Solidarity 600, 14 July 2021

Not the dirt we clean

ABM cleaners will be on the frontline of cleaning up after boisterous (and then jubilant/despondent - delete as appropriate) football fans enjoying the Euro 2020/1 final today. They'll have to deal with spills, bodily fluids, and heaps of discarded food and drinks packaging.

This is after a period...

Little choice in CWU election

Nominations in the posts and telecoms union CWU closed recently, providing further evidence of the sharp decline in the activist base within the organisation. Four National Officer posts saw candidates returned unopposed. That includes three that were vacant following the retirement of the previous incumbents. All the new occupants are drawn from the HQ bureaucracy. This is a sad state of affairs given that five-year elections were agreed by a conference, giving rank and file activists the opportunity to challenge incumbents who had previously been elected for life. Such challenges were a...

Tax billionaires to rebuild the NHS!

As lockdown measures are further lifted, the NHS is under huge pressure. Numbers of Covid cases admitted to hospital are rising for a third time, and sickness and isolation levels amongst staff are again increasing. Unlike last year, this pressure is on top of the provision of “normal” services, where, in turn, demand has escalated because of the pandemic. Waiting lists for consultant-led planned hospital treatment stand at a record high of 5.3 million, despite the restrictions on GP referrals over the last year. Last month was also the busiest ever at emergency departments across the country...

Police Bill: restart the fight, drag in the labour movement!

Protests against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (“Police Crackdown Bill”) began again in the week of 5 July, but the Tories have rammed it through the final stage of its passage in the House of Commons. It now goes to the House of Lords.

Labour after Batley and Spen

We are glad Labour’s Kim Leadbeater won the by-election in Batley and Spen, West Yorkshire, on 1 July. But Keir Starmer’s triumphalist rhetoric (“Labour is back… a fantastic victory”) is divorced from reality. Labour won 35.3% to the Tories’ 34.4%, its lowest ever percentage in the constituency. In 2017 it won 55.5% and in 2019 42.7%. On this basis the party would lose dozens of seats in a general election. The trend of Labour losing ground in by-elections continues, despite the Tories’ decade in government and grim Covid record. It may even be that Labour held on partly because some right...

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