Solidarity 143, 4 December 2008

The one they won’t bail out

Two years ago the Christmas savings club Farepak went bust. Its 150,000 customers — predominantly low-income and female — have still not received a penny of compensation for the £40 millions which they lost. Farepak customers deposited money with the savings club from January to October each year. In November they would be issued with the equivalent value in the forms of vouchers, provided by Choice Gift Vouchers (CGV). The retailers in whose shops the vouchers were used would return the vouchers to CGV. The latter, in turn, would send the vouchers on to Farepak and reclaim their value in cash...

Indian left fights communalism

Achin Vanaik is professor of politics at the University of Delhi. He spoke to Martin Thomas from Solidarity about the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai (26-29 November). First we asked about the background to the attacks, and how they fit into the pattern since the demolition by Hindu chauvinists of the Babri mosque in 1992, and the attacks on Indian Muslims in the following months. The destruction of the Babri mosque was obviously a landmark event in terms of the communalisation of the Indian polity, but this particular attack — given the fact that the targets were foreigners, and it was...

No to war on Pakistan!

Mainstream politicians in India have been claiming that it's basically Pakistan behind it. There’s an escalation of tension, very much in line with the usual thing — whenever there's anything like this, the blame is focused on Pakistan as the main enemy. Congress has been trying to outdo the BJP in this. Although the BJP has led the way, Congress always tries to be as anti-Pakistan and as communalist as the BJP, particularly now with elections soon. In September there were the bombings in Malegaon, in Maharashtra. Recent investigation had revealed the role of Hindu communalists in those...

India: history, politics, terror

India has a population of 1.1 billion, reckoned to be 80% Hindu, 14% Muslim, and the rest Christian, Sikh, and others. Since independence from Britain in 1947, Indian politics has mostly been dominated by the avowedly secular Congress party, now in government; but the last decade or more has seen the rise of the Hindu-chauvinist BJP, based mainly on upper-caste Hindus, and linked to openly-fascistic Hindu militias. The BJP led governments in 1996 and 1998-2004. Both BJP and Congress, since the early 1990s, have been pushing policies of deregulation, privatisation, and engagement in world...

Workers of the world

Iran In late November, Education International (international federation of teaching unions) received information from contacts inside Iran that Kurdish teacher activist Farzad Kamangar was being prepared for execution in the notorious Evin Prison. There was a flurry of activity, with many thousands of people around the world responding to the request to email Iranian president Ahmedinejad against Kamangar’s execution. Latest reports suggest that Kamangar is still alive, but he remains in imminent danger. Kamangar has been convicted of involvement with the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) but his...

Making High Street clothes at 14p an hour

Between 3 and 11 December the anti-sweatshop campaign, No Sweat, will be touring with members of the National Garment Workers Federation of Bangladesh. This grassroots union federation has been at the frontline of a recent wave of strikes and riots. Like the shopworkers in this country, the garment workers of Bangladesh have never felt any benefit from the bumper profits made by the high-street giants. From garment workers being paid 14p an hour through to checkout staff in London on £6 an hour, surplus value is extracted at every opportunity, with each hour of sweated labour contributing to...

The Roosevelt New Deal myth

The choice of expression “New Deal” is of course not accidental. It is quite explicit in the report. The authors state: “Drawing our inspiration from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s courageous programme launched in the wake of the Great Crash of 1929, we believe that a positive course of action can pull the world back from economic and environmental meltdown.” They also draw on “a succession of left leaning politicians” as well as Roosevelt, Leon Blum and Clement Attlee. “But the instigator and genius behind this radical re-ordering of society was the British economist, John Maynard Keynes”. The...

What’s wrong with the Green “New Deal”?

In recent months the idea of a “Green New Deal” has become an ubiquitous answer to the current economic and environmental crises. Barack Obama has alluded to it. The TUC has backed the idea. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has come out for it, endorsed by UK Environment Minister Hilary Benn. A self-selected Green New Deal Group includes Caroline Lucas MEP, Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott, Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper and others. In July this year the group published its first report. According to its proponents, the Green New Deal consists of two main...

Hunger

Whatever your opinion of the Irish Republican movement, and we have criticised it over many years, the events that took place inside the Maze Prison remain an incredible display of political courage. The film Hunger, coming eighteen months after the famous “Chuckle Brothers” scene of Ian Paisley sitting beside Martin McGuiness, gives some historical context to the cozy bourgeois relations now enjoyed by the leaders of the IRA and DUP. The film starts in rural Northern Ireland. We follow a prison warden with bloodied knuckles on his way to work at the Maze prison outside Belfast. On arrival...

The lessons of the “Baby P” case

Whoever is to be blamed, and however the degrees of blame are to be portioned out, the bottom line is that “Baby P” was killed after a horrific 18 month life, during all or most of which he was repeatedly beaten and physically injured by his mother, and her partner, and, perhaps, the lodger. Other articles: Haringey; why the "business model" didn't work, by Pauline Bradley, from Solidarity 3/142 A reply to the criticisms in the comments below, by Sean Matgamna. This happened while the family was being supervised by the social services and “Baby P” was known to be at risk. Everyone involved...

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