Solidarity 231, 25 January 2012

Since the start of the Thatcher government, in 1979, the rich have been getting spectacularly richer in Britain (as in many other countries), and the gap between rich and poor has been increasing. The gap has continued to increase in the economic downturn since 2008. All the main political parties say that cuts in social spending and a squeeze on wages and benefits are necessary — even if they argue about the extent and the speed — because, as Ed Miliband puts it, “we are not going to have lots of money to spend”. In fact there is lots of money to spend. The question is, who has it, and what...

The people of Scotland have the right to decide whether they want to be part of a common political system with the people of England and Wales, or to separate. For the majority of the readers of this paper, in England, that is the chief issue raised by the current moves for a referendum on Scottish independence. The people of Scotland should have their say. The more clear-cut and simple the referendum question, the more democratic the decision will be. For readers in Scotland, a second question arises: how should they vote in the referendum? Lenin wrote much about socialist attitudes to...

The AWL is growing. We now publish Solidarity weekly, setting up new branches and expanding all areas of our activity. If we are going to continue this, we also need to expand our sources of funds. That’s why we’re launching an appeal to raise £20,000 by the end of August. A donation from you, or a regular standing order, will help. We need money to: 1. Continue publishing Solidarity as a weekly; 2. Establish a fund for publishing high quality books and pamphlets; 3. Improve our website; 4. Organise events such as our New Unionism dayschool next month, and our Ideas for Freedom summer school...

The public sector pensions battle is not dead. The lecturers’ union UCU has called a further strike for 1 March, and activists will be pressing hard for, at least, the civil service union PCS and the teachers’ union NUT to join in on that day. But the campaign has been severely wounded by the decision of the big unions, notably Unison and GMB, to call off action and turn to haggling over detail of the Government’s supposed “final offer” of 19 December, which was in fact only a slight sideways rearrangement of its previous, rejected, formula of 2 November: work longer, pay more, get less. As...

I agree with a lot of Hugh Edwards’s article (“Italy’s corruption crisis needs workers’ solutions”, Solidarity 230, 18 January 2012), especially his scepticism about the Monti government’s crackdown on tax evasion and corruption (which is a structural problem of Italian capitalism and will not disappear just because Berlusconi has been replaced by somebody who does not engage in tax fraud, false accounting and the bribery of public officials). However, I think he is being far too sweeping in his criticisms of the trade union leadership. Or, to be more precise, of the CGIL, since the only...

A few weeks have now passed since Liverpool player Luis Suarez was found guilty of using a racially objectionable word towards Manchester United’s Patrice Evra. But in the storm that followed the incident in the game last October, huge levels of ignorance around racism were shown. The stance that LFC took to defend a player that admitted to using a word that we would describe as racist was extremely disappointing. To say that, because he has always worked with black players, he can’t be racist, and that the word is acceptable in the Uruguayan’s country, is completely irresponsible. The days...

Britain’s biggest union, Unite, “should only fund Labour when it supports [their] policies”, says Jerry Hicks, left challenger in the union’s general secretary election in 2010. Hicks’s article, which has been doing the rounds in the left “blogosphere”, is full of contempt for Unite leader Len McCluskey, accusing him of hypocrisy in attacking a Labour leader whose election he (along with Unison and the GMB) effectively engineered. Hicks exhorts McCluskey to “Stop wringing your hands, stop moaning and stop funding them!” A perfectly reasonable line of argument, surely? Why should unions...

The tragic Costa Concordia sinking off the coast of Tuscany, with the loss of 15 lives and 20 people still missing, has turned the spotlight on the cruise industry, a world dedicated to pandering to the snobbery and greed of the rich and wannabe-rich. In this world every need of the passenger is met by an ever-smiling, grateful and humble crew. The “Jack-the- Lad” captain in charge of the 110 thousand ton vehicle the Costa Concordia was desperate to prove he could bring it to within 150 metres of the little island of Giglio in order to “salute” a former sea captain. This dangerous practice had...

The massive participation of private and public sector workers in the 17 January srtrike called by the Greek union federation PANATIKI showed the working class is willing to resist the most barbaric attacks on their working and living conditions in 50 years. Greek workers face attacks that the President of the Euro group, Jean-Claude Juncker, has predicted “will exceed every imagination”: further redundancies, unpaid work, destruction of collective bargaining agreements and pro-worker legislation, reductions in wages and pensions, cuts to health and education. As unemployment fast approaches...

A meeting of the Atheism, Secularism and Humanism Society at Queen’s Mary’s University in east London on 18 January, discussing “Shari’a Law and human rights”, was cancelled after a man burst into the room, filmed all the attendees and proclaimed he would “hunt down” anyone who insulted the Islamic prophet Mohammed. The incident follows a similar furore at University College London, where the Students Union moved to take disciplinary action against its own Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society after it produced posters with cartoon depictions of Jesus and Mohammed sharing a drink. An...