Solidarity 448, 20 September 2017

On 12 September a day of strikes and demonstrations was called in France to oppose new labour laws. This is an edited version of a longer report from Arguments pour la lutte sociale. Macron spoke of “idlers” (then tried to row back, claiming he was talking about his predecessors); of “cynics”, etc. Lots of the media has been peddling tragic, banal anti-strike tripe, and selling the lie that the 12 September rallied virtually no-one but the CGT and its die-hard “battalions”. But they are all kidding themselves, or appearing to; and this is not an expression of their strength, but of their fear...

No-one is a better representative of a united Germany than Angela Merkel. First mocked as [Helmut] Kohl’s girl, Forbes magazine has for some years listed her as the most powerful woman in the world. After Donald Trump’s victory in the US general election, the New York Times describes Merkel as the last defender of the liberal West. Merkel is modern: as a trained physicist, being a housewife is just as alien to her as climate change denial. Against Trump and other xenophobes she defends an open world, and, in spite of grumbling on her right flank, she is doing well at it. Short of a miracle she...

Nominations closed last Sunday (17th September) for the post of Scottish Labour Party (SLP) leader, left vacant by the recent resignation of Kezia Dugdale. There will be two names on the ballot paper: Anas Sarwar and Richard Leonard. Sarwar was a Westminster MP from 2010 to 2015, when he lost his seat in the SNP landslide. In 2011 he was elected Scottish Labour Party deputy leader but resigned from the post in late 2014. In the 2016 Holyrood elections he was elected as a Glasgow list MSP. Sarwar certainly has money and an election machine at his disposal. His father is a multi-millionaire, a...

I suspect a sentence in the editorial of Solidarity (447) said something different from what the writer intended: “For Labour to back a Tory amendment on a single market would be a mistake”. Presumably it was meant to read “the single market”. But why a mistake? Labour should have a distinct policy, based on working-class solidarity across Europe, further reduction of borders, free movement, etc. If Labour limits its message to just a vote for a liberal-Tory pro-single-market amendment, that will be bad. But the problem will be with the limiting, not with the vote. We want to change some...

Andrew Coates is an astute critic of the state of the international left, so I’m grateful for his review of the book, The Russian Revolution: When the workers took power. Andrew is right to identify the Bolshevik party as the main locus of the book, since it was this party that made the difference in 1917 (compared with revolutionary situations in Germany, Italy and elsewhere) and it the Bolshevik model that is most relevant for revolutionary socialists today. Andrew raises important questions about the party and about democracy after the revolution. The book is mostly about 1917 and the...

Sergei Udaltsov, one of the leaders of the Russian Left Front was freed on August 8 after spending four and a half years years in a penal colony, convicted for inciting to violence in connection with the 2011-2012 mass protests against electoral fraud. He was also accused of accepting money from shady businessmen from Georgia and Moldova, allegedly to sow discord and chaos into Russian society; human rights campaigners have called these accusations and his imprisonment politically motivated. His freeing has been welcomed by the leaders of various movements of the Russian opposition, but is...

On 13 September Labour passed a motion in Parliament protesting at this year’s rise in tuition fees from £9,000 to £9,250 per year. While the motion was not legally binding, it has been reported in the mainstream press as a dent to the democratic legitimacy of the government’s policy to raise fees in line with inflation. On 17 September there was seemingly even more substantial news — the government may consider lowering fees to £7,500 from 2018-9! Isn’t the government starting to buckle under the pressure of the young people and students who voted and campaigned in large numbers in support of...

Higher Education has been devastated by recent reforms. Further Education has been hit even harder. We’re facing staff cuts, course cuts, rent hikes in halls, a student mental health crisis, institutions catering to the interests of big business at the expense of staff and students. All of these have their roots in or have been exacerbated by rising fees, debt and marketisation. They all have their solution in a free, accessible and democratic education system. That’s why we’re marching on 15 November. We could be on the verge of winning free education. On campuses across the country we’ve...

A consistent trend across universities is the skyrocketing of rent in university halls. There is no reason why rent should be so high and increasing at the rate it is. So why is my rent so high? Since 2010 direct funding to universities has been completely cut and now universities are entirely reliant on your £9,000+ fees for funding. Whereas before university funding was always guaranteed, now it is insecure — universities now need to spend copious amounts of money on PR, visit days and brochures, to attract your loans. However, it also means that universities look for other ways to make...

Across the country, university bosses are announcing cuts to jobs, courses and departments. Teesside has forced all of its professors to reapply for their own jobs and banned their trade union from a meeting to discuss it. Durham wants to recruit 4000 more students while cutting staff. The Open University plans to slash a quarter of its budget, meaning swathes of jobs, to pay for a “digital transformation” plan. Many of these universities are in good financial shape, and the government has not recently cut overall funding. So why are the cuts happening? First, gaming the new Teaching...