News

Against the “National Challenge”

The National Challenge scheme, launched in June 2008, is supposed to push up school standards.

Schools have been threatened with being forced to convert into Academies, and could face the loss of specialist status and the removal of funding. The 638 National Challenge schools were selected on the basis that fewer than 30 per cent of their students have achieved five or more A*-C grade GCSEs, including English and maths.

European Central Bank Mario Draghi’s “OMT” programme (6 September) has been hailed as the “bazooka” which will save the eurozone, but it is likely to sharpen the crisis in Greece.

The Saudi Arabian-led blockade of its smaller Gulf neighbour Qatar began on 5 June. The Saudis, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt put in place economic and political sanctions including closing their airspace to Qatari flights, shutting the Saudi-Qatar land border, forcing their citizens to leave Qatar and expelling Qataris from their territories.

Our union (PCS) National Executive Committee will meet this week to discuss a formal position on criteria for any possible return to work. The majority of civil servants can work from home, so there’s no reason why any return to the workplace shouldn’t be voluntary.

Ed Maltby recently visited Tunisia and interviewed a number of Tunisian left activists.

Maher is a facebook activist and blogger.

The role of internet activism in the fall of the regime began before the revolution. We organised a collective online called "anti-ZBA" [ZBA are the initials of Zinedine Ben Ali]. That group's role was to support the demonstrations and prepare people for action.

The ERF [Energy Recovery Facility] where we work is fuelled and funded by bin waste. In a series of morning meetings, we’ve heard that the city’s refuse collection workers are taking strike action over pay and conditions. The first strike day [scheduled for 1 November] was called off after the company made a pay offer, but the GMB drivers’ branch rejected it. The following week, workers and managers at the ERF began discussing the effect on the plant.

Sarah Jane Baker was cleared in court on 31 August of “intentionally encouraging the commission of an offence”.

However, she is still suffering utterly disproportionate punishment, being held in Wandsworth men’s prison, because parole authorities have revoked her “licence”. It could be months before she even gets a hearing. The campaign to free her continues.

There were a number of protests calling for her release across the country on the day of the court hearing.

George W Bush's US administration is currently locked in negotiations with the Shia-Kurdish coalition government in Iraq over terms for US troops to stay in Iraq after their UN authorisation expires on 31 December.

Workers' Liberty Australia 45 PDF

The Elections Bill, designed to suppress turnout in UK elections, is yet another weapon in the Tories’ multi-faceted assault on democracy (Police Bill, Spycops Bill, Overseas Operations Bill, threat of a new anti-strike law).

Tom Watson has posted some AWL material on his Facebook page in an attempt to revitalise and justify his tiresome scare stories about Trotskyism. In the Observer (14 August) Corbyn gently slapped Watson down, calling his claims of Trotskyist entryism into Labour, “nonsense”. Corbyn’s basic point seems unassailable: there are few Trotskyists and a great many new members, so why make a fuss?

Last week AWL activists leafleted SWP meetings to try to engage SWP members over their organisations support for a vote for the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian presidential elections.

Generally we found SWP members unwilling even to take our leaflet, never mind read it and discuss. If a debate had actually taken place it might have looked like this.

National Union of Teachers (NUT) members at Forest Hill School in Lewisham will strike again on 20, 25 and 26 April in their campaign against vicious cuts being imposed by management to fulfil conditions of repayment of loan to Lewisham council. There is a demonstration on Saturday 22 April.

The proposed restructure at the school is in response to a £1.3m deficit. Lewisham council has given the school a “loan” however they are demanding that the school cuts £800,000 from their wage bill.

An international solidarity event organised on 3 May in London by Marxist Revival (an international project of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and the Iranian Revolutionary Marxists’ Tendency) heard speakers from around the world, live or via video clips.

Jade Baker of AWL chaired the event which included August Grabski and Urszula Lugowska of Dalej (Poland), Dashty Jamal of the Worker-communist Party of Kurdistan, Maziar Razi (IRMT) and Alejandra Rios, representing the Left Workers’ Front of Argentina.

Covid-19 is spreading. Spreading even faster, in the last week of February, was financial panic.

The Dow Jones share-price index in the USA went down 12% in the week ending 27 February, its biggest drop since 2008.

The first economic effects from a pandemic are in some ways the opposite of the usual beginning of a capitalist slump.

That usually begins with "overproduction" - when capitalists, vying each to outstrip the other in a boom, find they've increased capacity way beyond available market demand, and suddenly cut back on new investment.

On 17 February, at a London meeting of the British Medical Association, around 250 members voted to end the policy of “critical engagement” with the government and move to a position of outright opposition.

The meeting also called for a poll of members on industrial action to stop the bill.

Doctors have traditionally been deeply conservative. In 1948 the BMA opposed the formation of the NHS, and in the 1950s they threatened to destroy the NHS with action over pay.