Solidarity 345, 26 November 2014

Union revolt in South Africa

The largest South African trade union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), has been expelled from South Africa’s union confederation COSATU by that body’s executive. The reason for this expulsion is that NUMSA members voted in December 2013 at a special conference to refuse to support the ruling ANC in elections. NUMSA wants to move towards a independent workers’ party. The background to this goes back to the struggle against apartheid. In the 1970s and 80s black South African workers were in the forefront of the struggle against the white supremacist state. But moves...

Daesh: a slow fightback

According to the Kurdish website Rudaw, the Syrian-Kurdish forces in Kobane, augmented by peshmerga troops from Iraqi Kurdistan, are now pushing back the ultra-Islamists of Daesh (ISIS, or “Islamic state”). Kurdish commanders in Kobane say that they now control half the city, which is in a Kurdish-majority part of Syria close to the Turkish border, and the other half is “destroyed” by US air strikes against Daesh. Regaining territory, however, is a slow process of street-by-street fighting. In Iraq, on 23 November Daesh launched an attempt to take the city of Ramadi, but elsewhere they have...

Dublin retreats on water fees

On 19 November the Irish government granted some concessions on water charging, in an attempt to quell a wave of increasingly heated protests and demonstrations. Tánaiste Joan Burton had her car surrounded by protestors in Dublin, and Taoiseach Enda Kenny faced a hostile reception at an event in Sligo. Under the new proposals, announced by Environment Minister Alan Kelly, households will be liable for charges of €160 for single adult homes and €260 for all other homes, capped until January 2019. Water conservation grants of €100 a year will also be available, as an incentive to sign up to...

Two thirds of new jobs under living wage

Two-thirds of people who found work in the past year have taken jobs for less than the living wage, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Overall 22% of workers earn less than the living wage. The foundation reports during the last decade only a fifth of low-paid workers managed to move to better paid jobs. As many people from working families are now in poverty as from workless ones. The Trussell Trust reports that record numbers are resorting to food banks. Almost 500,000 adults and children were given three days’ food in the first six months of the current financial year — it was 355...

NHS: we need more than Efford

Labour MP Clive Efford’s Bill on the NHS got through its second reading in Parliament on 21 November with 241 votes in favour and just 18 against. It was a good though unexpected result, though nothing for the government to get worried about. There’s not enough time for the Bill to go too far before the general election next May. The Bill gives an opportunity to have discussion and debate about what changes are needed to restore the NHS; and maybe to get a sneak preview of what Labour has in mind for the NHS. The Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign called a rally outside Parliament to welcome the...

Demand, don't plead: what's wrong with NUS's "Roadmap for Free Education"

As 10,000 students marched for free education in London on 19 November on a vibrant demonstration largely organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC), the National Union of Students (NUS) meekly published a “Roadmap for Free Education”. The NUS full-time officers (FTOs) did all they could to scupper the 19 November free education demonstration – flouting the decision of the union’s National Executive as a whole. They have released the “roadmap” report in order to do the bare minimum on their mandate from the last NUS conference. Since left-wing activists won the debate on...

A tale of two meetings

On Tuesday I stood outside a meeting of Goldsmiths Student Assembly leafleting on behalf of Workers’ Liberty. A motion was to be discussed which would disband the SWP’s student society on campus. Our leaflet said, in brief: the SWP are a degenerate sect, who have been responsible for covering up rape allegations inside their organisation, but don’t ban them, argue with them. A few dozen people took my leaflet, politely, and went in. No fuss. At the meeting, the very little opposition there was to the banning included the AWL; a non-student SWPer turned up to hand out a leaflet. The motion went...

Unity: real steps, or “rebranding”?

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has made another call for left unity (21 November). Sadly, it seems that the SWP aims more to “brand” itself as pro-unity than to get any actual unity. Exits from the SWP in the last couple of years have taken maybe half its previous active membership and made it seem more of an expert on how to get splits than on unity. However, the new call makes no offer to recent splinters from the SWP — Counterfire, ISG, RS21, ISN — of terms on which they could reunite. Understandably, the SWP wants to ease the isolation it has faced since its recent splits and scandals...

William Morris in political context

The William Morris exhibition Anarchy & Beauty at the National Portrait Gallery is well worth a visit for anyone interested in Morris, his art, and the late nineteenth-century socialist movement. The opening section, a rounded appreciation of Morris, is a marked contrast to the common view of him as a largely apolitical purveyor of Victorian handicrafts. As well as some of Morris’s early wallpaper designs and an armchair produced by his collaborator and friend Philip Webb, we find the 1893 paperback edition of News from Nowhere. The justly famous imagining of a less alienated and more...

“If we burn, you burn with us”

“If we burn, you burn with us” — those were the fighting words that rallied support behind the symbol of the rebellion: The Mockingjay. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), when pushed to her limit, became the symbol of hope and change that Panem’s Districts were so dearly in need of. ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1’ was 123 minutes of being on the edge of your seat, almost holding your breath to see what would unfold next. Even though I had read the books, I found that the cinematography, acting, and screenwriting were compelling enough for me lose myself in the narrative. This third...

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