Solidarity 365, 20 May 2015

German rail strike shows the way

A much needed reminder of the power of organised labour in a rich and advanced economy is currently being demonstrated in Germany. Freight and passenger train drivers for Germany’s Deutsche Bahn recently completed the latest of their strikes over wages and conditions. Their confidence and determination is growing in what is already a 10 month-old dispute. The latest action was the longest strike in the rail operator’s history, lasting for six days and costing German business an estimated £360 million. The wailing of German bosses at that £360 million hit was still echoing around marbled...

The plight of the Rohingya boat people

Thousands of Rohingya migrants, fleeing Myanmar, may be facing death as they drift in the Andaman Sea in boats provided by and now abandoned by people smugglers. The Rohingya, a persecuted minority in Myanmar, are being turned away from Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. Boats reaching the coasts of these countries are being towed back out to sea and left adrift after being handed basic provisions, despite starvation, disease, and increasing violence on the boats. The UN now estimates as many as 8,000 migrants are adrift, and that as many as 25,000 migrants set off from the Bay of Bengal...

Manchester occupies

On Wednesday 13 May students occupied part of the Manchester Business School, Manchester University. They reclaimed the space, which was being redeveloped into a £50 million “executive education centre”, in protest at the Tories’ continuing marketisation in education. The university has prevented anyone else entering the occupied area through aggressive security measures. Initially management were also preventing deliveries of food to the occupation, but backed down on this measure following after national media attention. The University’s management are still refusing to let anyone into the...

Jacques Morand, 1938-2015

Jean-Claude Kerjouan, known in his political activity as Jacques Morand or Illy, died on 10 May, at the age of 77. He was a leader of the L’Etincelle group in France, with which AWL have collaborated for many years. L’Etincelle is now a group within the NPA (New Anti-Capitalist Party), but was previously, from the early 1990s until it was expelled in 2008, a faction in another large French revolutionary socialist group, Lutte Ouvriere (LO). As far as we can see Lutte Ouvriere has published no tribute to Morand. Yet for many decades he was a leader of LO. He joined in 1956, as a high-school...

Unite and a new Popular Front

“ … The [Labour] party’s leaders in parliament know that if they were to lose Unite, there could be an English Syriza formed with more resources and dynamism than the party it would replace”, Counterfire It hasn’t been widely publicised, but for the last couple of years Unite leader Len McCluskey has been saying that in the event of Labour losing the general election, Unite would seriously consider disaffiliating from the party. Many of us considered this a bizarre position to take: surely the aftermath of a Labour defeat, and the ensuing ideological struggle between the Blairite right and...

England right, Scotland left?

One story being told about the 7 May election is that Scotland has become left-wing, and England right-wing. Labour lost, so they say, because it was too left-wing for England and too right-wing for Scotland. A likelier explanation is that the SNP was able to project itself as both a bit left-wing, and safe, whereas Labour’s combination of general talk against “predators” with extravagantly cautious and tiny policies left it looking neither really left-wing nor really safe. The SNP was able to scoop up a swathe of middle-of-the-road, disaffected-leftish, or left-on-some-things-right-on-others...

Unions are not to blame for Labour's defeat

When Jim Murphy announced he was standing down Murphy claimed that he had been “at the centre of a campaign by the London leadership of Unite the Union, (who) blame myself or the Scottish Labour Party for the defeat of the UK Labour Party in the general election.” “Sometimes people see it as a badge of honour to have [Unite General Secretary] Mr McCluskey’s support. I see it as a kiss of death to be supported by that type of politics… We cannot have our leaders selected or deselected by the grudges and grievances of one prominent man.” “The leader of the Scottish Labour Party doesn’t serve at...

Make sure Murphy goes!

After surviving a no confidence vote by 17 votes to 14 at the meeting of the Scottish Labour Party Executive Committee (16 May), the Party’s leader Jim Murphy tendered his resignation. Murphy’s election as Scottish Labour leader last December was the product of a carefully orchestrated plot by Blairite MSPs and Scottish Labour MPs. Last summer Murphy was given the lead role in the Better Together campaign, in order to raise his profile. The Blairites then triggered the resignation of incumbant leader Johann Lamont’, reportedly by circulating a statement of no confidence in her. With Lamont...

Oppression, liberation and disability

As we wage the fight of our lives against Tory government attacks on disabled people, it may seem that discussing “models” of disability is an irrelevance, a distraction, a waste of time. But the approach we use to understand disabled people’s position in capitalist society makes a big difference. Understanding oppression lays the foundation for an effective struggle for liberation. There are several “models” used to describe disability. The two most prominent are the medical and the social models. In short, the medical model sees the person’s physical or mental impairment as the problem, and...

Disability campaigns spearheading resistance

The Tory majority government will be disastrous for disabled people, even more than it is already. Over the last five years disabled people have borne the brunt of the cuts — losing nine times more, in financial terms, from their benefits and services, than other people. If you add all the current and already proposed cuts in benefits and services together, the total financial loss for disabled people up to 2018 will be £28.3 billion. Things like the ending of the Independent Living Fund, the ending of the Severe Disability Premium with the introduction of Universal Credit. Now the Tories want...

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