Solidarity 504, 1 May 2019

The pro-Farage “left”

On 17 April, George Galloway declared his support for Nigel Farage and his newly formed Brexit Party. Farage is a former Tory, then Ukip leader. He is vehemently anti-migrant. He has called for the NHS to be replaced by “social insurance”, for laws against discrimination at work to be repealed, and for millions of public sector jobs to be cut. Claire Fox, Alka Sehgal Cuthburt, and James Heartfield have been announced as Farage party candidates. They are figures round the online magazine Spiked!, the “legacy” operation of the “Revolutionary Communist Party” of 1978-97. Frank Furedi, the best...

When tests are toxic

On 15 April, NEU Conference narrowly passed a motion to boycott all high stakes summative testing in primary schools. On 21 April, Education Secretary Damian Hinds responded in the Sunday Telegraph with a series of ill-informed claims. Hinds began by likening assessment in primary schools to dental and eye tests. “If something matters, you check that it’s all OK”. Children’s learning matters very greatly, and it should be checked. Happily, this is what primary teachers do. Every single working day. Intrinsic to the work of teaching is the assessment of learning. Such assessment is a...

Union to boycott high-stake school tests; "Stand up for what's right"

On 15 April, the first day of the National Education Union (NEU) conference, delegates voted to ballot primary members for a boycott of all high stakes summative testing, including Key Stage 1 and 2 SATs and the phonics tests. An (electronic) consultative ballot will run from 4 June to 12 July or later. Disaggregated “real” ballots will follow at the end of 2019, in areas and schools where there has been sufficient response to the consultative ballot, and will conclude in January 2020. This was the fourth successive years that supporters of a boycott had put such a motion. They had responded...

Mueller, Trump, and the Putin connection

Sergei Mikailov was in for a nasty shock at his works meeting in Moscow in December 2016. Proceedings started when a bag was placed over his head and he was unceremoniously frog marched out of the room. This was the Lubyanka, and the FSB was cleaning house. Loose tongues had been wagging about Russian interference in the US Presidential election. Mikhailov, deputy head of the FSB’s cyber security arm, soon found himself facing a secret trial which landed him with 22 years in prison for “treason”. Three other servants of Putin’s secret state met similar fates. Such career endings are an...

Debate: retreating up a ladder

This is a reply to Daniel Randall’s polemic in Solidarity 498 against my article in Solidarity 497. More debate on the right of return here. A story. A man begins to think his partner has another lover. He asks her and is told: “Of course not! That’s ridiculous!” He doesn’t want to believe it. But he can’t get rid of the idea. So, scandalously, he takes to following his partner around. He sees her meet someone. They greet each other affectionately, and afterwards he sees them impatiently kiss and grope each other. They go to a flat and to a bedroom. He spies on them with binoculars, through a...

Reading or stagnating?

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or book long enough to suit me.” – C. S. Lewis When I was a young child, I learned an appreciation for the written word through both of my parents reading aloud to me and through listening to audiobooks on long car trips. Somewhere during the dreaded forced reading during my secondary and tertiary schooling, I lost my fascination with reading. Then, over time, with that lack, I noticed other things were lacking. There are so many reasons to read: to inform, to amuse, to connect, to understand, to critique, and so on. Reading is a fantastic way to...

The Glorious Heresies

Lisa McInerney’s The Glorious Heresies is a strong debut novel, which won her the Bailey’s Women’s Prize in 2016. McInerney was already known for her blog, Arse End of Ireland, in which McInerney spoke about the impacts of the financial crash on Ireland’s poorest. The novel continues similar themes, focusing on those forced into the fringes of society in Cork. Ryan is a teenage drug dealer, whose gruff persona masks his hidden inner depths: his talent as a pianist, born of childhood boredom and neglect, and his strong desire not to turn out like his alcoholic father, Tony. A scene where he...

Caring for the NHS

Mark Thomas’ show Check Up: Our NHS at 70 is a whistle-stop and funny tour of what is wrong with underfunding, short staffing and the creeping privatisation of the NHS. In some ways this is Mark Thomas at his softest, and probably on a topic on which he is on very safe ground. But the takeaway message is that inequality, low incomes, poor housing, cuts to social care and local authority services have all combined with the dismantling of the NHS to make the health outcomes for the poorest significantly worse. In Kensington and Chelsea, the residents around the Grenfell tower had a life...

ISO: the picture from Chicago

On 19 April, the International Socialist Organization (ISO), previously the largest far-left group in the US, announced it had completed the process of winding itself up. The decision to dissolve came in the wake of a major controversy over the ISO Steering Committee’s mishandling of a sexual assault allegation in 2013. The row began on 15 March with the publication of a letter from the new ISO Steering Committee elected at the organisation’s national conference in late February. The echoes with the 2013 “Comrade Delta” scandal that led to mass departures from the SWP are difficult to ignore...

Nottingham strike on 4 May

Deliveroo Couriers are to strike again on 4 May in Nottingham, for higher pay and better conditions. They have already struck and held various other actions, winning some small concessions, and are pressing on. Their demands, in line with demands of most groups nationally, are for minimum pay of £1/mile, £10/hour waiting time, greater transparency and visibility within the app, a hiring freeze, no “terminations” without due process and adequate evidence, and more. Nottingham Riders’ Network are well organised, with a comparatively high number of couriers being members of our union, IWGB. When...

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