Solidarity 400, 13 April 2016

Universal basic income? Maybe, but how?

Earlier debate on this issue here. The universal basic income (UBI) is the proposal that every adult should receive an unconditional cash benefit. The benefit is given even when the individual is working; it is given if they are looking after children, studying or spending their time on anything else they chose. UBI could, to a degree, replace some state benefits. The idea is that it is not means tested, but it could be counted as taxable income and clawed back from higher earners. The idea of UBI is distinct from a means-tested guaranteed minimum income from benefits as it is a payment to all...

A political campaign to fight the Education White Paper

The Government’s education White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere, is a threat to state education as we know it and to education workers’ pay and working conditions. It will only be defeated by a combination of industrial action by the education workers’ unions and by a political campaign without and within the Labour Party and the labour movement. It is important that this campaign isn’t just left to education workers and parents. The issues affect us all. The campaign must unite education workers, parents, activists and the public. The sheer level of private looting that is being...

Let them in!

On Sunday 10 April 2016, the Macedonian authorities brutally suppressed an attempt by Syrian refugees to cross the border into Greece. Tear gas, plastic bullets, stun grenades and water cannons were used against the refugees, including children, when they tried to scale the fence to cross the border. Médecins Sans Frontières reported seeing 200 people suffering from breathing problems, and another 100 suffering injuries The tear gas used reached camps near by causing families to flee with children to nearby farms to escape the effects of the chemicals. This barbaric treatment of people trying...

Junior doctors: a fight for the NHS

Solidarity spoke to BMA activists about the junior doctors dispute. Emma Runswick is a medical student at Manchester University. She is running in the elections for the BMA’s Council (national executive). I think the dispute is going well. The mood among junior doctors is getting angrier. We are angry about the imposition of the contract, and about the government saying it finds the Equality Impact Assessment’s conclusions about the negative impact on women acceptable. When you interviewed me in February, if you’d asked if there was support for “all out” action, with no junior doctors on...

Indian students oppose right-wing Hindu nationalism

To account for the events unfolding at various central universities in India, it is essential to pinpoint their inception and view them as repercussions of a larger phenomenon. These conflicts are undoubtedly exemplary of what happens when a government affiliates itself with authoritarian and fascist organisations to consolidate power and gradually curb dissent. 9 June 2015, perhaps marked the beginning of this consolidation, as Ganjendra Chauhan, former television personality and current BJP member, was appointed as the Chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India. This was seen as...

We need a class struggle student left

The conference of the National Union of Students meets in Brighton on 19-21 April. It’s the first conference since the left and soft left partially took control of the union last year, winning four of the six full time positions and a majority on the national executive. With huge government attacks in universities, the virtual destruction of further education, the upsurge in the Labour Party, the junior doctors’ strike, a burgeoning fight on academies and other significant battles, it is crucial that the student activist left is built up. But this hasn’t been the most lively year for student...

Trotskyism and Stalinism in World War 2

Review of The Fate of the Russian Revolution, volume 2: The two Trotskyisms confront Stalinism — Debates, essays and confrontations, Edited and with an introduction by Sean Matgamna (798 pp., Workers’ Liberty, London). An examination of Trotskyism as a historical current during World War II, in particular how its appreciation of Stalinism evolved under the impact of events, is certainly a worthwhile and useful project. Despite the trend among many young people today who believe that they can derive an adequate revolutionary ideology strictly from their own experience, I am among those who...

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