Solidarity 537, 4 March 2020

UCU: taking the struggle forward

How to continue after Easter By a UCU activist As I write, negotiations with the employers are ongoing, and we’re told they’re “constructive”, but we have no further detail beyond that. Greater transparency in these negotiations is essential; rank-and-file members of the union need the right to scrutinise and assess what the employer is putting on the table, and collectively decide how to respond. Lively pickets are being organised in many places, but on the whole the pickets since 24 February seem smaller than the October-November 2019 strikes, and than the USS pension strikes in 2018. Some...

Left challenge in NUS

I will be standing for the full-time position of Vice President Higher Education, in National Union of Students (NUS) elections next month. In that election I will be the only distinctly socialist left candidate, with a clear commitment to support the UCU dispute and to take a clear political stand against marketisation as well as push for piecemeal student demands. Most (but not all) of the candidates across three full-time officer positions are generally leftist, with good commitments, to, for example, restoring free education, closing the BAME attainment gap, improving mental health...

The story of the Polish workers

Buy the book referenced, or listen to the audio, here. This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Solidarność (Solidarity), the Polish independent trade union, at what was then the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk. Solidarność both emerged from and provided the organisational infrastructure for the mass strikes of August 1980. This intense period of struggle thrust strike leaders like Lech Wałęsa and Anna Walentynowicz into the international limelight. With the signing of the Gdańsk Agreement on 31 August 1980, Solidarność became the first independent union to be recognised by a...

Open the borders for Syrian refugees!

For a long time, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been "threatening" to open Turkey’s western borders, and allow the millions of refugees to travel to Europe. Now he is upping the threats and raising the stakes. His aim is not to get better conditions for the refugees. It is to force Europe into greater support of Turkey. Yet, with the renewed attacks on migrants, it is the responsibility of socialists all across Europe to challenge the racist anti-immigration laws being put forward by our governments. In Britain the losses have far outnumbered the victories as Home Secretary Priti...

Trump visit triggers anti-Muslim violence

Late February saw an outbreak of anti-Muslim violence in New Delhi, the urban area around the Indian capital. Although reports vary, they suggest forty-three dead and many hundreds hospitalised. Muslim homes, businesses and mosques were attacked, burned, and destroyed. Most of the dead and injured were Muslim. The trigger for the attack was President Trump’s visit to the city. On Sunday 26 February, a local leader of India's governing party, the Hindu-chauvinist BJP, Kapil Mishra, speaking at a rally, demanded that police clear protests in the city against the BJP’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act...

To bring revolution "down to earth"

The socialist activist and scholar Robert Fine, who passed away on 9 June 2018 at the age of 72, was a long-time sympathiser and sometime activist with Workers’ Liberty. Our series of book reviews to commemorate Fine continues with Political Investigations: Hegel, Marx, Arendt (Routledge 2001). Karl Marx (1818-83) was the first writer to integrate socialist politics with comprehensive and well-documented theories of economics and history. Most working-class socialists since his time have regarded themselves as Marxists to one degree or another, and by now most of us vehemently reject the idea...

The world's housing crisis

A new film, Push , documents the work of a UN Special Rapporteur as she travels the globe to understand the housing crisis. On the face of it, it could be an inspiring call to arms. Unfortunately, it provides few solutions beyond governments working together to tackle global finance. The film title is a nod to the process of gentrification, whereby residents are “pushed” out of their homes to make way for typically more expensive developments. Housing has become a financial asset to be traded at the whims of private equity firms. Meanwhile tenants face ever increasing rents and stagnating...

A landslide for Starmer will be bad

By Sacha Ismail Keir Starmer looks on course to be elected Labour leader by a big margin. Balloting opened on 24 February and will close on 2 April. According to a Survation poll for LabourList, Starmer will win 45% to 34% for Rebecca Long-Bailey and 21% for Lisa Nandy, and beat Long-Bailey 64-to-36% in the second round. According to a YouGov poll, he will win in the first round 53-31-16. The YouGov breakdown is interesting. Among members who have joined since the general election, Starmer has 67%, to 22% for Nandy and only 11% for Long-Bailey. Among those who joined before 2015 it is Starmer...

Indicted for opposing cuts

Disciplinary proceedings have been initiated by the leadership of Glasgow City Council Labour Group against Matt Kerr, who is a candidate in the Scottish Labour Party deputy leader ballot running from 21 February to 2 April. At a City Council meeting a fortnight ago the minority SNP administration proposed a cuts budget. The Labour Group also proposed a cuts budget, with the usual homilies about it being "less painful", "the fault of Holyrood underfunding", "our cuts not as bad as yours", etc., etc. Matt, a Glasgow Labour councillor, decided that he could not vote for either of the cuts...

Combatting antisemitism within the revolution

“Bolshevism has made Russia safe for the Jew. If the Russian idea should take hold of the white masses of the western world, then the black toilers would automatically be free,” wrote the Jamaican-American author Claude McKay in September 1919. By contrast, journalist and playwright Isaac Babel’s description of antisemitism in the Red Army in the years immediately following the October Revolution led him to ask the question: “Which is the Revolution and which the counter-revolution?” Echoing Babel’s question, the writer Ilia Ehrenburg described his experience of waiting to vote in the...

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