Solidarity 595, 2 June 2021

"This is about the kind of world we want to live in"

Ali Treacher is a care worker, Unite the Union activist and workplace rep, and Secretary of the Care and Support Workers Organise! network (CaSWO!) She is also a supporter of Anti-Capitalist Resistance . She spoke to us about care workers' fight. CaSWO! has been meeting throughout the last year, since the start of the pandemic, after a Unison-organised call which brought together care workers around issues like workplace health and safety and PPE. The initial focus was basically offering each other solidarity and advice and sharing information. Government guidelines were so vague that we had...

Racist war in the USA, 1921: the Tulsa Massacre

The first of a series of articles on the Tulsa Massacre of June 1921, and events which led up to and surrounding it. Part two here and part three here . In June 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Donald Trump announced an election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma: his first real-world public campaign event since the outbreak of the pandemic, and while infections were still running very high. Despite the Trump campaign’s embarrassing failure to come anywhere near filling the venue, the rally did result in a spike, with new cases...

Malm's "Fossil Capital": mired in slurry

Andreas Malm’s writings on climate change have been widely lauded across the left in recent years, including in Solidarity (Zack Muddle, 588 , 14 April 2021). In my view, Malm is a charlatan, a pretentious poseur, who sows confusion on Marxism and climate change politics. This became clear with his book Fossil Capital (2016) and has worsened subsequently. Fossil Capital Britain was the first industrial capitalist state. Climate scientists estimate that Britain accounted for 80% of global emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion in 1825 and 62% in 1850. Therefore accelerating fossil fuel...

Batley, blasphemy and the religious right

After the Batley Grammar School row , which led to protests outside the school, teachers being suspended, and one going into hiding for his own safety, the teachers have been reinstated. On 27 May an independent investigation commissioned by Batley Multi Academy Trust found that teaching staff at Batley Grammar School who had shown one of the Charlie Hebdo images of Mohammed “genuinely believed that using the image had an educational purpose and benefit, and that it was not used with the intention of causing offence. The image was included to initiate a discussion about the meaning of...

Steel jobs under threat from Gupta sale

Sanjeev Gupta, the owner of Liberty Steel, has announced he intends to sell-off the steelworks at Stocksbridge, South Yorkshire, which were taken over by Liberty, part of the Gupta Family Group (GFG), from Tata Steel in 2017. GFG, currently under investigation by the Serious Fraud Squad following the collapse of the finance company Greensill (for whom David Cameron lobbied), is using the livelihoods of the 750 steelworkers at Stocksbridge as a financial pawn to pay off Gupta’s £1 billion debt to Credit Suisse, inherited when Greensill collapsed in March. Liberty Steel has sites elsewhere...

McVitie's factory: more strategy needed

Around 250 people turned up on 22 May for a rally protesting the proposed closure of the McVitie’s biscuit factory in the East End of Glasgow. The focus of the campaign against closure is a cross-party alliance to demand intervention by the Scottish Government to guarantee the factory’s future. Having the local Tory councillor denounce Pladis (owners of McVitie’s) for treating the workforce with contempt probably helps build confidence (“everyone is on our side”). But, for obvious reasons, it also lacks credibility. Demanding intervention by the Scottish Government also makes sense. Some 700...

Go North West: gains and concessions

As we reported in Solidarity 591 (5 May 2021), sustained strikes by bus drivers at Manchester’s Go North West succeeded in forcing bosses to back down from their plans to use “fire and rehire” tactics to impose new contracts. The dispute has now been formally settled, with drivers voting by a 79% majority to accept a deal that sees the “fire and rehire” plan scrapped. The strike ran to 12 weeks in total, the longest bus workers’ strike in British history. Two workers sacked during the course of the dispute have been reinstated, with disciplinary charges against 37 more dropped. An above...

Diary of an engineer: Reshuffle in the power plant

One of the operators is retiring, and we gather in the control room for presents, leaving speeches, a raffle and a free lunch. The man retiring is T, “the Scotsman”, with the driest sense of humour on the plant. The Ops team gift him a fishing rod and a bottle of famous grouse, and G makes a speech about how “we’ll all miss T’s constant stream of abuse.” When T speaks, he’s very serious: “It’s been an absolute pleasure to work with you these past 35 years. I’ve made some great friends here — unfortunately they’ve all started leaving, so it’s time I went too. “Covid has made me think about my...

Kino Eye: Wedding in Galilee

Wedding in Galilee , an early Palestinian feature film, was directed by Michel Khleifi in 1987. Abu Adel, a Palestinian village mayor, wants to celebrate his son’s wedding in traditional style, but the local Israeli military commander insists the curfew regulations must be observed (the film is set in the period of “military government” of Arab areas inside Israel). Eventually, he agrees to let the wedding go ahead but on condition that he and his officers attend, to which the Mayor reluctantly concedes. Unsurprisingly, the presence of the soldiers creates tensions. Some relatives threaten to...

Disputes in DVLA, DWP, Parks (John Moloney's column)

Negotiations with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) over safety arrangements at the Swansea complex continue. A strike of contact centre workers there is planned for Wednesday 2 June. There’ll be a members’ meeting on 1 June which will discuss the dispute. Wales has a high vaccination rate, and bosses want to increase the numbers of people working on the site. We’re insisting that the union has a say in those decisions, and they’re not simply unilaterally imposed by management. Our consultative ballots for potential action over workplace safety in the Department for Work and...

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