disability or a mental health condition. A recent tribunal ruling had said that claimants with psychological problems who cannot travel without help must be treated like those who are blind. Announcing the government’s plan, No. 10 aide George Freeman said benefits should go to the “really disabled people”. Clearly Freeman doesn’t know what PiP...

The Government’s claim that there is no school funding crisis seems, finally, to be losing all credibility. In December the NUT launched a website which allows anyone in England or Wales to enter their postcode and identify instantly the likely funding losses faced by their local schools in the next three years and how many teachers would need to be removed to meet those cuts. The Tories tried to dismiss the NUT’s figures, claiming that they planned to increase spending on education and that it was higher than under any other government. They also slammed the union for publishing estimates of...

Is the right-wing surge represented by Trump, Brexit, and various right-wing movements across Europe part of a trend? It’s usual to presume that the young are to the left of their elders, and in some ways this is still true. But recent studies of social attitudes appear to show that those who came of age during the period that Tony Blair was in power (people now aged between 27-40) are more right-wing than those who came of age under Thatcher (now aged between 41-58), who themselves are further to the right than the preceding generation. A recent overview of data from social attitudes surveys...

Last month Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias won an internal leadership contest against faction opponent Íñigo Errejón. A temporary truce has now been declared. The following extract from an article by Eoghan Gilmartin, written before the vote, explains the background and is reproduced from Jacobin online magazine. At the core of the dispute [was] the question of how Podemos, a party that traces its origins back to the indignados movement, should approach its new role as a force in the country’s political institutions. The divisions are particularly pointed on the subject of relations with the...

I would not expect to see birds splashing in a fountain on this cold autumn day. But there they are. And they are more than one. Steve Bloom, “Meditations”