Third Camp Marxism

EU

The EU: remain and transform

Some significant workers’ rights are in EU law, such as the TUPE regulations that protect some of our contract terms when we are transferred between employers.

We want strengthening of these rights and new ones too. We demand Europe-wide rules for safe, healthy workplaces free from discrimination and mistreatment, and a legally enforced shorter working week with no loss of pay.

right

Free our unions!

As long as there have been capitalists (employers running business for private profit) and workers, there has been a struggle between them.

About how long the working day is. About how much we’re paid. About how hard we’re made to work.

As bosses squeezed workers to get more profit out of us, workers organised to fight back. An individual worker has little power, but when we organise collectively into trade unions we can force concessions from the bosses.

b/g

Bakhshi and Gholian freed from jail

Esmail Bakhshi, a leader of the Haft Tappeh sugar cane workers in Iran, and Sepideh Gholian, an activist who supported the workers’ dispute, have been released from jail.

They were sentenced in September – to 14 years and 18 years respectively — on all sorts of trumped up charges, including endangering “national security” and “the Islamic system”.

Because they put up resistance while in jail, Sepideh’s brother was arrested in January and Esmail’s mother in February! Then in August Sepideh’s defence lawyer was threatened with arrest.

vote labour then remain

Regrouping the left

Eleven years on from 2008, inequality is spiralling, the signs are that we’re heading for another crash, and mainstream ruling-class politics is veering away from neo-liberalism only towards the nationalist right.

The working classes of the world need a political movement which fights for socialism as working-class self-emancipation, as a full-scale change of society to social ownership and democratic control of productive wealth.

nhs

Restore the NHS

The socialist rule is “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.

The capitalist rule is “from each according to what the hours and effort they’re forced to put in, to get a living; to each according to their wealth”.

Under capitalism, the system where the economy is run for private profit, it is possible to win socialist-type bridgeheads.

The NHS is one of them. You get health care according to your needs, instead of being denied it if you’re badly-off and getting lots if you’re rich.

school stress

For a National Education Service

To produce the goods and services we need efficiently and without exhaustion and destruction – to reshape our economy to avoid climate catastrophe – to add beauty to life – to be informed about our social conditions and equipped to debate and decide on them – we need education.

Decades of battle by the labour movement have won us universal, free education to secondary level, and even the chance for many young working-class people to go on to university.

But the Tories have been stunting that and winding it back.

around 50 people gathered, with signs

Candlelit solidarity with the Chilean uprising

Photos: Rocío Almuna Morales
On Wednesday October 30, "Chilean students, academics and workers in Bristol" held a "Candelight gathering" in support of the general strike in Chile, on the same day. Around fifty people, mostly left-wingers of Chilean origin, gathered and chanted to show support for the strike's demands. This followed a similar sized demo a week prior.

Three demands that the Bristol demo was raising of the Chilean government were:

voting yes

Support the postal workers!

Note: Royal Mail are seeking an injunction to stop the dispute and this will be heard in the High Court on Tuesday 12 November.

A postal worker in South Yorkshire spoke to Solidarity about the Communication Workers’ Union dispute with Royal Mail:

“We are all just waiting for the announcement of strike dates. We’re all excited about the prospect of going on strike. The expectation is that this will be a prolonged dispute. We’re discussing a potential programme of ongoing strikes in the run-up to Christmas.

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