Solidarity 184, 4 November 2010

The biggest-ever "leak" of official documents in history has filled in the picture of brutal US floundering in Iraq. 391.832 files - daily reports by US military units to their commanders from 2004 to 2009 - have been passed on to WikiLeaks and then analysed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London. The leaks include no sensations. Units wrote their reports so as to present themselves as behaving properly and following orders. Some of the reports we now know to be attempts to cover up incidents which have since - because of other whistleblowing - led to court-martials. It is the...

Trade union structure, and labour law, is very different in France from in Britain. The French unions have responded much more vigorously to the cuts than British unions. Yet union membership rates in France are much lower than in Britain - about 8% on average, 15% in the public sector and 5% in the private sector, compared to about 28% in Britain. And, despite first impressions, overall rates of strike action in France are not hugely higher than in Britain. In 2006 and 2007, the most recent years for which strike figures are available for France, striker-days in France totalled 1,421,000 and...

Benefit cuts over the next 4 years: £18 billion Cuts in education and local services: £16 billion Bank profits for this year alone: £28 billion. Even bigger sums than those the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition say "must" be cut from benefits and services for the worst off are being pocketed as increased profits, top salaries, and bonuses by the ultra-rich. Between now and 2014-5, the government plans to cut £18 billion from benefits, £16 billion from education and local services, and another £30-odd billion from other sectors. The total cuts in spending come to £81 billion if you include £10 billion...

Do the cuts have to be as big? Or as fast? There is much debate about that. But what about the basic assumption - that there has been "too much" social spending? "Too much" for what? Q. There has been too much social spending, hasn't there? So the Government has to cut. A. You mean there has been too much social provision for old people? There have been too many teaching assistants in schools? Poor people have had too much housing? In theory, such things could happen. If there were so many teaching assistants and care workers that there were not enough people left to produce basic food and...

The announcement in last month’s Comprehensive Spending Review of cuts to social security benefits, together with planned job losses of fifteen thousand in the Department for Work and Pensions over the next two years, represents the clearest attack yet on the structure and principles of the modern welfare state created by the 1945 Labour government. The cut that has attracted most media attention – withdrawing Child Benefit from children with a parent earning enough to pay the top rate of income tax (currently just under £44,000 a year) – had already been trailed at the Tory party conference...