Solidarity 206, 1 June 2011

On 23 May the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) announced that 79% of voting postal workers in London had backed strike action against the closure of three London mail centres. The turnout was around 54%, and over 3,000 London postal workers could now strike in June as they attempt to save Nine Elms, Rathbone Place and the Twelvetrees Crescent centre in Bow. Other major London mail centres not threatened with closure, such as the giant Mount Pleasant site in Islington, also face significant cuts. Mount Pleasant could potentially be reduced to 57% of its current size. Royal Mail bosses...

Adam Curtis documentaries have become their own genre. When you watch one you get an idiosyncratic TV essay, illustrated with a montage of old films, archive footage and adverts. The films are always fascinating but can also be infuriating. Curtis says his latest documentary series, “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace”, is about how the dream of liberation by technology has gone sour. But the programme is more about the idea of self-organising networks and the failure of an ideology of extreme individualism. The first episode ranged from the private life of the novelist Ayn Rand to...

Ratko Mladic, who commanded Serb forces during the Bosnian war of 1992-5, was arrested on 26 May in a Serbian village, and will now face a war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. In July 1995, two of the areas which the United Nations declared “safe havens” in the midst of a fierce war were overrun by Serb forces under Mladic’s command. In Zepa, some 200 people were killed, and the bulk of the population of 40,000 fled. In Srebrenica, over 8,000 civilians were massacred. In classifying the massacre as an act of genocide the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia outlined what...

Top bosses of top companies had a median 32% rise in earnings last year. The total pay of chief executives of the Stock Exchange’s top 100 companies now averages 120 times the wage of the average worker. As recently as 1998, at the start of the Blair years, it was 45 times. Workers’ average earnings grew less than two per cent last year, in money terms. In real terms, on average, we ended up two per cent worse off. For the 40% of households above the poorest ten per cent, but below average, a recent report reckoned that our average real incomes in 2015 will be no higher than in 2001, while the...

Greece now faces a threat that its tax collection and privatisation programme could be taken out of the hands of its elected government and put under the control of commissioners appointed by the international banks. It would be a throwback to the days of high imperialism, when from 1881 onwards the financial affairs of Turkey and its subject nations were controlled not by its own government but by an internationally-appointed Ottoman Debt Administration. In a way it would be only a formalisation and nailing-down of what already exists informally. In Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, the three...

On 28 May the racist EDL held a demo in Blackpool. It was about two teenagers whom the police suspect had been sexually exploited prior to death. Why do the EDL care about these girls? Because the acquitted suspects are from Muslim backgrounds and the girls were white. Charlene Downes and Paige Chivers were both from Blackpool. Fourteen-year-old Downes disappeared in 2003. Her body has never been found, but it seems likely she has been murdered. A prosecution was brought against shop owners of Jordanian origin, but collapsed. Chivers was 15 and disappeared in 2007. No one has ever been charged...

In Solidarity 3/204, a BASSA activist argues that scabbing and a lack of support were key reasons behind BA cabin crew workers not getting a better deal. Whilst scabbing inevitably weakens any strike, this does not explain why the BA cabin crew action has failed. In fact, the strike was very strong. It caused BA losses of around £150 million. The strike failed mostly because of the union’s lack of demands on the substantive issues, i.e. the introduction of a two-tier workforce with Mixed Fleet. The key demand was “Please negotiate with us”, which is no demand at all. Any dispute will involve...

There were a few years in my life in which I was vaguely interested in the private lives of rock and movie stars. Broadly speaking, I had grown out of that kind of stuff by the time I made it to college. Sometimes I hear tell that friends of mine participate in clandestine relationships with people other than the cohab, or get word of spectacularly inappropriate one night stands between workmates. I will admit to taking brief, prurient interest in such tales, but only because they involve people I know personally. But my indifference to the fact that Manchester United star Ryan Giggs “romped”...

Poverty and all its associated miseries can crush and starve the human spirit, but it can also be the kindle that starts raging fires in individuals and movements. Julia Scurr (née O’Sullivan) was born into, grew up with, and lived with poverty and all the miseries it lavishly spreads so freely; but crush and starve her it did not. Politically active from her late teens, she fought tirelessly against the ills and injustices of capitalism until her early death (at the age of 54) in 1927. At 1905 Julia was working alongside George Lansbury, Dora Montefiore and Keir Hardie; she organised a...

The Rafah crossing, the only entry point to Gaza not controlled by Israel, was opened by Egypt on 28 May. The opening will mean a great deal to the people of Gaza. A Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions activist and socialist based in Nablus, in the West Bank, told Solidarity: “The opening of the border represents the end of the siege, and proof that the corrupt Arab dictatorships were partners in this siege. “Meanwhile, the recent Palestinian protests on Israel’s borders were part of the non-violent resistance and revolution across the Arab world.” Meanwhile the Damascus-based Hamas...