Solidarity 610, 20 October 2021

The Labour Party’s “future candidates programme” released its latest results on 15 October. It was first introduced under the Miliband leadership. Starmer has modified the criteria to allow people who have only recently joined the party to apply, but, more to the point, those selected are broadly supportive of Starmer, and Momentum reports that all left-wing applicants have been unsuccessful. The programme itself will consist of a mix of webinars and face-to-face learning with marking and graded outcomes! Left-wing Labour members should have no truck with this sort of candidates programme. It...

"I am angry that the working class movement built this, but now it’s the corporations who profit off this.” “I hope [housing companies] think ‘Oh, the Germans are crazy. Your money is not safe in Germany’. This would be great.” - Two supporters of the Berlin housing referendum, quoted Vice Germany’s 26 September general election was a mixed bag for the left. The conservative coalition was ejected from office for the first time since 2005, with the Social Democratic and Green votes rising substantially from 2017, the Christian Democratic vote plummeting and the far-right Alternative for Germany...

The Campaign Against Empty Homes held an online rally on Saturday 9 October to highlight the fact that half a million homes in Britain are without a permanent resident. A shocking statistic when homelessness stands at 280,000 in England alone according to the last official figure. One of the big ideas of the rally was to push for retrofitting homes over knocking buildings down, as this is better for the environment than new builds. Carla Denyer, Green Party co-leader, said: “Many of our big cities are becoming hollowed out.” Because of the issue of empty homes, she believes that investors...

On February 1, 1968, two sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were riding on the back of a garbage truck when the compactor accidentally activated. Both men were chewed up, like garbage. The deaths led to a strike by the city’s 1,300 sanitation workers and the participation of Martin Luther King Jr., ending with his assassination. Little did the striking workers know “that their decision would challenge generations of white supremacy in Memphis and have staggering consequences for the nation”, as Michael K Honey put it in Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis...

John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington and former Shadow Chancellor, spoke to Sacha Ismail. After Labour Party conference, what do you think will happen with Starmer’s leadership? Do you think he’ll be around for a long time? It’s impossible to tell at the moment. At the conference he used the traditional Blairite, Mandelson playbook. Attack your own party to demonstrate you’re a strong leader; do a big personal speech to try to demonstrate you’re a normal human being; make banal statements instead of policy commitments. It didn’t work: the bounce in the polls didn’t happen. The...

See other articles in this debate here . At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign power like someone standing outside of nature – but that we, n flesh blood and brain, belong to nature and exist within its midst, and that all the mastery of nature consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.” - Engels, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man I think Matt Cooper takes a too narrow definition of “metabolism” as a rather dull process...

The Israel-Palestine composite passed at Labour Party conference is widely considered a victory for the left, like other policy votes there. In fact it is not. It includes no solidarity with democratic and socialist forces on the ground, such as the Jewish-Arab movement Standing Together in Israel and trade union and other groups. Instead it looks exclusively to big-power “sanctions” “against actions by the Israeli government that are illegal according to international law”. It is not for us to object to diplomatic leverage such as that from the USA which pushed Israel to withdraw from Sinai...

The victory of the left in the national executive council (NEC) elections of the public services union Unison in June was a major opportunity to transform the country’s largest union. Unison has been politically and industrially timid with little fight against privatisation, losses of jobs and services or real-term pay cuts. Democratising the union is essential so members can debate and decide a new strategy for the union. The union’s largest service groups, Health and Local Government, have both rejected pay offers but there has been no forum to discuss how to win ballots under constraints of...

Update: Brighton council refuse workers voted on 18 October to accept a deal in their pay and conditions dispute. See here . A GMB organiser spoke to us on 14 October about the strike by refuse workers in Brighton , who have a long history of standing up for their rights . • Visit picket lines early mornings at Hollingdean Depot, Upper Hollingdean Road, Brighton BN1 7GA. Pickets on Friday 15 October, then off for three days, back on morning Tuesday 19 October. • Donations to GMB Brighton branch, account 42004718, sort code 60-83-01. • Messages of solidarity to mark.turner@brighton-hove.gov.uk...

I speak to one of the Extinction Rebellion (XR) coordinators over the weekend to ask about potential anti-incinerator action at my workplace. XR: “We’ve not planned anything in this city. XR Zero Waste are targeting Edmonton and other places in the south — I’ve not heard about anything here. To be honest our XR group is barely holding it together, and they’re quite a tame lot.” Me: (laughing) “Well, my company are shitting themselves anyway.” We talk about the attitudes at the plant, and the confusion with the Insulate Britain action. XR activist tells me about the conflict over Insulate...