Solidarity 274, 13 February 2013

The cuts, where we're at

Vicki Morris reviews the cuts made so far by the Conservative-Lib Dem government, and the state of the anti-cuts movement. The Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition Government formed in May 2010 quickly moved to make cuts, in an attempt, they said, to reduce the budget deficit that was largely the result of the banks bailout. The real effect of the cuts — and their aim — has been to slash the welfare state. We are still near the start of the process, but already the Tories and their Lib Dem partners are causing real suffering to working-class people. Starting as they mean to go on In May 2010 the new...

Advertise on May Day

Solidarity is inviting trade union branches, Trades Councils and other left and labour movement organisations to take out May Day greetings and advertisements in our May Day issue, which will appear in the week beginning Monday 29 April. A 78mm x 84mm, two-column advert costs £15, and a 78mm x 174mm three-column advert is £25. Organisations should send artwork and text by Friday 26 April to solidarity@workersliberty.org . All funds will contribute towards our May Day financial appeal. Help us raise £15,000 by May Day 2013. You can contribute in the following ways: * Taking out a monthly...

Benefit cuts hit 27 million

Over 27 million people will be affected by the benefit cuts due to kick in from April. 11.5 million children will be among them. The cuts will hit at least 9.5 million out of the UK’s 22 million households. Labour leader Ed Miliband has focused on the “bedroom tax”, a cut in housing benefit for all council or housing association benefits who are deemed to have spare bedrooms. “He is making disabled people in council and housing association homes pay more when they need more space due to their disability. Divorced parents whose kids come to stay are being affected. Grandparents will pay more....

Not in our backyard?

On 30 January, Cumbria county council voted against allowing further surveys to see if an underground dump for spent nuclear fuel can be safely built in its area. According to the Financial Times , “county councillors, who face elections in May, cited public opposition as the reason for their vote to withdraw. Tens of thousands have campaigned against hosting the dump, saying it would ruin the Lake District’s tourism industry and threaten health”. In fact the vote was a triumph for the NIMBY (“not in my back yard”) principle, similar to the frequent blocking of wind turbines by local...

Lincoln, slavery and self-emancipation

I’m interested by Eric Lee’s idea that Quentin Tarantino’s takes on Nazism and American slavery (Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained) promote the idea of self-emancipation, unlike Steven Spielberg’s (Schindler’s List and Lincoln). But I don’t agree that “the reality is that it wasn’t Black slaves who brought down slavery” but “a mostly (though not entirely) white army led by a white man”. Of course I am not denying the role of the US army in the US Civil War. Nonetheless, American slaves played a central role, perhaps the central role, in their own emancipation. Just before the Civil War...

Syria: inadequate slogans and inadequate logic

In responding to my criticism of the resolution passed on Syria at the AWL National Committee on 5 January this year, Colin Foster seizes on one minor aspect of my argument to teach us all a lesson about the tricky business of formulating adequate political slogans. Given that Colin and myself are in absolute agreement on this matter, why am I bothering to respond once more? Because unfortunately, Colin has picked on what he must imagine to be the weakest aspect of what I wrote. By concentrating his fire on this “weakness”, he has failed to take up my points regarding the faults and...

NUS should build on local battles

On 8-10 April the annual National Union of Students conference will take place in Sheffield. The student movement must take this as an opportunity to set NUS on a new, decisive course. The NUS leadership took a battering during the student mobilisations of 2010-2011, when then-President Aaron Porter denounced student demonstrators and offered no support to the movement against the fee hike. Porter was hounded off demonstrations — even symbolically “kettled” by leftwingers during a Labour Students Conference in 2011! — and pushed out of office. The NUS leadership might like to think that they...

Gove backs down

Education Secretary Michael Gove is to scrap his proposals to replace some GCSE exams with a new English Baccalaureate Certificate (EBC). Gove’s initiative was the inevitable result of his “back to basics” approach to education; seeking a reputation as a reformer (and the support of the Tory right wing) he has hit the education sector repeatedly — undermining terms and conditions, reducing pensions and introducing the divisive and discriminatory Academy Phase Two programme. This humiliating change in policy is doubly ironic. Firstly, the majority of the critical committee were Conservative MPs...

Obama: licensed to kill?

A US channel has leaked a document written by US government lawyers which argues that it is lawful for the President to kill US citizens just so long as “an informed, high-ranking official” declares that the citizen presents a “continuing” threat to the US. It is not necessary for a specific attack on the US to be in process. The document claims that the courts can play no role in evaluating these declarations, so if the US military targets and kills a US citizen whom an official has declared the citizen to be a target, there is no basis for challenging the killing in court. The document was...

Market worship leads to tragedy

Robert Francis’ report into the neglect and abuses at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust is 2,000 pages of horror stories about a hospital trust that was celebrated by NHS bosses and that went unnoticed by a “plethora” of regulators. The abuses included: patients being left in excrement in soiled bedclothes for lengthy periods; water left out of reach so patients was forced to drink out of flower vases; patients denied help with eating and left to go hungry. The Trust had an abnormally high death rate and many patients were denied their basic human dignity even in death. The report concludes...

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